Your Donations support the Site

Buy Cranky stuff


Buy Movie Posters

Top Selling DVD     Books

        BLU-RAY DVDs:
Avatar
Bad Teacher
Batman Begins
Big Lebowski
Blade Runner
Conan the Barbarian
Cowboys and Aliens
Dark Knight
Fifth Element
The Hangover
James Bond 11 disc coll.
Lord of the Rings trilogy
Star Wars Saga
Super 8
Ultimate Matrix coll
X-Men First Class
X-Men Trilogy
X-Men Wolverine

BLU-Ray for Family DVDs
Alice in Wonderland (2010)
Bambi
A Bug's Life
Cars
Chronicles of Narnia set
Coraline
Ghostbusters
Harry Potter 1-8 collection
Iron Man 2 combo
Kung Fu Panda
Lord of the Rings Trilogy Pinocchio
Pirates of Caribbean trilogy
Pixar short films
Ratatouille
Shrek the Whole Story
Sleeping Beauty
The Smurfs combo
Snow White & 7 Dwarfs
Star Trek motion pictures set
Star Wars Saga (1-6)
Toy Story combo
Toy Story 2 combo
Toy Story 3 combo
Wall-E SE

Search engine by FreeFind

click to search site

      Now in Release:
Adventures of Tintin
Albert Nobbs
Anonymous
The Artist
Carnage
Change-Up, the
Chasing Madoff
Cook County
Crazy Stupid Love
The Descendants
The Double
50/50
Hanna
Hugo
J Edgar
Killing Bono
Kill the Irishman
Machine Gun Preacher
Melancholia
Mission Impossible GP
The Muppets
Passion Play
Puncture
Rampart
Sherlock Holmes
The Son of No One
Super
That's What I Am
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Trust
Tucker and Dale vs Evil
What's Your Number
Winnie the Pooh
Young Adult

click for full sized poster	Shanghai Noon Starring Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson; Lucy Liu Screenplay by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar Directed by Tom Dey website: www.shanghainoon.movies.com

IN SHORT: Bust-a-gut funny. [Rated PG-13 action violence, some drug humor, language and sensuality. 110 minutes]

Jackie Chan was always different from all other martial arts stars 'cuz he always laced his fights and his films with humor. Lots of it. Between sight gags and his wonderful facial reactions, no language got in the way of the fights and his movies made the international jump well. But we are far past the time in which we could expect a nine point two minutes long battle every nine point four minutes. As I wrote about Rush Hour, and a phrase that applies as well to Shanghai Noon, this is not a "Jackie Chan" flick in the chop sockey sense. So let's take it as a regular movie starring Jackie Chan and see where that takes us.

There are certain things every good Western flick should have. Horses. Injuns. A huge church bell clanging. A showdown on an empty street. A hanging or two. A runaway horse and wagon. A damsel in distress and some pony-tailed Jewish guys in dresses . . . That'll make sense when you see the Shanghai Noon, which has everything a Western is supposed to have, and twice again as many laughs. They're in the script. They're onscreen in visual gags. They're all over Jackie Chan's face.

Beginning in the Forbidden City in the Western Year numbered 1881, we first see the Chinese Imperial Guard and witness their utter devotion and subservience to their Princess, Pei Pei (Lucy Liu). She, by Imperial decree or custom, is to marry the next Emperor of China, who happens to be a pudgy twelve years old boy. Her American tutor says he can smuggle her out of the country and she, thinking it is of her own free will, agrees. Only Chon Wang (Chan) sees her sneak out, but she orders him to let her go. He, obedient servant that he has been trained to be since birth, obeys. What the Princess doesn't know is that the tutor has left a ransom note behind. And the Royal Court sends their best men to retrieve the Princess . . .

. . . which wouldn't include Jackie, but he gets there anyway. On his way to Carson City, where the ransom is to be paid, Jackie picks up a horse, an Indian wife (Brandon Merrill) and an incompetent outlaw companion, Roy O'Bannon (Owen Wilson), whose non-stop mouth offers up all the gags that Jackie's English isn't good enough to provide. He battles both Cowboys and Indians and ultimate bad guy Lo Fong (Roger Yuan) while picking up a nickname and getting a bounty levied on his head. Once you get past the opening sequence, set in the Forbidden City, there's some kind of gag in every scene. Parents should note that there is some language and dope humor that isn't exactly family friendly, thus the PG-13 rating on what otherwise could've passed muster.

As in his last outing, Chan lets his sidekick steal the show. That would be Wilson, sounding like a 90s California dude and taking apart the classic showdown with an internal monolog that is flat out funny. Said showdown also adds a psychotic marshal (Xander Berkeley) who dogs our heroes as they search out the princess. Lucy Liu doesn't get a lot to do, though she does show up some karate chops which'll be on better display in Charlie's Angels later this year.

On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Eight Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price to Shanghai Noon, he would have paid...

$6.50

For the old school fan, it's thirty minutes between each Chan fight but the last one is a whopper.

	Click to buy films by Tom Dey
	Click to buy films starring Jackie Chan
	Click to buy films starring Owen Wilson