Kung Fu Yoga

Jackie Chan is indeed aging, but in some of his roles, it's not yet so apparent. However, it's noticeable that he has less screen time and gives it more in favor of the new generation, which perhaps also has something to offer. Perhaps not only with dance numbers. Good action scenes, visually pleasing, and especially great CGI animals. (2017.05.16)

A very sad sight to see. Jackie Chan passes the baton to the younger clowns, adding in several preening models, all in a nonsensical, coke-fuelled story – so what we end up with is just a more expensive and mainstream equivalent of Exodus to Shanghai. On the one hand, Chan’s sell-out to China has propagandistic connotations here – the co-production with India was evidently supposed to bolster relations between the parties to the Belt and Road Initiative, which did not receive a positive response in India. Furthermore, the absolute subordination to the most terrifying trends of contemporary Chinese production results in utter unwatchability for fans of Chan’s classics. The Chinese audience is enchanted by the most outlandish spectacles of the lowest calibre, so Chinese blockbusters cannot do without crazily frenetic CGI scenes that go beyond the realm of believability. Kung Fu Yoga offers sad proof that the audience that Chan targets is not curious about hair-raising stunts and imaginative choreography. Chan thus gets by with making faces and a heap of pixels. Even the few scenes in which he repeats his characteristic choreographic work from the heyday of his career are unwatchable because, instead of classic compositions blended into a whole where movements and ideas excel, the action is cut down into miniscule shots to give it some sort of dynamics. Next to Ringo Lam, Stanley Tong is the second veteran whose return elicited hope for the comeback of the style found in the golden age of Hong Kong cinema, but even more fatally than Lama’s result, it serves only to confirm that the golden age is not coming back in the current constellations of the Chinese industry. (2017.04.01)