By EWAN McDONALD
(Herald rating: * *)
Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson (above) follow their surprise chop-socky comedy hit, Shanghai Noon, with another surprise: an utterly unfunny chop-socky comedy flop. Seems the film-makers were caught off-guard when the first movie was a success and, unlike most chancers in Hollywood these days,
hadn't prepared a sequel before the original came out and had to paste one together pdq.
Clearly there was little time to find a writer and they rely on Chan's martial artistry, and even that can't carry a ludicrous idea on its own.
Chon Wang (Chan) and his offsider, Roy O'Bannon (Wilson), are in Victorian England to find who murdered Chon's estranged father. They are helped by Chon's sister, Lin (Fann Wong), who is as acrobatic as her brother and of considerably more intimate interest to his partner.
In their quest the group will be helped and hindered by Jack the Ripper, Arthur Conan Doyle and Charlie Chaplin, who would have been greatly amused to learn that he was around at the time.
DVD features: movie (114min); commentaries by director David Dobkin and by writers Alfred Gough and Miles Milla; Fight Manual documentary with Jackie Chan and Dobkin; Action Overload music videos; deleted scenes.
