Looking for Jackie (2009) User Reviews

disappointed

[thisissubtitledmovies · 4/10 · 26 August 2010]

Originally and more accurately titled Looking For Jackie, this 2009 Chinese family comedy has been retitled for its UK release in a cynical attempt to cash-in on Jackie Chan's recent Karate Kid remake. But with little screen time for the martial arts legend, does the film offer enough elsewhere to placate fans angry at being duped into picking up this DVD?

A little research shows that Jackie Chan & The Kung Fu Kid was certainly a hit at the domestic box office, setting a new record for local children and family friendly productions. The film is not unwatchable and there is some ironic fun to be had, mostly due to its stiff lipped and po-faced tone. However, for anyone expecting to see much of Jackie Chan, martial arts action in general, or even an engaging 'rights of passage' tale about one boy's journey into manhood, will be left disappointed. PD

This is NOT a Jackie Chan movie

[chelano · 4/10 · 15 November 2010]

I think I understand what the movie is about and what the directors were trying to get at. They wanted to show that the Kung Fu you see in movies is fake. That the actors are doing a form of it, but no one is really getting hurt. That the future is not about fighting, but about learning. They used Jackie Chan in the film because he is such a big star. He had very little scenes in the movie though. The movie was mostly about a boy who says that Jackie Chan is his hero. That he wants to go to China to find him so he can become he disciple and learn to basically beat up people. The kid learns a life lesson in this movie and that is pretty much what makes up the excitement of the movie. The music used in the movie is something you would hear out of a Saturday morning special. The actor was barely at par. Jackie Chan acted good, but again, he didn't have much of a role in a film that has his name written in hug letters. The poster of the film is very misleading, making viewers think it is a new Jackie Chan fighting movie. I believe it was done to get people to see the message of it all, but in return, it made viewers give pretty bad reviews. When I watched it, I realized what they did, but I was still going to watch the movie as a whole and rate it as I would any movie. Unfortunately, the movie was not that good at all and was lacking in many areas.

A Chinese family flick featuring Jackie Chan...

[paul_haakonsen · 5/10 · 30 August 2012]

When I bought this movie from Amazon it was under the impression of it actually being a Jackie Chan movie. Be warned though, that this is not a usual Jackie Chan movie at all, he is in it, sure, but as a guest actor only.

And to make matters worse, the DVD is titled "Jackie Chan & the Kung Fu Kid", and the movie cover here on IMDb is titled "Kung Fu Master", but in reality the movie is titled "Looking For Jackie Chan". What is up with these lame alterations of movie titles? Sure I can understand the movie company's attempt to cash in on the popularity of the remake of "The Karate Kid", but this is just downright outrageous and scandalous. It suckers people into buying the movie under false pretenses.

Anyway, the story in "Looking For Jackie Chan" is about young Chinese boy Zhang Yi-Shan who is going to school in Indonesia, bullied by classmates and failing classes, he sets out on a quest to go to Beijing, China, and seek out Jackie Chan in order to become his disciple and learn Kung Fu from him.

"Looking For Jackie Chan" is sort of a family type movie, but I assume that you have to be a Chinese family to fully appreciate this movie. I, as a Westerner, found the story to be adequate, though I felt cheated with the fake movie title on the DVD cover.

The DVD cover said, and I quote, "essential for any Chan fans". Well, I will have to put a big question mark at that statement. This is hardly a Jackie Chan movie. He just have a small supporting guest role. This is the story of a boy's journey, of coming to terms with himself, the world around him, respecting himself and his elders, and a sort of rites of passage movie. Hardly an essential Chan movie.

I am not saying that the movie in itself is bad, just don't sit down to watch it with expectations of it being a traditional Jackie Chan movie, and don't actually expect to see a lot of him on the screen. Watch it for what it is, a family movie about a boy setting out to find his idol, and that's it.

A boring movie

[Wolfstemple · 1/10 · 10 September 2010]

I saw this at my local Redbox. Rented it and regretted it, it bored the bejeesus out of me.

SPOILERS.

This is basically where a 16 y.o. Chinese kid idolizes Jackie Chan and wants to meet him. Pretty standard plot but it's not like Forbidden Kingdom with some fantastical story. He lives in Indonesia with his grandmother and doing bad in school, particularly in Chinese. For whatever reason, he gets sent to his other grandparent's place to learn in Beijing.

After his plane lands, he forgoes going to his grandparent's place and takes off to meet Jackie Chan. This detour includes a rural temple where he meets the temple owner and her daughter, having his wallet stolen by a gang whose matron takes a liking to him due to him being the spitting image of her dead brother, and then being taken hostage by the same gang, and him staying by the female cop who eventually saves him. After he runs from her (wearing her uniform, Jackie Chan is in town and he wants to get near the event), his disguise as a cop is foiled when a random woman asks for directions and he can't read the map. He has a run-in with the gang boss and the female cop spots them: she manages to handcuff the gang boss to a structure but she is beaten within an inch of her life until the boy intervenes and is on the verge of hysteria of bringing her to the hospital.

The cop is comatose and the police bring boy to the Grandparents. They see something about a new movie studio on TV, they bring him there but is rebuffed nicely by the security guard. He tells his overbearing grandmother off when she mentions studying. He goes in the back where they cast extras, gets picked, and predictably gets booted off the set when he keeps asking when he'll meet Jacky. No surprise, this kid has been an impatient jackass throughout.

His grandmother connives her way into the VIP area and stumbles into Jackie Chan without realizing it, and Jackie plays up to his nice guy image (which would be impractical in real life). The kid ends up getting to see one of Jackie's action sequences being filmed, Jackie asks his reason for being a disciple, boy says revenge against his schoolmates, and Jackie goes into schtick about how Kung Fu is not about that. Jackie promises the boy if he improves his grades, he'll take him on as a disciple. They take picture with Jackie's camera which he promises to send with improved grades.

The kid goes back home thankful to grandparents and more obedient. End closes out that he improves his grades, and to prove to his peers about meet Jackie, he calls and after a belated pause, gets the photo sent to him. End.

It was fine for a kid's film, but by the new title "Jackie Chan: Kung Fu Master" I expected a Jackie Chan film, not 5 minutes of him.

When Jackie Chan finally did come up, it was anti-climatic and boring, and the whole last 10 minutes felt like a studying public service announcement for China. It also made me question Chinese Kanji system if a 16 y.o. kid who is getting Cs has problems reading anything throughout but that's another debate.

What is most depressing about this film is that the kid could have given a shot of real emotional connection with any of the three unrelated females (temple daughter, matron, cop) but just as the film started getting any depth, the kid moved on with his quest. It would have been particularly interesting if the cop, which the movie never revisits despite her dire situation and him seeming to care about her in the end, would have trained him in martial arts at the end and the Jackie Chan thing abandoned as a message about real life heroes vs celebrity. (When the movie introduces her, it shows her beating 2-3 colleagues in the gym, and when he tells her of his Jackie Chan dream, she scoffs at it being fake movie crap unusable in real life.) But alas, it drearily plodded along to its cookie cutter ending.

The title doesn't lie

[EasternZZ · 2/10 · 3 June 2020]

Where is Jackie Chan? At least this movie doesn't lie to the audience, well kinda. Jackie Chan is barely in this movie and he only shows up during the final 5 minutes to pretty much give a speech to kids these days about being good and making dumb decisions.

This movie is not that bad but I am gonna give it a low score because it said "starring Jackie Chan," and the entire time I was waiting to see Jackie Chan, not some kid who goes on a journey looking for Jackie Chan.

2/10

Not the WORST movie I've ever seen, but certainly one of them...

[jlight1977 · 1/10 · 5 August 2013]

I've recently gone back to re-watch EVERY Jackie Chan film, even one's like this where he just has a small role. To be sure, he is featured more here than some other cameo appearances, but even for a die-hard Chan fan, it's not worthwhile.

This "film" is just all kinds of horrible. There is literally no aspect that doesn't suck. It looks like it was made for TV, and two directors can't find anything original to do, they just copy well-worn shots and angles and make even Chan's fighting look slow and amateurish. To boot, many shots of him don't clearly show his face, so I don't know, it might even have been a double doing some of the stunts?? If you get Chan to appear in your movie for 5 minutes, you'd show his face as much as possible, right?!

The script by about 8 writers also has nothing new to say, nothing interesting, and more importantly, no characters to identify with. The main kid is so unlikable that I was praying one of his horrible decisions would end up killing him, as he's incredibly immature and stupid even considering he's 15. The adults in the film are all rash and unsympathetic, also making a string of foolish decisions. The film wants to show some kind of coming-of-age adventure, but the main kid doesn't grow or mature, and nobody else really helps to guide him. They just yell at him to learn manners and then give in to him anyway. Even Jackie isn't the best role model as he gives in easily.

And finally, the action. Well, the film tries to give you lots, but it's all weak, slow, motion-blurred for effect, and unoriginal. No point in watching for that.

Worst of all, the film is basically a propaganda piece for China, trying to show the awe of it's modernization, the beautiful women doing important work everywhere, the generosity of Jackie and all civil servants, the new technology and buildings everywhere, and of course the impeccable Chinese manners and morality. It's all such one-sided BS that I couldn't stand it. Anyone who's spent much time in China will easily see what I'm talking about.

With crappy music, acting, editing, and everything else, there is absolutely no reason to watch this. If you want to see the real glory of China, there are plenty of other films that represent it greatly. There are also plenty of other Chan films worth watching. This one is just punishment.

Where's the Jackie? Where's the story?

[mu-13 · 1/10 · 26 September 2010]

An extended service announcement: kids, be nice to granny, honor your family, and study. That's it, albeit sprinkled with tidbits of Jackie Fu. There's no more depth or character development than a moderately swank ad; in fact, I've seen ads that do a much better job. Every character is a foil, including our protagonist who's rebellious and wants to learn Kung Fu so he can kick the butts of those who kicked his. We never get a clue as to why he's rebellious, why he doesn't want to study, etc.; he's a mono-dimensional punk and we don't care. He has encounters with some promising characters—a girl and her master in a monastery, an impressive woman cop—but none of these relationships go anywhere and are dropped in service of moving the main character along his track to encounter Jackie Chan who, as has been mentioned, we see very little of. Then the service announcement (I refuse to call this a "movie") moves inexorably on to complete the message and our protagonist-foil, who's blatantly in service to this ad's message, asks granny about her granny. Lesson learned and now he's a wonderful kid. Yippee. How I managed to finish watching this advert I'm hard pressed to say. I think it was a morbid curiosity to see if it was going to finish as badly as it seemed it surely would.

I kinda liked it

[2Yung4This · 5/10 · 19 January 2023]

I watched it twice the first time was back in 2010 and forgot about this movie and watched it again recently and I enjoyed the movie both times it's not the best movie but it's not the worst either this film is about Jackie's fan who just wants to meet him and learn from him and due to movie strict budget it also feels like it actually made by a fan

This is not Jackie Chan's movie calling it Jackie Chan kung fu master is disgraceful on prime video I watched thinking I must have missed this movie but halfway through the movie I realized that I watched this movie before because Jackie is only around 5 min in the whole movie

If you are a Jackie fan then watch the movie but it definitely didn't age that well.

No jackie sums up this movie pretty well

[alis-123 · 5/10 · 12 September 2010]

A dumbass kid with big dreams looking for jackie chan, thats pretty much the whole story. Watched this because i like jackie chan movies but like so many movies before they just used a well known actors name who is in the movie for about 5 minutes or less. Good marketing but really annoying for us who watch the movies.

As for the actual film it was somewhat entertaining, some funny scenes and the action parts weren't too bad, not good but better than B movies. The movie is probably much more entertaining for Chinese audiences, i don't understand Chinese culture at all so i think i missed about 80% of the humor. The kid seems to lose his martial art skills for some reason, in the start he can fight but after the first fight scene with the teacher he doesn't seem to be able to do anything.

Not good

[aaron-scoggin · 2/10 · 11 September 2013]

I love Jackie Chan as an actor, so I was pretty psyched to pick this one up at Redbox. I thought I was in for some awesome Jackie Chan action.. Boy, was I wrong. Putting Jackie Chan in big letters across the title and even having him on the cover is pretty much false advertising.

The whole movie is about some whiny kid who looks for Jackie, finds him (Jackie gets about 5 minutes of screen time), and then the movie ends. Out of all the movies I've ever watched, I'd place it in the bottom 5. It's that bad.

Save your dollar for something else.

Don't listen to them. This movie is great.

[Gonissa · 8/10 · 18 January 2011]

I think the thing throwing people off here is the title. The original Chinese title is "Looking for Jackie Chan" which does describe the plot of the movie. That being said, there is only a little bit of Jackie Chan in this movie. But come on, a movie can be plenty good with other people.

This is just the story of a really dorky kid looking for his idol. It's fun, has just a touch of fantasy and a lot of silliness. Sure, it has some quaint morality themes in it, but none of those stop this from being a fun family movie, the kind of thing that was so much fun to watch when I was a kid. Watch it, enjoy it, and stop being such a pretentious person just because it doesn't have that much Chan in it.

1 of the worst movies I've seen.

[uvu00 · 24 November 2010]

No matter how arty-farty people claim to be, this movie is a total disgrace, and Jackie should be ashamed of himself for letting the 'media' machine (ab)use his name and presence to promote this movie.

First: The English Title (Jacky.. Kung Fu Master) is totally misleading. Worse still, the movie artwork, showing Jackie in a martial-arts costume and pose, along with a historical war scene below is a blatant deception of what the movie is about.

Those 2 pictures are actually 'stills' of an acting scene acted out by some 'minor' characters in the movie (yes, Jackie is a minor character), and have nothing to do with the plot.

Even that taken aside, the movie is unrealistic, disjointed, unreasonable, and worst of all achieves no closures for many of the scenes in the movie.

*Spoilers* a 16 yr old 'high-school' student is bullied at school, idolises Jacky Chan, and wants to be Jacky's kung-fu student so that he can beat up his school mates. --- Come on; a 16 yr old boy? He would have matured enough to know...

... 1st, learning Kung Fu takes years!!!.. by the time he is any good, all his school friends will probably have families!!!. --- the sad thing is, in the beginning our 16yr main character was already top of his local martial arts school, and is favoured by his kung fu teacher. That should be enough to beat up his bullying friends.

He travels to China to find Jackie... ends up at some monastry where he meets a young female monk, who doubles as a kung fu actress wanabe, as a movie was being filmed near by. He also gets kidnapped and held hostage, meets a female cop whose life he ends up saving, and in doing so misses meeting up with Jackie. His Grand-mother then meets Jackie (a 16yr old boy travels all the way from Indonesia with a passion to meet Jackie can't... yet his Grandmother, easily waltzes into the VIP area looking for the toilet... meets Jackie) and begs Jackie to meet her Grandson.

They meet up, and Jacky says, "Go home, study more and when you pass your Chinese language class... I'll take you as my deciple."

--- The End ---

What a joke!!! Don't waste your time. I was exercising on my bike, and my eyes were in more pain than my legs after this movie.

The title: Where is Jackie? would've been more appropriate.

[survivorista · 1/10 · 9 February 2011]

we never found him! he's missing in action! is Jackie Chan that desperate to accept a movie without any sense at all? the action scenes didn't even help salvage the whole movie! I felt like I was trying to solve some Chinese arithmetic problem just to squeeze out any good in this film.

please save yourself from wasting time and money! stay away from this film! the only thing this movie did to me was add more sins in my life like cursing, cursing, cursing and cursing.

what a way to rip off people! at the beginning of the first scenes, i was soooooo worried because the fight scenes were horrible. but then it gave me a slight hope when it just turned out to be a "film shoot" of Jackie Chan. while going through the movie, I realized the first scenes were actually the best ones compared to the entire film! I was just hoping the lady cop or the cigarette vendor who helped the kid has a lustful taste for the boy just have some sense of "Ooohhh"ness

Propaganda film masquerading as an action vehicle

[Leofwine_draca · 2/10 · 2 December 2016]

I saw this film under the title JACKIE CHAN & THE KUNG FU KID. It's a Chinese propaganda piece, shot in Beijing, and designed to pass on ideals of behaviour to 'educate' audiences. Thus the tale is about an obnoxious 15 year old boy who mistreats his family and friends in a bid to meet up with his all-time favourite star, Jackie Chan. Inevitably he learns some important life lessons along the way, not least from Jackie himself.

I suppose 2009 must have marked the year that Jackie became heavily involved with the Chinese government. I notice that this film was put out by the Beijing-based Children's Film Studio, which has been making propaganda films for children since the 1980s. The story of the film isn't so bad but the execution is; this is a very cheap production barely above the Z-grade shot-on-video level.

The main characters are all very dull and their acting abilities limited. The moralising is so heavy-handed as to be off-putting. Jackie himself gets to take part in a few fight scenes, but rather unforgivably he appears to be doubled more than a few times, which is a definite no-no for fans of the martial artist. My favourite scene is a nice cameo from old-timer Jackie co-star Yuen Wah, playing himself.

Could have been a contender

[safenoe · 5/10 · 24 January 2023]

I was hoping for something more entertaining in this movie, Searching for Jackie, or its original title Xun zhao Cheng Long, but it kind of seemed by the numbers.

The sentiment was there, and Jackie Chan was there as the moral compass. Which is ironic in some ways, as I was hoping that his daughter Etta Ng Chok Lam would make a tearful reunion appearance with Jackie. I would have rated Searching for Jackie nine stars if Etta Ng Chok Lam had made a cameo appearance.

But not to be. Anyway, what's also sorely missing are the trademark outtakes in the end credits. I would rated Searching for Jackie more than five for sure.