The trailer for the PG-13 martial arts flick The Forbidden Kingdom (Weinstein Company/Lionsgate, April 18), starring Jet Li and Jackie Chan, elicits a shrug, for the most part. It mixes its message a bit, with varying tonal signals. It opens with typically earnest, historical narration (“In a land… where heaven touches Earth… with an empire divided by war”), and seems to have a fairly legit scope in terms of production design and setting. The floating-arrows-and-spears stuff is pretty cool, but then the prophesied-American-teen-transported-back-to-ancient-China stuff starts getting played up a little more, and the brow furrowing commences. There are lines seemingly meant to convey a sort of pithy jocularity (Chan to Li: “We can kill each other when it’s over”), but they essentially fall flat, and I don’t know that Michael Angarano (aka “the kid,” Jason) can pull off enough of a transformation to make any of this pop, or matter. There’s one legitimate laugh here (Chan’s petulant “He’s got no kung-fu — none!”), but the movie definitely doesn’t seem to be going for Shanghai-type hijinks. Maybe it should, given the mash-up/fish-out-of-water plot. Also, randomly, I do have to admire, on a certain level, Chan’s steadfast refusal to iron out his English. It’s obvious (even if you haven’t seen the bloopers and deleted scenes from any of the Rush Hour films) that he still learns his lines phonetically, bless him, and I think the weird intonations are inextricably part of his charm. For more about The Forbidden Kingdom, click here.