'Around the World in 80 Days' is a bad trip

We seem to have entered a brave new millennium of filmmaking in which our entire collective cinematic past is being remade and reinterpreted as moronic farce. And the more moronic, the better.

MOVIE REVIEW

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS

DIRECTOR: Frank Coraci

CAST: Jackie Chan, Steve Coogan, Cécile de France

RUNNING TIME: 125 minutes

RATING: PG for action violence, some crude humor and mild language

WHERE: Bella Bottega, Bellevue Galleria, Cinema 17, Crossroads, East Valley, Factoria, Gateway 8, Grand Cinemas, Issaquah, Meridian 16, Metro, Mountlake 9, Oak Tree, Parkway Plaza, Valley Drive-in, Woodinville 12

GRADE: D

Whether it's an old television show ("Starsky & Hutch"), a well-regarded movie of decades past ("The Stepford Wives") or a bona fide film classic ("Mr. Deeds Goes to Town"), the idea is to transform what was once taken seriously into goofy, adolescent comedy.

The new "Around the World in 80 Days" seems a particularly striking example of the trend because it's a remake of a film that was so admired in 1956 that it won Hollywood's highest honor: the best-picture Oscar. And it's been turned into a stupid kung fu movie.

Ultimately, all it really has in common with the original movie (or the 1873 Jules Verne novel) is the title and the premise: a Victorian character named Phileas Fogg is trying to win a bet that he can circle the globe in less than three months.

Otherwise, every scene is different and played for slapstick, crudity or martial-arts bravado, and -- to accommodate star Jackie Chan -- Fogg's valet, Passepartout, has been elevated to protagonist (and, of course, given an ethnic makeover from French to Chinese).

In this new version, Passepartout's real name is Lau Xing and he's the fighting hero of a small Chinese village whose sacred jade Buddha has been stolen by an evil woman warlord and deposited, for no reason that makes any sense, in the Bank of England.

As the film opens, he's burgled the bank and stolen back the statue, and -- to evade capture and get the idol back to China -- he becomes sidekick to Fogg (Steve Coogan), who in this incarnation is a crazy British inventor who has undertaken his journey on a whim.

After a brief stop for a massive kung fu fight with the forces of the pursuing warlord in France -- where they also pick up a Parisian cutie (Cécile de France) for company -- and after more fights in Turkey and India, Passepartout/Lau Xing manages his homecoming.

But since the movie can't very well end here, he stays with his friends for a trip across the Pacific to America and a climactic kung fu fight inside the Statue of Liberty before they (so help me) invent the airplane and wing their way back to London.

Like the '56 movie, there are some guest-star cameos -- Arnold Schwarzenegger as a Turkish sultan, Rob Schneider as a San Francisco bum, Owen and Luke Wilson as the Wright brothers, John Cleese as a London bobby and Kathy Bates as Queen Victoria.

But this time the gimmick doesn't work -- not one of them is remotely clever or adds a whiff of sophistication to the tedious silliness that director Frank Coraci (working very much in the spirit of his two Adam Sandler comedies) has so deliberately strained to create.

The film cost well over $100 million -- making it the most expensive independent film of all time (Disney picked it up after it was completed) -- but the budget is not on the screen: its computer effects and locations look like rejects from a low-budget video game.

Moreover, the stunt choreography is ho-hum. Chan always gets a free ride from critics, but the truth is he hasn't had a new idea in a decade. And, two months after his 50th birthday, his efforts to be boyishly cute are getting to be forced and awkward.

As much as I despised the movie, I'm forced to admit it seemed to play well to its preview audience, who roared at every pratfall and anachronism and didn't seem to mind at all that it represents the movie equivalent of a mustache scrawled on the Mona Lisa.

P-I movie critic William Arnold can be reached at 206-448-8185 or williamarnold@seattlepi.com.