This review of "Around the World in 80 Days" is making me like a not-terrible film less. Mind you, I've never liked Mick LaSalle's reviews, the guy's a hack, but I still read them with a grain of salt. This review is a new low for him.

Let me get this out of the way right off: it offends me that Jet Li or Jackie Chan will never "get the girl" in a Hollywood film, and I'd appreciate it if reviewers start pointing this out more often. Anyway, LaSalle makes a mistake in bringing up the term "Jackie Chan movie", and once I think about it, "Jackie Chan movie" is not a descriptive, it's a term of art. And this movie is NOT a Jackie Chan movie. It's a movie with Jackie Chan and his trademark action artificially plugged in. That's not to say it isn't entertaining, but when Jackie Chan works with another director, they work together to create a seamless "Jackie Chan movie". This film is directed by someone else, but when it's time for a Jackie Chan action scene, it looks like Jackie Chan took the reigns and the other director took a coffee break.

LaSalle also makes it sound like this is fresh Jackie Chan. It isn't. He's getting old, he's getting slow, it's taking longer for his bones to heal. It still looks great even if his age stretches the credibility of his martial arts verility in a fight, but even the scene with the rope that LaSalle "marvels" about, it's been done before and done better and more cleverly by Jackie Chan. And about cameos, they are "welcome all the same"? What kind of line is that to put into a published review. The guy's getting paid for this. Welcome how? Are they so exceptional? Was the movie sucking without them? Welcome by whom? Not me. I can't stand Schwarzenegger, Rob Schneider, and the Owen brothers.