Wendy Wu

Decided to check this out because it was a sort of cute premise and was directed by someone who worked on Xena. It's actually rather similar to Xena, with the same goofy humor, obliviousness to accuracy and general good-heartedness, although the good-heartedness is push a little more because it's for the Disney Channel. The fight scenes are fun, the movie has a good sense of humor and it's a nice take on the Buffy the Vampire slayer story. In fact, while the Buffy movie had a clever idea (shallow popular girl has a destiny) it actually wasn't a very good movie, and between the two I would take Wendy Wu. Definitely worth watching.

Worst DCOM I have seen. Ever. Well, maybe not as bad as Smart House. This was just bad. The acting and story was fine, but the effects SUCKED!

They were so fake! The only good fight scene was between the brother and Shen. That was probably the only scene in which I was excited.

Overall, I found this movie very boring and the film kind of ended suddenly.

I will give it a four for Brenda Song who is a very funny actress and that one fight scene.

4/10

This is basic Disney fare. Cute and kinda of funny...clearly aimed at teen and pre-teen audiences. No problem there..but I did have a problem with Brenda Song trying to step away fromo her "London Tipton" role...she barely pulled it off. At any moment I was expecting a dumb comment or one of those vauge "duh" looks to come over her. She obviously was playing a bit of a spoiled high school girl..not a real stretch I suppose. The idea of the story was nothing new...it was pure Disney. What always gets me in these films is while these magical things are going on..no normal person in the film seems to notice anything. In this one...I wondered why the Grandmother had not bothered to start training her granddaughter earlier if she khew what was going to happen? As always...Disney stories involve growing up and finding happy endings..which this one does...after quite a bit of annoying things in between.

The theme of Chinese marital arts on a Disney Original Movie caught the attention of my kids. I watched it with them last night when it was replayed. I also got hooked and entertained with the way the story developed. It was very interesting to see an Asian-American character as the girl to beat to become Homecoming Queen. She was frankly quite annoying in those scenes where she was trying her darnedest to shake off the Buddhist monk Shen, but the light mood of the whole movie made it tolerable. The scenes where Shen involved Wendy's teachers during training and the climactic fight were very action-packed yet with a sense of humor. You are willing just to overlook those impossible scenes (like how Wendy changed into her Chinese fighting garb at the museum that her Grandma brought for her, among many others). Oh well, it is all in good fun!

I've always been a fan of kung fu kind of movies, and this movie really surprised me. For something off of Disney this movie felt totally geared towards teens or at least the older children group. There was a lot of humor in this and Disney did not cheat us out of special effects. It was pretty neat that they got Shin Koyamada ('The Last Samurai')to play in this movie and the plot of the story was very original. Normal Teenage girl finds out she's the next warrior to fight for good and tries to escape her fate at first. She gives in for training and does what she has to do basically, all while trying to win the title of Homecoming Queen. I loved it basically! ^_^ It's worth sitting down to watch!