David Chang's inept martial arts comedy confirms the genius of Jackie Chan. In film after film Chan has played a bumptious, sweet, and astoundingly athletic hero engaged in some of the most brilliant sight gags since Buster Keaton. Double Trouble, on the other hand, involves lots of mugging, screaming, clumsy action, and a tinge of xenophobia and misogyny. The fact that it stars Chan's son Jaycee makes the comparison all the more invidious. He plays Jay, one of the troubled doubles of the title, a moody guard protecting a painting at a Taiwan art museum. He's paired with Ocean (Xia Yu), also a security guard, but from Peking; he's in Taipei as a tourist and is even dumber than Jay. After various witless misadventures, Ocean ends up helping Jay recover the painting when it's stolen by "foreigners." So, China united against the West? Only with the goofy outtakes at the end does the film measure up to the classics of Chan the elder.
