Nearly 30 minutes pass in Rob Minkoff’s “The Forbidden Kingdom” before we reach the main event – a graceful and painful face-off between martial arts icons Jackie Chan and Jet Li. It’s worth the wait. Their anticipated tête-à-tête explodes in a cornucopia of ancient fighting styles (the snake, the tiger, the drunken punch) choreographed with the precision of a Russian ballet by Woo-Ping Yuen (“The Matrix,” “Kill Bill,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”). The lengthy bout isn’t quite Ali-Frazier. A friend at our screening pegged it as Hulk Hogan meets Ric Flair. You’re not going to hear a better analogy than that.

The film’s undercard – a pedestrian fantasy story about a modern-day teen (Michael Angarano) traveling through time to return a powerful Asian staff to its rightful owner – doesn’t match the intensity and hype of the Chan-Li title fight. The story, credited to John Fusco, unloads reams of dense mythology on us as Angarano, Li and Chan combat an assortment of villains inspired by the “Mortal Kombat” arcade game.

I’m not sure why Lionsgate handed “Kingdom” to Minkoff, a family director whose credits include comically childish fare like the “Stuart Little” franchise and Disney’s “The Haunted Mansion.” He botches the film’s fantasy elements, saturating these segments with cheesy effects.

The most special effect, however, remains Chan, who turned 54 on April 7 but continues to bend, swing, leap and split with the agility of a junior-varsity gymnast. Perhaps Chan feeds off his co-stars, who get younger from picture to picture. Chris Tucker (“Rush Hour”) makes way for Jennifer Love Hewitt (“The Tuxedo”), who has passed the torch to 20-year-old Angarano. And through it all, Chan keeps kicking. At this rate, he can schedule a buddy-cop thriller with Dakota Fanning for the summer of 2010. Now that, I’d pay to see.