Shanghai Knights” is one of those movies that really makes you think, fully engages its audience and poses challenging questions. You think of ways you’d rather be spending your time. You become fully engaged with annoying British jokes. And the most challenging question of them all is, “Who the hell thought this movie was a good idea?”

“Knights” is the sequel to 2000’s “Shanghai Noon,” a movie that was somewhat original and amusing, but by no means unique, clever or hysterical. The film takes the same lead characters, Chon Wang (Jackie Chan) and Roy O’Bannon (Owen Wilson) and transplants them from 19th century Nevada to 19th century London. Therein lies the first problem with the movie. Chan and Wilson’s unlikely duo works in Nevada, but it just makes no sense in London.

Oh, but it does. Or so thought the screenwriters. After all, where else would you be able to make jokes about spotted dick, the American Revolution and Stonehenge (because big rocks are funny). You can see them coming from clear across the ocean, so the fifth time Owen Wilson makes a face about the food, you’re ready to sentence him to life in Scotland Yard, which, as Roy so astutely observes, is not in fact a yard, but rather a prison.

The movie is stupid. Unfortunately, it doesn’t know it and tries to interweave a pseudo-dramatic storyline with a heartwarming tearjerker ending. Chon Wang, whose complete name is almost always said whenever he is addressed, lest we forget it is pronounced John Wayne, receives word that his father has been killed. He picks up his good old womanizing buddy Roy and off they go to London to meet up with Chon’s sister (Fann Wong) to seek revenge.

Along the way they meet a precocious street urchin named Charlie and an inspector named Artie, and together, they get into fights and high jinks ensue. And, oh yes, a love story between Roy and Chon’s sis is thrown in for good measure.

What should have been thrown in for good measure was the towel.

People seem to like Jackie Chan. I, for one, can’t stand his confused yet charming facial expressions and the inherent language issues he has in American movies. His confusions are even worse when he’s asked to say things like, “His fish don’t swim upstream; he shoots blanks,” regarding Roy’s supposed impotency.

Chan will be lucky if his public forgives him for this script choice, especially since it comes right after the monstrous flop, “The Tuxedo.” Wilson also seems to have some appeal, but I missed it. Roy says, “I’m a 30-year-old waiter gigolo — where’s the future in that?” I don’t know, but there sure isn’t any future for an actor who takes a role as awful as Roy O’Bannon.

Two points in this movie evoke sheer terror, but neither are because of crafty storytelling. The first is when Roy approaches a table of umbrellas and the opening chords of “Singin’ in the Rain” slowly begin to play. As he proceeds to awkwardly kick and karate chop his way through the whole song, Gene Kelly wasn’t turning over in his grave, he was throwing up in it.

Then there’s the pillow fight scene between Chan, Wilson and a bevy of whores. This scene would have merely been stupid and pointless if not for Chan and Wilson’s full-body footie pajamas.

What defines “Shanghai Knights,”though, is a major continuity error in the movie’s climax atop Big Ben. Wilson gets kicked out of the tower through the clockface and the glass shatters, but the next time we see the clockface there’s no hole. It’s sort of like how, if you still decide to go see this movie, you’ll walk out and have no idea how or why you just wasted two hours of your life. nyou

Communication junior Martha Finkley is an nyou writer. She can be reached at [email protected].