THE chin and Chan show returns. Not content with taming the Wild West in the mock-Western Shanghai Noon, big-chinned American ladies' man Owen Wilson and Asian pocket dynamo Jackie Chan link up for more boisterous high jinks.

One of those comedy odd couples that doesn't look right on paper, they work peachily on screen.

Chan is Chon Wang (pronounced John Wayne, ho-ho), long-haired Sheriff of Carson City, who learns of his father's murder at the hands of a Chinese rebel now fled to London, with a stolen imperial seal.

To make the trip, he needs money, money frittered away on birds and booze by former partner Roy O'Bannon (Wilson). That doesn't stop the sparring duo from heading to London, and this is very much London, England, as Americans are wont to call it. Victorian England in fact, with all the theme-park clichs writ even larger than in Three Men And A Little Lady

Cue cameos from Jack The Ripper, Big Ben, Madame Tussaud's and, er, Stonehenge; every Londoner acting like an extra from Oliver!; assistance from an Artful Dodger street urchin who will turn into Charlie Chaplin (Aaron Johnson); a bungling, funny-voiced Scotland Yard inspector by the name of Artie Doyle (Thomas Fisher); a sneering, dastardly aristo (Aidan Gillen) and a spotted dick gag. All that and a plot to kill Queen Victoria (Gemma Jones) too.

Inoffensive, energetic and pleasantly silly comic froth, David Dobkin's jaunty Shanghai Knights serves up robust verbal cut and thrust from the ever willing Chan and his charmingly dippy, English-baiting foil, Wilson.

Never mind that Chan's highly choreographed stunts are no longer high speed, his Gene Kelly umbrella dance pastiche is a tender gem. Better still, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is sent up in the combative form of Chon's sister, Lin (Fann Wong). Nothing wong with her.

Updated: 10:03 Friday, April 04, 2003