A couple of years ago we put Jackie Chan together with Owen Wilson in a cowboy movie Shanghai Noon, a name chosen for its pun value (Chan’s character was from Beijing). The ending seemed like a real ending; both men were (apparently happily) hitched, and Wilson had metamorphosed from Roy O’Bannon into Wyatt Earp, a genuine historical character.

Now they come back, and it’s as if the original ending had never happened. Princess Peipei, who does not make so much as a cameo, is apparently working in San Francisco while Chan (Chon Weng — “Thet ain’t no cowboy name!”), the erstwhile Shanghai Kid, is now the sheriff of a small town, apparently in Nevada. Wilson, who is again known as O’Bannon, has gone east, apparently wifeless, and is the subject of a series of best-selling penny-dreadfuls in which Chan’s character is again relegated to the status of sidekick; he is also in charge of investing lots and lots of money which he and Chan acquired in the first film. One may suppose, with much justice, that entrusting so much money to the feckless Roy is not A Wise Move.

But bad things have happened back in Beijing; Chan’s father has been killed during a raid in which the Imperial Seal was stolen from the forbidden city, and Chan’s sister Lin (Fann Wong) has tracked the thieves, led by the evil Lord Rathbone (Tenth In Line To The British Throne), back to England. Chan turns over his horse and his star to his deputy and goes to New York to get his money from Roy. One thing leads to another, and the two of them end up in London and points beyond, where they fall in with a couple of interesting individuals whose real identities the viewer will have fun guessing: a young Oliver Twist-like thief named Charlie (Aaron Johnson) and a lanky police detective named Artie (Tom Fisher). Ultimately, they must foil a plot to destroy two royal families in two quite disparate nations.

It’s all a lot of good fun. I particularly enjoyed the scene where Wilson, attending a soiree at Lord Rathbone’s in disguise, must invent a name for himself, and chooses “Major-General … Sherlock … Holmes …” from the label on an object hanging nearby (Chan, equally well disguised, is the “Maharaja of Nevada” — given the sequel, I would have expected him to be disguised as a Chinese acupuncturist named Wa Tsong). Lin’s encounter on a bridge with a maniacal Jack the Ripper is perhaps a bit too short (and now we know how Red Jack’s reign of terror was also cut short). There is a nifty pillow fight in a house of ill repute. There’s lots of martial-arts fighting in the inimitable, not totally reverent, Chan style, and the usual set of outtakes at the end.

Don’t expect a movie for the ages, but don’t expect to be bored, either.