DVD Xi you ji: Da nao tian gong
Run time: 119 min
Rating: 4.8
Genres: Action | Adventure | Family
Director: Pou-Soi Cheang
Writers: Kam-Yuen Szeto, Edmond Wong
Stars: Donnie Yen, Yun-Fat Chow, Aaron Kwok
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Storyline Sun Wukong, (The Monkey King) is a monkey born from a heavenly stone who acquires supernatural powers. After rebelling against heaven and being imprisoned under a mountain for 500 years, he later accompanies the monk Xuanzang on a journey to India. Thus, according to legend, Buddhism is brought to ancient China. This much beloved story, is as much a part of Asian culture as The Iliad and The Odyssey or The Wizard of Oz are to the West. This first installment in a trilogy of live action 3-D movies is actually a prequel to The Journey To The West, the much told story of the Monkey King’s adventures on the road to India. The Monkey King: Havoc In The Heavenly Palace will be released in the U.S. as The Monkey King. The first movie is the origins story – beginning with the birth of Sun Wukong and ending with his imprisonment for his crimes under the Five-Peaked Mountain. Along the way he acquires incredible powers, battling the armies of the gods and the armies of the demons to find his … Written by Robert Harris / Global Star Productions |
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Plot Keywords: monkey, monkey king, journey to the west, martial arts, kung fu | |
Details: Country: China, Hong Kong Release Date: 30 January 2014 (Hong Kong) |
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Box Office Budget: $100,000,000 (estimated) |
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I just saw this film with my mother, a 65-year old Chinese woman (who has trained under some masters of kung fu), who grew up reading the stories of the Monkey King (whereas I'm more familiar with the Japanese Series, 'Monkey Magic'). My mother was delighted at how faithful this film was, with so many of the characters and substories being very close to how she remembers them.
Unlike other reviewers, we found the CGI to be quite good (a couple of bad spots, but in other places, stunning!) We thought the acting and direction was also really good. Donnie Yen is such a wonderful and naughty monkey. His movement is fantastic, whether he was fighting or being a lazy monkey. Chow Yun Fat a benevolent Jade Emperor, and Aaron Kwok a coolly evil demon king.
The film is also incredibly fun. This isn't going to win any Oscars, but if you're out to have fun, it's a better adaptation of the beginning of Journey to the West than most.
When THE MONKEY KING debuted the teaser trailer sometimes last year, I was doubtful whether Donnie Yen was really up for the legendary Sun Wukong role or not. Even the glimpse of the special effects doesn't look engaging enough to convince me whatsoever. However, upon finally watching it, this nearly four-years-in-the-making production proves to be a well-worthy cinematic experience after all.
WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT?
During an ongoing war between god and demon on the Heavenly Palace, Bull Demon King (Aaron Kwok) lost the battle against Jade Emperor (Chow Yun-Fat). However, Jade Emperor's daughter, Princess Iron Fan (Joe Fan), begs her father for mercy because she loves Bull Demon King very much. Jade Emperor ends up banishing both of them to the Fire Mountain and forbids them to enter Heavenly Palace ever again. Meanwhile, a monkey spirit is born out from Princess Nuwa's (Zhang Zilin) magic stones which later grows up as a mischievous adult. Soon he is trained under Master Puti (Tian Hai Yi) and names him as Sun Wukong. After Wukong completed his master's training, he returns to the Mountain of Flowers and Fruits where he originally belongs to reunite with his fellow monkey clan and calls himself as Handsome Monkey King. Trouble arrives when Bull Demon King sees Wukong as his golden opportunity to use him as bait to access Heavenly Palace, while waiting for the right moment to wage war against the god all over again.
THE GOOD STUFF
Last seen in 2012's MOTORWAY, Soi Cheang's direction is colorful and yet entertaining enough to please most of the die-hard fans of the Sun Wukong story. Speaking of story, Szeto Kam Yuen's and Edmond Wong's screenplay is a fairly satisfying combination of action, comedy, romance and fantastical elements all rolled into slick package. Christopher Young's music score, in the meantime, is simply majestic. The action sequence, which is choreographed by Donnie Yen himself, is often exhilarating and epic in scope.
As Sun Wukong, Donnie Yen has successfully delivers one of his best performances ever seen since IP MAN (2008) and IP MAN 2 (2010). And likewise, he proves to be such a nimble fighter as usual, especially when he uses his golden staff. Other actors, such as Peter Ho as the scheming Erlangshen and Chow Yun-Fat as the noble Jade Emperor, are equally acceptable as well.
MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT(S)
The "all-hell-breaks-loose" duels during the movie's spectacular finale.
THE BAD STUFF
Despite the hefty amount spent on the budget, the special effects are average at best. Even there are times the special effects looks like a rushed job. Some of the other cast, including Aaron Kwok's villainous turn as Bull Demon King, Kelly Chen as Guanyin and Gigi Leung as Chang'E, are sadly underwritten.
FINAL WORDS
While THE MONKEY KING is far from the best movie adaptation ever seen from Wu Cheng'en's classical novel of Journey to the West, it remains a satisfying effort worth checking out for this Chinese New Year.
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On paper, everything about The Monkey King screams blockbuster. It's an adaptation of Journey To The West, the classic Chinese novel which tells the hugely-beloved tale of a daring, gifted monkey who falls from the heavens and must find his way back again. It stars three of Chinese cinema's most familiar and respected faces: Donnie Yen, Chow Yun-Fat and Aaron Kwok. Hollywood talents have been recruited to oversee the make-up and special effects for the film. In theory, this is a film to get enormously excited about.
In practice, everything about The Monkey King screams travesty. The movie is remarkably faithful to some elements of the novel, and deviates tragically in others. All three stars are hamstrung in their roles, forced to play the fool or brood anti-heroically in place of a script that actually gives them something real and meaty to do. The CGI is mostly awful, and the make-up/costumes almost laughably amateurish. Brew all those mistakes together, and director Cheang Pou-Soi has really mucked it up big-time.
The film opens with an epic war in the heavens, one that results in the goddess Nüwa having to sacrifice herself to rebuild the celestial palace of the Jade Emperor (Chow). Monkey (Yen) is one of the vestiges of Nüwa's grace, cast down to the mortal realm and trapped in a mountain. Monkey's fate, so it seems, can bring peace or chaos; his own mischievous personality balanced between good and evil. As he trains with a pack of human disciples who mock him for being more simian than they are, Monkey picks up skills, weapons, and a monumental ego. Soon, he establishes himself as the King of Huaguo Mountain, where he lives with his obedient flock of monkeys. But, under the manipulative influence of the Bull Demon King (Kwok), Monkey soon finds himself returning to the heavenly palace to wreak havoc beyond anyone's worst nightmares.
Journey To The West is, truly, a marvellous source of material for a film adaptation: it's morally rich, thematically complex and spiritually enlightening, with huge helpings of adventure, fantasy and derring-do. The allegory, of course, is one that chimes with the Buddhist scriptures: the hubris of Monkey doubles as that of humankind, the notion that we believe ourselves to be somehow greater and more important than we are, that we can rail against the heavens and win. Monkey's journey is one of humility and, eventually, enlightenment.
Almost miraculously, The Monkey King – which focuses on Monkey's fall from grace, a mix of his own arrogance and the demonic lies he unfortunately chooses to believe – wastes almost every iota of the novel's magic and potential. The script is dreadful, blundering from scene to scene with little care for continuity or character development. It dutifully checks off each stage of Monkey's rebellion against the Jade Emperor – from anointing himself the Great Sage Equal To Heaven to, briefly, becoming the divine horsekeeper and later eating forbidden celestial peaches – but fails to connect any of them in a meaningful way. In fact, it shambles about so much that it becomes unintentionally funny.
You might think that the three actors holding up the film might salvage it in some way. They do, and they don't, largely because the terrible script prevents them from doing much good. Yen manages to be charismatically cheeky as Monkey, even though he seems to think that acting like a monkey involves blinking a lot and very fast. He gets approximately one scene to tumble through the air with his trademark acrobatic grace, after which he's submerged beneath a maelstrom of CGI and wirework. Kwok has been set to dark, brooding mode, which he does quite well, but he never really bothers to snap out of it. Chow, with his blue contact lenses, is the only one who seems to be in on the joke, twinkling his way through scenes that require him to throw off extraneous lines of dialogue or float unconscious in mid-air.
It's hard to shake the feeling, too, that most of the film's budget went to securing the services of Yen, Kwok and Chow. The other actors seem to have wandered in from a grade-school production of Journey To The West, dressed in costumes they might as well have made themselves. Peter Ho, in particular, is hilariously bad as Er Lang Shen, the devious celestial deity who has it in for Monkey. Through much of his unfortunately considerable screen-time, Ho looks permanently constipated. Cameos from the likes of pop singers Kelly Chen and Gigi Leung – the former plays Guan Yin, Goddess Of Mercy, and the latter the immortal moon-dwelling Chang'E – add to the generally trippy effect of the film.
The special effects are, on the whole, terrible: a lot of the time, the film feels like a creaky albeit well-intentioned television adaptation from the 1970s, which is unfortunate given the forty intervening years of technological development. Everything is green-screened within an inch of its life, and almost all of it feels awfully fake. Some moments are nicely-rendered, but those are soon forgotten beneath the deluge of psychedelic Buddhas and sparkly goddesses. Leave us not forget the costumes, which look as if they were picked up from a store dumping its unwanted Halloween stock.
If you can suffer through the first two-thirds of the film, The Monkey King actually seems to find its feet in its final half-hour. The action beats have a genuine snap of tension and the drama is rounded out by a welcome touch of comedy. It's still a surreal and not altogether well- put-together mess, but it's a great deal more effective in a narrative sense. Too bad it comes about an hour after the audience has run out of doubt from which the film can benefit.
When reviewing The Monkey King, most reviewers forget the purpose of the movie: G RATED entertainment meant for ALL AGES. Teeners will abuse the CGi lame bits, film enthusiasts will lament to the point of misguided critique as to the lack of depth building and plot complexities as portrayed by the original books and film purists will pick every personal gripe until the bones appear…. However at the end of the day as a family movie for all ages old and young it is a definite winner.
As a absolute devoted fan since the 70's of the NipponTV incarnation of this tale, it was absolutely fun to watch with my kids and parents as the Director intended, to introduce and showcase a very popular traditional Chinese story to a larger demographic western audience with a modern feel and fun easy to digest storyline. (Thus the use of some headline artists in the main roles)
The obvious details of the screenplay to book adaption aside, Donny Yen really brings SUN WUKONG to animated life much as he re-birthed IP MAN for modern audiences.
A truly memorable performance by Chow Yun Fat and supporting casts makes it a benchmark movie amongst the last few recent "MONKEY" re-envisaged movies of recent years.
Maybe not a movie for the full on Chinese mythology traditionalist but certainly one NOT TO MISS for the dedicated devotee of the MONKEY story sub genre.