Xi You ji: Da Sheng gui lai

The animation is kind of clunky and the characterization leaves a lot to be desired, but the scenery and battles are epic, and there's something touching about the bond between the monkey king and the persistent boy monk. And it's interesting that the great jade king was cast down from heaven and became a great, corpulent, cowardly pig. My 6-year old son Sebastian particularly liked this movie.

I don't know if it was because I'm too sentimental or what, but I was literally tearing when I was watching the trailer with the moving song by Kit Chan. I went to the cinema with hesitation actually,thinking that I might have too much expectation on it, and was kind of afraid that it would let me down. After watching it, I would say it absolutely deserves my expectation and infinite applause. It is probably the first Chinese animation for adolescent and adult audience, comparing to childish Pleasant Goat& Big Big Wolf and Bonnie Bears. The latter actually made nearly 300 million RMB in China. The plot of Monkey King is quite common, especially in western movies: the fallen hero's rebirth, but this kind of themes still attracts large portion of audience and wins lots of tears, including those of the two little boys who sat next to me during the movie. The animations and features are just impressive, maybe not as good as many of the western masterpieces, but definitely good enough to describe it as unprecedented in China's animation history. The bad thing is that, because they almost used up all their budget on the film's creation and modification, they literally didn't do anything on marketing and advertising. Something even worse is that, although I admire the crew's courage and resolution, they chose to compete with extremely fan-based Tiny Times 4.0 and Forever Young, which are acted by a bunch of idols with tons of fans in China. The two I mentioned already made more than 100 million RMB on their first day respectively, but only about 20 million for Monkey King due to the lack of exposure and coverage. However, I always believes that one cannot evaluate a movie only by looking at how much it makes, neither an actor nor a director.

I truly recommend this movie for all! I have long been disappointed of Chinese animated pictures. But now they have got talents, great animators. Great "new thinking" plot on a well exploited story, great characters with real emotions as motivation for character development, great camera-work, great character design, great action and so on! But there is still one thing almost all Chinese animation lack, including this one, and that is good sound effects. The movie feels unintuitive and unnatural at times, because the sound doesn't match what's happening in the screen.

In short, see this movie! If you want to see a great Chinese animated picture!

Vibrant. Colorful and fast, with some amazingly innovative, original animated images. Characters include an orphan taken in by an aged monk, an ugly obnoxious shape-changing pig, an enemy lord with his armies of kidnapping trolls, and the disgraced Monkey King who must defeat the evil lord to atone for past sins.

Animated version, equally cute, but little attracted me as much as the two previous films, but it's cute, the little ones will like it, I'm just not in the vibe...