Zhuo yao ji

As someone who often enjoys Chinese movies, and lives in China, I thought I would be able to appreciate this film. I was wrong.

This movie is somehow boring, sappy and stupid at the same time. The plot is inconsistent, the characters are flat, and the baby monster is simply annoying.

While the movie makes an attempt to include a blossoming romance, again everything is inconsistent and often ridiculous.

More often than not, I found myself getting upset at how terrible the writing was.

I would not recommend this movie for anybody older than five. Forget that. I would not recommend this movie to anybody at all.

Whether you're into monsters or not, this adorable film will appeal to a wide audience. Whether you love it for the action, the stunts, the visual effects, or the cuteness of the baby character, there's something here for everyone to adore. I just loved everything about it. I found it incredibly cute and delightful and a pleasure to watch. Some scenes were jaw dropping incredible!!

I watch animated films once in a while and I watched this right after another foreign animated film, Hero Quest (on Netflix). In contrast to the muddled, flat, at times horrific Hero Quest (probably a 3.5 rating out of 10, 4.1 on IMDb), Monster Hunt is a thoroughly enjoyable film. It fits more with the animated humor of the Dreamworks genre (more so than Pixar). Not surprisingly, Raman Hui, who worked with Shrek and other Dreamworks productions takes his energy and infuses Monster Quest into a well-done tale.

Overall, it's one of the best foreign animated films but does fall a bit short of Pixar's and Dreamworks' top 10 films. So it has a bit of Monsters Inc or Shrek or How to Train Your Dragon but falls a bit short. Nevertheless, it should rank in the middle of the pack of the better CGI animated films of the last two decades. The strength of the film is actually(!) the human characters: the lead Boran Jing who plays the bumbling Tianyin. And Baihe Bai who plays Xiaolan, the Monster Hunter and Elaine Jin, the grandmother were the strengths of the film with comedic acting that's among the best anywhere. For that, the human comedy roles get a 9.5/10. And some of the gags were terrific humor such as when Tianyin plays hide-and-seek with the Wuba, the baby king, to lure him into the cage. The chemistry between Boran Jing and Baihe Bai is terrific, it rarely gets better.

However, the storyline gets a bit complicated and it's easy to lose track. Then the couple songs in the film just don't really make the grade. In addition, it's hard to really warm up to the monsters except maybe the Baby King (Radish). The monsters had faceless qualities and never really developed strong characters unlike Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, or Sulley or Mike Wazowski (from Monsters Inc). The CGI was fabulous but it had some blandness. It's like looking at some really beautiful and delicious pizza but when you bite in, it does really have a great flavor. Hence, it never really pulls out the emotional connection.

Still, the film is wonderful fun. It just doesn't make the top 15-20 animated film list. Yet, its uniqueness and wuxia antics make it a darling for fans of Chinese films. Hence, it deserves to be #1 in China. It's better than the 6.2 rating, surprisingly low, and should move up with time. I gave a 9 to balance the act but the real rating is 7.2-7.5.

Monster Hunt begins telling the history of the war between mankind and monsters, when the humans won, the monsters have separated themselves from them until years later, their queen escaped while bearing a child who will become the prince and being tracked down by other monsters and a human army. The opening doesn't bring anything fresh within its backstory, the actual plot doesn't get any less original either, when we cut to a young hero who doesn't get any luck after this plot came and other colorful set of character join to his journey. Despite of these done to death tropes and premise, the movie however brought something appealing, and that's definitely how seriously weird it is. It's packed with a lot of amusingly strange ideas which becomes its own personality. It's good if it runs less than two hours. The stock plot doesn't get any better and the climax feels a little too long for its own good. But to what it is, there is something delightful to its weirdness.

So the hero lives in a small village, he lives with a relative anyone but his parents, he feels like an outcast, an underdog, etc. At this point of this film, it's just totally uninteresting witnessing the same tropes, even without trying to make its own spin out of it. And then he discovered that there is more to this world than what he has always knew. There is a girl who is stronger than him... is this even worth paraphrasing? You get the bottom line, however, the film gets better when it shifts to being downright weird. The pregnant queen can transfer her egg to another womb, which is given to the male hero. And this little antic is actually quite amusing. After the laboring, the movie continues to play off the concept as they raise this little monster. It's a delight, but it still doesn't help the plot that much.

Even before the climax comes, it's still felt uncertain where the story is going. It feels a little busy playing around to some of its side villains. Now when it comes to the actual climax, it would have gone better if it was shorter than it was. And then a twist reveals that is kind of generic. There just isn't much to it, the story between the relationship of the monsters and humans remain thin. It's the main characters and the baby prince is the only strong moments in here.

And to be fair, before the climax that eventually wears off, the pacing is kind of nice, making every moment reasonably entertaining. The action scenes are watchable. The special effects are alright, though the only likable digital creature is the prince which is admittedly adorable. The performances seem to be having fun on what they're doing, bringing energy into this film's silly nature of being a cartoon.

That's pretty much what Monster Hunt mostly feels like, a cartoon. Yeah, the tropes and plot are pretty stock, but it really gets more interesting when it's getting weirder and weirder, from a pregnant male protagonist to some dark sense of humor it keeps things entertaining. I sort of wished they establish more of this mythology and how this monster prince can change their world, but the movie doesn't have much of that opportunity. To what it is, it's fun, though I wish it was a little shorter, or spent those other minutes to develop the fantasy stuff. But the main characters eventually become charming, in spite of how faulty the plot is. Monster Hunt is entertaining for the outrageous stuff alone.

"Monster Hunt" (aka "Zhuo yao ji") was sort of a movie that was entertaining in a strange way, especially since it was a combination of animation and live action. Normally that mixture does work well enough, but it was the odd cute and cuddly appearance of the monsters in the movie that just made it weird.

The story in "Monster Hunt" was actually surprisingly good, as it is a story which is suitable for both children and adults alike. And the movie itself is also suitable for children to watch.

"Monster Hunt" is about ancient China where humans and monsters live simultaneously, although the monsters are banished. The queen of the monster world is pregnant, but is being chased relentlessly. With her dying breath she passes on her egg to a human named Song Tianyin (played by Boran Jing). He is traveling with monster hunter Huo Xiaolan (played by Baihe Bai) and they are being chased by monster hunters set out to capture the royal monster child.

With a captivating story, then "Monster Hunt" is already well on the way for being a good movie. But it is really helped along by some great acting performances by Huo Xiaolan, Boran Jing, Wu Jiang, Sandra Kwan Yue Ng and Eric Tsang. And it was a nice treat to have the talented Wei Tang make a short appearance in this movie.

The CGI were good, although the design of the monsters was at first somewhat of a difficult pill to swallow for me. They were simply just too cute in their design to be taken seriously. So I guess you will either outright fall in love with them right away (which my wife did), or you will have problems with taking them seriously (as I did).

"Monster Hunt" is a fast-paced movie that has both a good storyline, but also has enough action and martial arts to keep the average fan of the Asian cinema more than happy.

While it is somewhat of an offbeat movie, compared to the myriad of Hong Kong movies released every year, then "Monster Hunt" certainly is well-worth watching. It turned out to be a very nice surprise and a very entertaining movie, and I can warmly recommend this movie, both if you are a fan of the Asian cinema, but also if you are looking for a good movie for the entire family.

"Monster Hunt" scores a rock-solid seven out of ten stars rating from me.