La Légende du tigre

It's 2009 Hong Kong. Mrs. Lee and her baby grandson Tom are being chased by yaoguai. They are saved by the 12 Chinese Zodiac. Tom is the chosen one. It's 15 years later in San Francisco. Tom is now a bullied high school kid. His grandmother had kept his powers a secret. They are attacked by the wicked magician Loo who is after his Phoenix stone. The 12 Zodiac gather to protect the boy.

The story is pretty simple as in good versus evil. There is a thing to get. There is the boy savior. The difference is mostly the Chinese culture. I would use more generalized English terms for some of these Chinese things. I would definitely give some of the Zodiac better powers. For example, the rooster crows in the sunrise. Why not have him throw off rays of sunlight? Instead, he's throwing feathers like darts. The pig rolls in mud. Why not give him earth power or throwing around mud? It seems random that the monkey can shrink things. The monkey should be super-smart. So on and so on. Finally, it's a French animation company and they are at least a generation behind. The surface work and the designs are all a little off. It's lesser animation.

The Tiger's Apprentice is a mediocre book adaptation where it had good opportunities, but was not exactly as good as I would expect. It does have the right tools to be a good film with the direction the movie is going for with the respectable Chinese representation, decent animation, and action scenes being the best part. But it ended up being an easily forgettable film with a disappointingly dull and rushed story, weak looking human characters, and pretty bland characters. I know not everyone will have Paramount Plus and I agree that their exclusives aren't that great. So I won't see any rush to watch this one. I have never read the book, so I'll just say that maybe those that have read it may be interested in this. It is disappointing that Paramount is not releasing original animated films in theaters, but this one does feel like it fits for streaming.

Wow, that's bad.

Dialogue like "- Hey, you're the new girl. - Been a girl for a while now." already made me pause, like is that supposed to be a joke of some sort? But then there is the whole bullying theme, which is not only cliched, but also does not make sense. Bullies can find the littlest things to bully for, yes, but bullying for grandma making incenses?.. Them calling grandma a witch is understandable, but everything else felt extremely forced (and rushed).

Then there was also the choice of music... It's fine if that's not my style of music (Spider-Verse also has a few tracks that are not my thing), but it just did not fit in any way. I am a strong believer, that music needs to "match" the screen, so that it "expands" the scene, adds to it. When music sounds like an unnecessary noise - it's just poor taste.

These things, albeit minor, already made me want to drop this, but then I did a bit of search, in case I am missing a point, and maybe it will become good after awhile, but... Turned out they changed the premise from the original book. In the book the boy knew who he was (at least to an extent). This minute detail changes the character entirely, and there is absolutely no reason for that, considering that school (and thus bullying) took like 2 minutes of the whole runtime and did not make me relate to the character in any way.

This made me think, that this change, and probably dozens of others (I am assuming here) were done just to push some sort of agenda. No idea what kind of agenda, though, since I dropped it soon after Hu appeared and all his interactions seemed unnatural even for a supernatural being. Either way, I would rather read a book, since it's synopsis sounds way more interesting.

Oh and animation is meh, while the overall style is quite subpar. Probably expected, if it's low budget, though.

A woman wants a "Phoenix" egg McGuffin (because she is "bad"), and twelve Zodiac human-animals need to protect it's new Guarding. That's it! The characters are introduced, they fight and the movie ends.

While it has some good environmental and visual effects, the contrast between the overly-designed characters with the lack of personality or likeability, is really noticeable.. As if all their effort was put into making the trailer first! And the rest is a rather-shallow-production that lacks in everything non-visual. There's also a lack of world building, flat and boring voice acting (not to mention the boring dialogue), generic action, rushed development, uninteresting story (with some very slow parts), poor music choices.. and constant slow-motion shots.

Sadly, I don't think this offers anything at all as a movie.

Here's The 4K Lowedown on "Tiger's Apprentice" (PG - 2024 - Paramount+)

Genre: Animated/Family

My Score: 6.7 Cast=8 Acting=5 Trailer=7 Ending=7 Story=7 Visuals=7 Direct=5 Sounds=7 Genre=7 Sub-genre=7

After the death of his grandmother, a Chinese American boy has to be apprenticed to the talking tiger Mr. Hu and learn ancient magic to become the new guardian of the phoenix.

"Your grandmother was a guardian...sworn to protect humanity." I liked this, but it was not well written. It was like Wish Drago and Kung Fu Panda had a baby but it was born in captivity. This movie plays better to a younger audience...with its colorful animation and simple dialogue. But unfortunately, animals born in captivity are generally not as exciting as those in the wild. If you have a season pass to the Paramount+ Zoo though, this is worth seeing.