Le Roi singe 2 : Cendrillon

After watching Part 1, I immediately had to see Part 2. Like the first movie, it is fast, crazy and funny. Unlike the first one, it's also somewhat touching, although reviews on this site that seem to find the last part an overwhelming emotional experience puzzle me.

I did not like Part 2 as much as Part 1, simply because I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was going on. Part of this was certainly the bad subtitles I downloaded from the Internet. Part of this was that I am somewhat face blind, so that I had difficulty telling two of the principle women apart. But in spite of that, I think a lot of the issues are with the movie itself. Things just suddenly happen without introduction, and there's a body switching bit that seems just designed for confusing people.

In spite of being frequently confused, though, I enjoyed it a great deal.

What an insane thing this is! The story of cinema has been written from a predominantly Western point of view this first hundred years. Were it to be evenly told somehow, this would be in a short list of cult classics you have to see, for sheer bonkers imagination.

It's rooted in a Chinese classic about the Buddhist monk who brought back the first scriptures from India but that's just the springboard that supplies the context and characters of legend, it has as much actual history as the Pythons' Holy Grail does about medieval times.

Everything at first takes place in some remote outpost where a mysterious woman walks into the company of a petty thief and his gang. That night characters are revealed to be Devils, the woman changes into a giant spider. Immortals and supernatural beings show up through both films. The "hero" is a scoundrel who gets beaten all the time and set on fire, in that marvelous way Hong Kong has of mocking cool.

There's time travel and a story about being incarnated as the "Monkey King" of legend, meanwhile the famed Buddhist monk is shown to nag everyone with legalistic obtuseness. Illusory magic puts characters in each other's bodies. Half of it makes no sense at all but strangely it somehow does. A Bull King with his army comes stomping into the scene. Now and then it erupts in flying wuxia, remarkable gliding and leaping through colored smoke. A battle takes place inside someone's body, slashing through arteries!

It's all as crazy as anything the Pythons and Abrahams/Zucker did, as devilish as Army of Darkness. It's drawing from its own Chinese folk tradition of course about ghosts, immortals and magical belief. It begins with Guanyin, this is the boddhisatva of compassion in Buddhism, facing off with Monkey because Monkey can't stand the monk's nagging and wants out from the mission.

How revealing to watch it with a Marvel comparison in mind (who have many of the same stuff, mythic beings, gods and demigods) where everything has to be laboriously explained. Everything here just springs from air, shapeshifts in and out of illusion. Characters come and go with no obligation to some overarching purpose, or feels like it. Self is malleable, a matter of illusory disguise, a foolish invention the story gives rise to; so proper in a Buddhist context.

Another context sees the women in control, the men as dufuses. Men and women change bodies, changing the social dynamics. Self being illusory, anyone can be anything, a devil of vast powers turn into just a girl in love. Yet the central tenet in the story is the pining for deep love.

I could barely make sense of it but what I could hold onto is sweet and layered. The hero travels through time to save his loved one, until he loses himself. But it seems that was someone he started to love out of duty to a story he made up, because he said he was who she was waiting for, Monkey. Being lost, he meets another girl who is his true love and "turns him" into that person. There's body swapping at this point and she becomes possibly a Pigheaded henchman. His being torn between dutiful and true love is surreally transmuted in a scene with dual marriages supposed to take place.

By the end we have veered off into a cosmic showdown where the sun is tethered close and burns everything up. And then we return to normative reality. The "Monkey King" has to resume his place dutifully in the journey of fantastic mythadventure while his mortal self stays behind with the love of his life. Parting illusory from real.

This is taking whimsical nonsense as your dharma teacher.

When you know you're in love with someone, but you can't tell them, when you decide to tell them, they're no longer there. Life breaks up love (three sounds). When Goku wakes up, he finds that it's time to go to work again, and everything is normal again. When I watched the excitement before, I didn't think it had anything to do with me, but when I saw this pair of hypocritical men and women today, Wukong felt that he should be hypocritical, so he temporarily went out of his body and had a mind. Then I went to work. If we stay the course, will we be able to end up married? If we give up, we will meet.

More Chinese Odyssey - at least according to the english title of the movie. Recently and after 20 years of the first two another movie has come out that has been titled A Chinese Odyssey Part 3. I haven't seen that one yet, so I can only talk about this and a little bit about the very first one. Yes this is a sequel and it begins without any callback or flashback to the previous movie.

Having said all that the movie starts off pretty "normal". Now that is for the first minute or so and then fighting ensues. After that it is a bit of romance and the first character callback from the first movie. He knows things that the woman he's talking to has no idea about. So "comedy" ensues. And a lot of physical pain and beating up (mostly to make audiences laugh, but there are also real fights with death and blood and violence and all).

There is also a moment where the male individual (our main hero of the story I guess you could call him), retells events from the first movie ... by using random characters who play or rather replay characters from the first part - including someone watching who ... Oh boy I don't even know how to describe this. It's kind of epic as are the fights, if you don't mind people flying around and kicking others while doing so. Also Magic, Demons, Lovers, Body switch comedy and so much more ... it's insane. Will you like it? Depends on your taste, but it really never lets up and it never changes its tune

Someone may think it is a love story while someone may think it is a comedy.But I think it is a sort of tragedy full of sarcasm.I think it is the best Chinese movie I've ever seen.It is totally worth watching.If you really give it a time to think about this movie,I promise you can gain a lot from it.It is way better than Journey to the West.

Sometimes you will feel lonely even when you are successful.Sometimes you have to accept the fact that you cherished and loved is gone because they didn't belong to you any more.Sometimes when you finally got what you've always wanted but it doesn't matter now because the one you loved is gone,so what's the point of all these efforts?Sometimes in order to succeed,we have to give up something that may seemed unimportant in the first place but after we made it,you would be painful to find out that all things you once gave up has been always important,you just got blind and didn't notice that.

If you really catch the meaning of this movie,well,congratulations. Cuz you are really grown-up .ENJOY IT!!!!It's full of joys and tears.