Le roi singe

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 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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With director Soi Cheang delivering such dark thrillers like the amazing Dog Bite Dog and Shamo, etc, I was quite curious as to how this adaptation of the world famous story was brought to the big screen.

I mean, it hasn't been that long since the awesome Jackie Chan, Jet Li vehicle, The Forbidden Kingdom with Jet Li as the Monkey King.

And then there was the awesome Journey To The West: Conquering The Demons, from the fantastic Stephen Chow Sing Chi.

And now, The Monkey King with the incredible Donnie Yen as the titular hero...

First of, even at 2 hours long, The Monkey King feels somewhat longer. Saying that, it is a visual feast that sometimes wins with its CGI and quite often doesn't, reminding me of the fist attempts at Hong Kong effects-filled movies like, Storm Riders and A Man Called Hero.

Often slow burning, with average fantasy action scenes and wire-fu, The Monkey King is rife with amazing characters from Chinese mythology, including one of my favourites, little Nezha and his flamed wheels on his feet!

Cast wise, Chow Yun Fat looks as cool as always as the Jade Emperor, and the gorgeous Aaron Kwok plays the Bull King - although looks slightly bored in doing so. And then there is Donnie Yen.

I love Donnie. Always have, for about 30 years now, and feel that since his explosion in the US, critics have been harsh on him for his choice in roles - no matter how many he is dishing out.

As the Monkey King, I think Donnie pulls of an amazing job, making me sometimes wonder who I am looking at. His performance is pretty damn good, working through a host of emotions and physical roles alongside a bevvy of great characters.

Overall though, I think the film just falls short of amazing. I feel it is something that needs to be seen in 3D to be appreciated more, but also feel that it was an unneeded remake of sorts, that didn't offer anything exciting but the use of its visual flair.

Action fans will be disappointed, but I hope this film finds a place in the family friendly section of all film fans and can be seen at least once..!

First, I'd like to say I really enjoyed *most* of the special effects. There were moments where the CGI was worse than pre-2000 CGI, although to be fair, it was mostly in the background but they were awful. As an example, pay attention to the armies fighting in the beginning.

Second, the acting for the most part wasn't too bad.

Here's what bothers me and I haven't seen any reviewers address these. If you have to read the subtitles, you spent some time thinking "What??" due to their translations. It feels like they ran some of it through Google Translate. Some of it was good, while some sounded like they were purposefully trying to make it sound like broken English. Then there was the out of place use of modern English slang like "small potatoes" or the informal "wanna" in addition to other parts that just sounded downright childish. Did the person or people who did the English subtitle translations not speak English very well? I can't understand why you wouldn't at the very least pay some American college kids $100 a piece to proof read it. It wouldn't be that hard. I mean, the internet, right?! I'm pretty sure that given a few hours time, I could make the English translation sound 1000% better, while keeping to the spirit of the movie.

Then there is the portrayal of the Monkey King. For the most part it was pretty good but all the blinking and there was LOTS of blinking. So much so that it would have given an epileptic a seizure. Did he think monkeys have really bad eyes? Add the stupid surprised faces that got on my nerves and it gets really old. It didn't help that he even did the begging dog pose, which I'm SURE isn't actually a thing with monkeys of any type.

All said, it's a decent movie with some redeeming qualities that understandably isn't geared towards an English speaking audience. I just wish if they were going to bother with it, why they couldn't get it right.

No spoilers... It is just a intro to Chinese folklore....I got It...for westerners this it is a fun fare. I know the history...but they left out so much...but I found it to be very entertaining.It was funny emotional and very captive, I thought that Donnie... like always...he delivers and goes thru all the way...listen don't put it down so much, put the bias a side and you will find it shorter that the long hour of watching the whole soap...I like it and I watched those long month of the soaps...enjoy...I did...I would like to see what the sequel hold for us...man I love it...they got me from beginning to end. Yet To me Donnie Yen could do no wrong...ass does Jet Li.