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.

There is one scene that makes the whole movie worthwhile, when they say goodbye. It has such an Asian feel to it: it's all heartbreaking but inevitable.

Other than that, it goes from weird kung-fu action against cuddly 3D animated monsters to fart jokes, birth jokes, marriage jokes and family problems, then back again so fast that you don't really know what you're supposed to be watching. And occasionally they just randomly start singing, fortunately not too often.

The story follows a hapless young man and a young female "monster hunter" in the context of a monster hunt. On orders from a very powerful man, all hunters are on the lookout for the monster queen and then her infant offspring. These are all very powerful kung-fu masters, but somehow they get thwarted by the power of youth and love and after much adventure and a twist, a happy ending.

My conclusion is that this film combines a lot of classic Chinese concepts: the humor, the fighting style, the overlaying culture of it all. My guess is that it was aimed at young Asian children and, while it will probably be enjoyed by children everywhere, Western adults might find it crass and infantile.

Chinese animation has been through a rough time, it missed the mark so many times when used to create epic legend. However, it seems that the eccentric animation just found its niche with the blend of humor, drama and action fantasy that is Monster Hunt. It shockingly deals with a few eerie themes yet presented in family friendly light humorous way, almost like MIB in ancient China.

In a world where monster and human live in inharmonious way, an ordinary man finds himself in a struggle between the monster kingdom and human hunters. It opens up with typical fantasy troupe, then escalates with good comedic tone as well as healthy dose of martial art stunts. The cast works fine, especially with famous names as supporting characters or cameos, some of them are added for comedy relief.

The tone might feel awkward, it's often playful but then it displays incredibly creepy prejudice against the monster, even down to eating and torturing them. Granted, some of them look like radish or salad, although the abrupt change of pace can be startling. There are definitely some odd twists here. Fortunately enough, the core drama is light humor, with endearing family value thrown into the mix. It mostly deals with platonic funny theme, and fans of Chinese cinema should find the humor familiar.

For a movie that uses animation and action choreography at the same time, Monster Hunt looks amazing, especially in the second half with gorgeous setting. It's one of the best animations Chinese has produced, it's much smoother than the rest and these silly designs are well integrated into the world. The feel of uncanny valley actually works in their favor since the monsters only partially resemble human yet they look harmless enough to be friendly.

Monster Hunt has all the elements of Chinese fantasy movie, the visual effect and also the soundtracks enhance the flamboyantly cheesy premise. It's a well-produced action comedy and definitely a crowd pleaser.

"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.

I wanted to see this movie for quite some time after hearing that it was a smash hit in its native China; I wanted to see what regular Chinese people found so appealing. After seeing it, in some ways I am at a loss for words. The movie is a fantasy comedy, though both the fantasy and the comedy will seem very strange to most westerners. The fantasy portions are unlike anything in Hollywood movies, and they sometimes seem to depend on viewers having an extensive knowledge of ancient Chinese culture; if you don't have that, you'll probably be lost at times, like I was. And the humor is far from subtle, much of it being extreme slapstick that westerns might find extremely excessive. But the movie is so different in these two regards, that I was always interested to see what was coming next, since I had never seen a movie like this before. This is definitely not a boring movie. And the movie looks extremely polished for the most part, though the CGI is a bit too cartoony at times.... though this might have been intentional, to give the movie a goofy feel. While I think that many casual western moviegoers might find the whole package a bit bewildering, viewers who want something different and fun will probably find this an amusing diversion.