Zhuo yao ji

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!!

So this is the highest grossing film in China Right now? Well so far it seems that my local cinema has been given me one of China's blockbusters every week. From Mojin: the lost treasure to Detective Chinatown. I like those movies so I thought a movie about hunting monsters would be a grand slam. This did not happen for me.

I was not expecting a movie so catered for children, which became completely obvious the moment the cute little monsters dominated the screen. For the first ten minutes I thought I was in the wrong theater watching a CGI animated movie. Even the monsters that were suppose to be scary were too cute to be taken seriously.

I also did not know how much watching the non-3D version would lesson my experience as the 2D version was in an English dubbed that seem to be paying homage to Kung fu flicks of the past with it's awfulness. It's not funny when you're doing the bad dub on purpose, and I think the whole story may have fallen out of whack because of it.

The Chinese seem to be making these big budget films that can rival American blockbusters and I'm into it, just not real into Monster hunt. I found this adventure to be real boring to the point where it got painful to get through.

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.

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.

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.