Xi you ji: Da nao tian gong

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..!

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.

...with a budget of almost 90 million US dollars(biggest Chinese movie budget to date), and this is what they came up with? there were many major problems with this movie, first off having Donnie Yen as the monkey king was a big big no no. the mans facial features are as expressive as wood and recently you can tell how egotistical he has become. he wants every big role in a big movie even if it isn't right for him and in this movie he makes a fool out of himself till 3/4's of the way thru. he is known for his action movies and there isn't much of that as the movie is almost all cgi and wire-fu.

for most of the movie the cgi was almost laughable, i've literally seen better in video games, and they had help from the cgi team that did Avatar( i think the team took the money and ranned ). it was going to be hard to cgi the right way cause the book was so detailed and deep.

i went into this movie not expecting much and wind up not getting much, there were no development of characters, some of the costumes were laughably bad and the other 2 leads weren't that interesting either. basically just about nothing works in this movie...and now for its saving grace.

if you watch this movie make sure you finish it, because the last quarter of the movie is freakin awesome and makes up for sitting thru the first 2/3's to 3/4's of the movie. everything picked up close to the end...it almost seemed like a different team stepped in to finish the movie, in every aspect. the fighting got good( you actually see real fight moves from Donnie). the story and acting got tighter and best of all, the cgi looked as good as any that Hollywood can put out, and it was exciting.

so, if the movie isn't that appealing...just make sure you watch the last third or quarter and you'll feel a lot less screwed...the ending of the movie was its saving grace and just might save the movie from disaster. i give this movie a 5.8 out of 10. save the popcorn for the last 30 minutes of the movie.

Although it is true that the big part of the original (huge) book was about the Pilgrimage mentioned in the Synopsis, there are two things you should know: the pilgrimage was more an adventure full of battles, monsters, magic powers, and epic Characters, rather than just a pilgrimage; and this movie concentrates on the first part of the book, before the pilgrimage (actually the Monk does not even appear), on the genesis of the Monkey King. The book was written by a great Taoist monk and it is full of hidden knowledge which not everybody can consciously understand, but it is so well done, so full of adventure and action and funny things, so intriguing and entertaining, that in the centuries it became one of the (if not the) most important books in the popular Chinese culture. There are many layers in it and it was made in such a way that almost anybody can enjoy it. The Monkey King became an extremely popular character, and even Dragonball comes from that book! This film is a bit strange, the special effects are not the best, and some things in the realization will need a bit effort from the western audience, but it is OK, you must understand that as said this is a Chinese story and obviously not made with the western people as main target. But whether you are interested or not in the background of the story, the film is pleasant and entertaining and you can surely enjoy it :) Now I just hope there will be other movies with the rest of the book!

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.