Contos do Caçador de Sombras

This movie is a half traditional Chinese stories and half video game (CGI that sometimes looks great and sometimes doesn't). It's sort of traditional with lots of spiritual stuff. The production value is pretty high in some set-pieces, and the art direction in general is great. There are also animated cutscenes that are worth the watch (in a style similar to Yoshitaka Amano's art from Final Fantasy).

Sadly, the movie is too silly at times, or too slow and boring in it's development for my taste. It has a very simplistic plot, but I imagine this would have been worth it if done correctly, which is a shame. Some minor parts I really enjoyed (almost everything with the "demon ladies"). A very poor execution drags it down to the floor.

As a Jackie Chan movie it has several action scenes.. that aren't memorable. He isn't as nimble or fun to watch anymore. Overuse of CGI (and I can't stress that enough) and noticeable cables being used in the choreography take you out of it. Also.. farts.

All in all, I'll remember the short animated sequence, the lovely tragedy in it, and forget the rest.

Funny, good effecfs despite of the common scenario, still worth for watch

Jackie Chan is a poor scribe who can't sell copies of his books for five cents each. He's also a great and mystical demon hunter armed with the magical Yin-Yang pen, which lets him fight and trap the bad demons and make the good ones serve him. Now he's after mirror demon Elaine Zhong. His newer apprentice, Ethan Juan, won't let him exile her into his book because.... well, that's the story, isn't it.

And a pretty well-told story it is, with some fine sequences of on-screen magic. There's lots of movie flying and, for fans of Jackie Chan, a nice humorous fight sequence about two-thirds of the way through. It's not as extreme and hilarious as the sort he ran through in the mid- and late 1990s, but, hey, he's older than I am, and it's nice to watch him being funny without anyone breaking any bones in the out-take reel.

This is an asian high-fantasy movie rather than a martial arts flick. So adrenaline junkies looking to get their fix on this are going to be disappointed.

This does have a relatively good premise and story. The characters are well-thought out and enjoyable. Unfortunately the English text translation is so extremely bad it is sometimes difficult to follow the story. Typical confusion between he / she / it, extreme mistranslation (in one spot the English is actually written out on-screen and the translation renders it otherwise).

But the romantic sub-plot is quite good, and it has a very Asian ending (avoiding spoilers). It does get to a point at near the end where the on-screen CGI is so over the top it feels more like a Transformers movie than fitting in with the rest of the film. That along with the very bad translating gives this a mere 5-star "mediocre" rating from me.

Those who rated this 1 star... seriously, you're putting this equal to the worst movies ever made? If you can't write better reviews than that don't bother. I'm not sure it warrants the 8 stars some give it, but given a chance and tolerating the butchered translations, it's a mildly interesting 2 hours.

I really liked the mind-altering pixie character. Cute as a button and used well throughout the film, both as plot device and emotional prodding.

This is in the magical realm of Jackie-land. Cgi could be better, same for the dialogues. But all in all a funny and good Jacky/love-story. Without the over the top(as in great) fightscenes.