La légende du Phoenix

In its attempt to one-up The Peacock King, Saga of the Phoenix unfortunately feels like a massive downturn often coming across as a huge internal battle between two directors whose styles do not fit together, cutting the darker and more adult fantasy elements to make it more kid-friendly was a poor move. Poor Yuen Biao spends most of the film encased in ice and nobody seems to care, granted the sequences helmed by Lam Nai-Choi are a sight to behold with plenty of great special effects work and dazzling production design, however, the action is sorely lacking even if it is rather well shot. Nobody ever sets out to make a bad film but sometimes even the best intentions go badly awry, there's a wealth of oddness and general daftness to keep you entertained but it lacks what made its predecessor special. Granted the film does earn an extra brownie point with me for having Zatoichi himself, Shintaro Katsu, in the film even if it is a relatively small role. By the time Biao returns to the film to set things straight, the damage has been done. Truth be told, the film is passable in spurts but sadly, it's also 25 minutes too long. The scope of Saga of the Phoenix may be smaller but there's still a lot of charming creativity which means I can't hate the effort, although catering the film for a younger demographic did not help matters and hurt its overall impact.

This is the sequel to the adventurous and action-packed Peacock King, returning Biao Yuen and Gloria Yip in their respective roles. This time, Ashura (Yip) is trapped by a Buddhist monk so she wouldn't fall into evil hands and use her power to destroy humanity. However, the Abbot Jiku (Hiroshi Abe) grants her wish to enjoy the human world for seven days.

While this movie has some exciting action and whimsical magic scenes, much of the plot suffers from dragged-out attempts at comedy and the romantic themes between the male and female leads. This distracts from the main point of the story and actually can bore the audience. It takes a while for the movie to tread back to the good vs. Evil themes.

The acting wasn't bad, but the movie is overall average at best.

Grade C-

Following Peacock King, this sequel seemed to be somewhat of a rush job to cash in on whatever success and goodwill the first film had established, only to come off as being a pale shadow of the previous movie, dumbed down for a more juvenile audience. A number of principle cast members got replaced, which isn't exactly a good thing, save for Yuen Biao to return as Peacock and Gloria Yip as the Hell Virgin Ashura, now hell bent on living on wonderful Earth instead of going back to where she came from.

With Lucky Fruit (now taken over by Hiroshi Abe) and Peacock forming a friendship with Ashura, they plead her case with Master Ji Ku (Ken Ogata taken over by Shintaro Katsu) and a High Abbess (Yuko Natori), who are adamant that Ashura cannot remain on Earth and have to be sentenced to eternity living inside a Buddha stature, only for them to relent and allow Ashura seven days to roam the human world under the watchful eyes of Peacock and Lucky Fruit, and 3 more female nuns who shadow their movement without their knowledge. Happy for her wish to be granted, Ashura grabs this opportunity, and picks up her companion Genie, a gremlin like creature which allowed the filmmakers to utilize stop motion techniques and puppetry developed from the earlier film.

But of course Hell still has some unworldly creatures left who are harbouring hopes of conquering our world, with the Hell Concubine desiring whatever's left of Ashura's powers, and so from time to time our heroes have some fight sequences during their watch, culminating in Yuen Biao's convenient disappearance for about a third of the movie when he got frozen in ice. The rest of the story deals with Ashura's time spent on Earth like a teenage girl who has her curfew lifted, tracking her Genie down, inadvertently picked up by a girl (Loletta Lee) who brings it back to Hong Kong, who soon got befriended by Ashura and Lucky Fruit, as well as her brother Tan (Lau Shek Yin) who's a madcap scientist working on a teleportation device. Most of the mid section deals with the shenanigans of Genie so much so that you'd be mistaken if that creature was the focus of this film, with half baked subplots such as the unlikely romance between Loletta Lee's character and Lucky Fruit, and some cheap moments where the 3 shadowing nuns got their clothes shredded and subsequently changed into swimsuits, characters who don't even deserve a decent send off in the film.

Fight scenes were extremely limited, and the stop motion, animatronics that were the highlights of the first film got severely reduced as well. There's not much of a story going on, and this is essentially a kids movie along the same veins as any Power Rangers episode, where the conniving villains send their lousy minions to do their dirty work, and when defeated come howling back to base only to get obliterated. The finale battle sees a new Peacock rising, which alas was extremely short and nothing more than an elaborate light show, and budget limitations meant some very cheesy and cheap methods employed to try and get the most bang out of the buck received.

It's a pity though for a film rich in content from its manga roots, cannot deliver something relatively decent, especially when compared with the first in the series where this made that look like a classic. As I have already mentioned before, this series would be ripe for a remake with today's advancement in technology. So as long as someone has a bright spark of an idea for a strong storyline to happen, combined with spruced up effects and a proper ensemble cast, who knows this could be wiped from memory when a remake done with all the right ingredients finally does get made. But until then, you can choose to watch this only for glimpses of how youthful looking some of the stars back then were, having signed a contract to make a film especially friendly for kids.