Woochi: le magicien des temps modernes

Crowd Pleasing Film Would Make A Fortune Here In The States If Picked Up for Distribution-(and of course promoted)

I'm not kidding--the crowd i saw it with very much into it the entire time. (one dude was all like "that was the greatest movie i ever saw" i wouldn't say it was the greatest i ever saw--but it was a whooshing good time if you'll pardon the lame attempt at a pun.)

Film is about a wizard in the 1500's who's of course a bit of a sarcastic wise guy--he dozen't listen to his elders for shame!!! He gets tasked with battling and capturing these goblin demons that were set free from some ancient scroll--and ends up getting trapped in a picture (cause he can walk into pictures!) for 500 years--and ends up being released into modern day society where he pretty quickly acclimates.

Plot is very similar to Les Visitors (and its American remake Just Visiting) but with more f/x and slam bang but also the film plays it relatively straight (more going with the flow and accepting the situation and less "aren't our modernistic ways frightening and silly to you folks not from around here??? style jokes....although i really really enjoyed Les Visitors--that one was more about the men trying to comprehend what was happening and much less about the mission.)

Film will bring to mind plot elements from all kinds of other movies--at one point the hero's hand turns to stone to try and crush a bad guy--and that's right out Hellboy of course. (come to think of it the plot itself and the loosely defined bad guys are right out of the first hell-boy movie as well.) The army of mutants is pretty much out of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. (giant mutated rabbit and wolf and guinea pig are some of the goblins woo-chi has to catch) There's even the whole falling in love with the descendant or re-incarnation of loved one from the past time in the new time. (that's a bit as old as Dracula at least.) Woochi even runs smack into a film set and dozen't quite comprehend what the heck is going on (which i know i've seen somewhere else before)

Sometimes it really just dozen't matter if its all been done before though because the film is just so much fun all around. Woochi can bounce around into pictures, into advertisements, into display windows, he also has a sidekick who is essentially a dog in human form. (film gets a lot of laughs out of this) He can become an ink blot drawing at will!

Woochi is a tremendous amount of fun---and I can't believe some studio--even a low budget indie one--dozen't pick this up for a limited run and DVD sale stateside. With just the tiniest bit of commercial promotion--this thing could be a monster hit on par with The Host. (not that that was a monster hit--but you know what i mean--that film got a national release, a good ad campaign, and as such made some coinage because of that....there's no reason why that can get a release and this can't especially since this is a real crowd pleaser...overdone FX effects and all!!) WOOCHI!!!!!!!!

To make a long thought short: I've watched The Sorcerer's Apprentice first, and then the War of the Wizards the same evening. While the Disney flick was plain boring, I really enjoyed the Korean piece. Given, that the CGI is not 100% of the stuff, Hollywood's money can buy, it has all the rest I've missed in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. War of the Wizards has fun story, nice yeah-I'm-a-great-magician-fights (I loved the boss-fight). Summarised: The Sorcerer's Apprentice sticks to it's name: merely an apprentice compared to this lovely crafted Asian movie. Watch it if you like cool magician battles and have an eye and heart for eastern humor.

Combining fantasy, adventure, action and humour to maximum effect, this lively Korean film deserves to be seen by as big an audience as possible. Writer/director Dong-hun Choi, best-known for his excellent con-artist films THE BIG SWINDLE (2004) and TAZZA : THE HIGH ROLLERS (2006), takes an unexpected turn into fantasy/action territory, but again shows why he is such a highly-regarded film-maker. Using the time-travel premise that was well-used in films such as ICEMAN COMETH (from Hong Kong) and of course HIGHLANDER, WOO-CHI makes the most of the material, helped along by a strong cast and superior technical crew. Dong-won Kang (from SECRET REUNION, DUELIST, VOICE OF A MURDERER, and the very funny TOO BEAUTIFUL TOO LIE)is excellent as the title character, making a flawed, at-times quite vein person likable. The great Yun-seok Kim, who impressed audiences in RUNNING TURTLE and inparticular in the brilliant THE CHASER, is perfectly cast as Woo-chi's main nemesis. Su-jeong Lim (from Park Chan-wook's under-rated I'M A CYBORG, BUT THAT'S OK and the outstanding A TALE OF TWO SISTERS)is perfect as the object of Woo-chi's affections. It's also great to see Dong-hun regular Yun-shik Baek (TAZZA / THE BIG SWINDLE / THE ART OF FIGHTING / SAVE THE GREEN PLANET) make a very welcome appearance. With $200 million Hollywood productions failing to make the grade, it is wonderful to see a film like WOO-CHI deliver such high-class entertainment on a fraction of the budget. Fast-paced, exciting, very funny, and full of vibrant, involving characters, JEON WOO-CHI : THE TAOIST WIZARD will certainly be one of my best films of the year. One hopes it will get a proper international release (unfortunately the director's other films have yet to achieve a deserving release outside of South Korea).

For once, I found the movie actually better than the underwhelming trailer. Woochi is an action fantasy comedy movie with one half taking place in the past and the other in modern South Korea. It's not traditional fantasy with traditional magic. The so-called goblins, only fantasy creatures in here, are actually beast-men able to take human appearance and you only really see two of them (maybe 3 depending on how you count). However, they're really well done and animated. The magic is of the taoist kind with "spells" written on little pieces of paper. Sounds lame but works wonderfully. I found it quite different than the usual and often a delight to behold. Wooji, the title character, is a very confident trickster mage who is a lot of fun and his introduction was a great moment. He's constantly surprising and I loved the character as well as his comic-relief sidekick. The 3 taoist monks were also quite enjoyable and got way more interesting as the movie went on. The ambiguous and stoic main villain had a lot of presence but the "goblins", although excellent martial artists, were bland in terms of personality.

The plot and motives, mostly exposed in the starting moments and in snippets afterwards, were quite forgettable and not really necessary for enjoyment. The special effects were very well done combining seamlessly CGI and real actors. It was even better sometimes than big-budget American movies. Not only that but there were several beautiful original sequences rarely or never seen before (at least by me). Some of those include going in and out of paintings, multiplication of bodies (think Naruto) and flying tramways. The action scenes were exciting and very cool but unfortunately the fights were often too closed-in and fast for my poor eyes. The comedic moments were funny and didn't turn the film into bad parody. I must admit becoming fidgety and my mind wandering more than half-way through as if the movie was too long or had lost part of my interest. I've seen movies that were as long or longer not thinking of when they would end as I did in Woochi. I had a good time watching this film and would recommend a rental to those who like somewhat exotic martial arts fantasies with comedic elements.

Rating : 7 out of 10.

A film with time travelling Goblin Rabbits trying to steal a pipe that will….I don't know what. This is Asian cinema at its best. A story built on eastern story telling. Young buck, wise old master, humorous sidekick (who may or may not be a dog of indeterminate gender) and a love interest with guts and gumption when needed most.

Following the apprentice Wizard Woochi (Don Wong-Kan) and his shape shifting Dogberry-esque friend Chorangyi and their hunt for the magic that will make Woochi's name and Chorangyi human.

Fight scenes of inventiveness that take the stylistic quirks of the later Matrix films and make them great, comedic timing and watch out for the reality of magic in the second act (21st century) as we find out what would really happen if you had to seek out a magic painting at two in the morning in downtown Pyongyang.

Betrayal, magic, drunken Taoist gods who can't seem to get anything right and a downbeat upbeat ending that wraps the film up in the brilliance of the eponymous hero's own imagination.

This is a film for teenagers, lovers of story and people who don't take themselves seriously.

Big bag of popcorn.