Le roi singe

I just saw this film with my mother, a 65-year old Chinese woman (who has trained under some masters of kung fu), who grew up reading the stories of the Monkey King (whereas I'm more familiar with the Japanese Series, 'Monkey Magic'). My mother was delighted at how faithful this film was, with so many of the characters and substories being very close to how she remembers them.

Unlike other reviewers, we found the CGI to be quite good (a couple of bad spots, but in other places, stunning!) We thought the acting and direction was also really good. Donnie Yen is such a wonderful and naughty monkey. His movement is fantastic, whether he was fighting or being a lazy monkey. Chow Yun Fat a benevolent Jade Emperor, and Aaron Kwok a coolly evil demon king.

The film is also incredibly fun. This isn't going to win any Oscars, but if you're out to have fun, it's a better adaptation of the beginning of Journey to the West than most.

...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.

No spoilers... It is just a intro to Chinese folklore....I got It...for westerners this it is a fun fare. I know the history...but they left out so much...but I found it to be very entertaining.It was funny emotional and very captive, I thought that Donnie... like always...he delivers and goes thru all the way...listen don't put it down so much, put the bias a side and you will find it shorter that the long hour of watching the whole soap...I like it and I watched those long month of the soaps...enjoy...I did...I would like to see what the sequel hold for us...man I love it...they got me from beginning to end. Yet To me Donnie Yen could do no wrong...ass does Jet Li.

Being an American imbued in this ego-mongering, greed-centric culture and it's pitifully vacuous religious folklore and totally unfamiliar with the story behind the 'Monkey King', I was hesitant to watch this since I had to read subtitles which turned out to be difficult at best due to translation issues, but I did manage to get the gist of the story as it unfolded, and I couldn't help becoming involved in the characters soon after it began. The special effects were not the cutting edge I've grown to expect from Hollywood, but considering the complex fantasy nature of the story, I'm glad that they didn't waste time and money trying to go that route since this story is obviously full of ancient iconic elements that have such a nebulous foundation with each other and history that the relationships between them and the time-line of events would not have flowed as well if they had. I thoroughly enjoyed the spirit of innocence and interminable joy demonstrated by the Monkey King at each stage of his travels. The spirit of his appreciation for life was contagious, and I found myself feeling better about my own reality as a result.

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.