Starring: Nicholas Tse Ting-fung, Charlene Choi Tsoek-jin, Fan Bingbing, Chen Bo-lin, Kenny Kwan Chi-bun, Steven Cheung Chi-hang
Director: Jeff Lau Chun-wai
Category: IIA (Cantonese)
There is probably no Chinese novel that has found itself the basis of more motion pictures than the Ming dynasty classic Journey to the West. Originally published in the 1590s and initially filmed as a silent picture in the 1920s, its first 21st-century big-screen incarnation both updates and downgrades the epic. What emerges is a teen-idol blockbuster whose big budget falls short of making creative use of the audience's familiarity with one of China's most famous legends.
The indifferent results are all the more surprising because this is not director-writer Jeff Lau's first encounter with Journey and its chronicles of a monk, a monkey spirit and a pig spirit on their journey to India to obtain Buddhist sutras. Eleven years ago, Lau's two-instalment A Chinese Odyssey struck box office gold with Stephen Chow Sing-chi as the simian Sun Wukong. This time around, there is less dependence on acting than on special effects whose technical wizardry cannot compete with rivals such as King Kong and Harry Potter and the Golden Goblet.
The emphasis is not on the monkey king, Piggy Zhu Bajie, and Sandy Sha Wujing (pallidly portrayed by, respectively, Chen Bo-lin and former Boy'z duo Kenny Kwan Chi-bun and Steven Cheung Chi-hang). The focus instead has shifted to a ho-hum relationship involving Tang monk Tripitaka (engagingly played by Nicholas Tse Ting-fung) and lizard imp Meiyan (Charlene Choi Tsoek-jin), whose cloyingly cutesy persona is welcomely muted by 'ugly' makeup. Though on paper it might have seemed a refreshingly bizarre element, the sub-plot of a beautiful princess from outer space (Fan Bingbing) fails to add zest to the proceedings, and an animated interplanetary battle sequence looks as if it was spliced in from another movie galaxy. The film has little to engage non-adolescent viewers, though it's sure to get points from tobacco advocates for the injection of the glamorous princess' cigarette habit into ancient China.