Review | Film review – Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back finds Stephen Chow and Tsui Hark on autopilot
While packed with cartoonish mayhem and never less than watchable, big-budget sequel to Hong Kong filmmaker’s 2013 hit lacks comedic edge
2.5/5 stars
In the 2013 film the Tang dynasty Buddhist monk Xuan Zang conquered the three demons that would subsequently become his famed disciples (the Monkey King, pig demon “Pigsy” and fish demon “Sandy”); the coolly, if confusingly, titled The Demons Strike Back follows the quartet in the early stages of their journey to the west, as Monkey King and co. repeatedly try to protect Xuan Zang from demons – including the well-known spider and skeleton types – presumably eager to feast on the monk’s flesh.
Throwing continuity to the wind, Tsui takes on a revamped – and lesser – cast that made the Wen Zhang-Shu Qi pairing in Conquering the Demons look like romantic comedy gold. While Sword Master star Lin Gengxin is passable as a sombre Monkey King, former K-pop idol Kris Wu Yifan, playing an ironic Xuan Zang, remains one of China’s least convincing actors even after his Hollywood debut in xXx: Return of Xander Cage. Yao Chen and The Mermaid’s Jelly Lin Yun, as Xuan Xang’s antagonist and love interest, are both underused.
While The Demons Strike Back, for all its cartoonish CGI mayhem, is never less than watchable, it’s hard to shake the impression that Tsui has partly ditched – or maybe failed to replicate – Chow’s irreverent sense of humour: gone are the wacky sight gags of a malfunctioning blood-splashing device, and Xuan Zang’s disciples as grotesque animals; in their places are warmed-over jokes that, in the Hong Kong version, retain just a fraction of Chow’s spirit through Cantonese dubbing by his regular cast.
Bar a couple of inventive opening scenes that see Xuan Zang wake up to find his demon-hunting ensemble forced to make their travelling expenses as circus sideshow freaks, and a tagged-on subplot involving Xuan Zang pining for lost love Miss Duan (Shu in a cameo role), there’s little intrigue in Tsui’s take on the classical novel, which lent a similar narrative premise to Soi Cheang Pou-soi’s superior The Monkey King 2 a year ago. The conflict between Xuan Zang and the Monkey King also errs on the superficial side.
Still, the fact remains that Chow has unleashed a box office juggernaut that’s all set to roll on for further instalments. The Demons Strike Back took in an estimated 360 million yuan at the box office in China on January 28, the biggest opening day ever for a Chinese film. Chow’s clout was also in evidence in Hong Kong: despite the local audience’s general indifference to China-oriented films, his new film grossed more than HK$5 million on Saturday to become odds-on favourite to win this year’s Lunar New Year box office battle in Hong Kong.
Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back opened on January 28
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