'The Monkey King' Review: A Royal Charmer
What The Monkey King is about Based on a 16th-century Chinese epic, Journey to the West tells the story of the main character through the lens of a family film made into a fantastic Netflix animated film.
The Monkey King (Jimmy O Young), with eyes that can produce laser beams and the promise of a special destiny from Buddha, becomes a stranger. As a young man, he defeats 100 demons and fights for immortality with the help of a local village girl named Lin (Jolie Heng-Rapport). They are accompanied on their journey by a wizard, and standing in their way is the Dragon King (Bowen Young), who rules the underwater world.
The film is directed by animation veteran Anthony Stuckey ("Boxtrolls"), and the voice cast includes Academy Award nominee Stephanie Hsun for Everything, Everywhere, Everything at Once.
I would say that The Monkey King offers a richly textured landscape as we reach from the depths of the sea to the stars. The animation tools represent the best of what can be achieved by bringing an imaginary universe to life.
The movie "The Monkey King"
Streaming on Netflix
From the first frame to the last, it's always captivating, resulting in a visual result that feels out of place and out of place.
It's a pleasant surprise in light of the current shutdown of streaming services for a lackluster family movie. Art can seem out of place when it comes to providing food for a queue.
The Monkey King is not entirely free of this phenomenon: the fantastical scale of the world built by Stacey and her team is caught up in the general mess of character and plot development.
The characterizations are familiar: The Monkey King as a bored and arrogant young American figure; The Bad Landscape Chew with its sweet sides; And the sincere and well-intentioned Lynn seems more at home in cheap children's entertainment, or perhaps a second-rate Disney production, than in a film with such visual brilliance.
Plot developments tend to dilute the big picture: Quest for Immortality includes many fight scenes and other sequences that seem designed to make the material accessible to a wider audience.
There are also memorable musical numbers.
Up to a point, of course, it's all good business. The film's director, Stephen Cho ("Kung Fu Hustle"), has years of experience directing and acting in Hong Kong, which translates internationally because it is based on basic principles that work well in any context.
The Monkey King is a small price to pay for a film with ambition, castles in the clouds, wells sunk in sea glass, hellfire and a wide-eyed stare. In addition to concentrating on a single experience.
The bottom line is that Monkey King's graphics are worth the money.
