I was kind of looking forward to see this movie when it premiered in Indonesia a day before the Chinese New Year holiday. But as I mentioned in my review of Monster Hunt 2, the locations of the theaters playing the movie were not idealistic to me. Fortunately my wife found out that the movie finally play in one of our most favorite theater, and we immediately decided to see this one. So last night we set aside our time and went to the theater for 6.40 PM show. Well let us get on with the movie now.
Brief Story Line
Movie started with our beloved characters Sun Wukong, the Monkey King (Aaron Kwok - The Detective, Divergence etc) together with his teacher Tang Sanzang, the Buddhist Monk (William Feng - Wolf Totem, Prince of Lan Ling TV series), and the other disciples Zhu Bajie the pig demon (Xiao Shenyang - Some Like it Hot, Detective Chinatown etc) and Sha Wujing the water demon (Law Him - Young and Dangerous: Reloaded, Your Class or Mine TV series etc) were passing through a river in their journey to the west.
While they were trying to avoid the capture of the river god, they somehow were transported to a country full of only women. Problems soon arouse as the Queen (Zhao Liying - Duckweed, Legend of Lu Zhen TV series etc) seemed to take a liking to Tang Sanzang and the feeling seemed to be mutual. Sun Wukong who was always protective of his master was no doubt worried about this. Not to mention the queen's advisor (Gigi Leung - Sisterhood, Full Throttle etc) was totally against the males visit to the palace as they were deemed to be poison who would destroy the country.
So what would happen to Tang Sanzang & the Queen? Would Sun Wukong and his brothers be able to escape from this Womanland? Find them all in this funny yet dramatic latest adaptation of the Monkey King series.
End of Brief Story Line
This movie was rather unique. The first half of it was totally funny and hilarious with so many comedic moments (albeit slapstick comedies), where all the audience were laughing very hard. My wife and I totally enjoyed those moments as to us they were really fun to see. Be sure to catch those moments when Tang Sanzang was talking to one of the soldier, or when the four of them were trying to escape from the prison and few other hilarious moments. However, as we move forward to the second half, the movie's tone rather drastically changed to a more serious and romantic which sadly make the movie became a bit too serious.
Now I do not have any objections on the story as I knew this was one of the challenge that Tang Sanzang as Buddhist monk had to endure during his journey to the West. But because the first half was totally fun, I personally felt that the tone change was a bit sudden and made the movie's pace very slow. Even if the "relationship" between Tang Sanzang and the Queen was made beautifully, it felt a bit too long and draggy (probably to ensure this one also had roughly the same duration as the previous movies of almost 2 hours). The focus of the story in this movie seemed to shift a bit from Sun Wukong aka the Monkey King to Tang Sanzang and Wukong became more of the supporting character rather than the main character. That might be the reason this 3rd movie was not as successful as the second one or even the 2017 comedic approach adaptation Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back.
After seeing The Monkey King and The Monkey King 2 earlier, I have to say (and I totally agreed with my wife on this), that we loved the second movie the most. The first one was really true to the title whereas it told us the complete story from Sun Wukong's birth until his 500 years punishment. But the second one was telling the story of Sun Wukong's encounter with his master and brothers, with a worthy adversary in the form of White Bone demon. While in this third movie, there was no really really bad monster/demon and Sun Wukong's fights scenes were rather limited. I also think that not watching the first and second movie would still be OK if you want to go straight to this one as there was no direct link from the previous movies apart from the introduction of the characters which I believe was not really necessary as they were already so well known.
Aside from the hilarious moments that turned into heartbreaking romantic story, the movie also had some good aspects such as the very colorful beautiful scenery of the Womanland and the vast ocean, the better looking CGI of the monster or the bigger portion of Sha Wujing and Zhu Bajie (who had always been my favorite character as he always could make me laugh). The song in the middle and the end credit were also very nice to hear. Oh and there was a rather funny mid end-credit scene, so be sure to catch that one as well.
Finally if you want to see this movie just to see Sun Wukong's craziness and actions, then this might not be to your liking as his screen time were not the majority. Think of this movie of more like an adaptation of 1 of the Journey to the West stories. So if you are really into that, then you would not be disappointed as the struggle of Tang Sanzang who had his life's biggest dilemma was totally spot on in here. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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