I was not aware of this movie existence till a day before Chinese New Year when I saw its poster in the "coming soon" section. As it premiered on the holiday itself, my wife and I were unable to see it due to our tradition of reuniting with our families the whole day. Anyway, we did see it on its second day, which was last night. So let's get on with the movie now.
Brief Story Line
Pu Songling (Jackie Chan - The Foreigner, Kungfu Yoga etc) was a demon/monster hunter who lived near Pi Huan city and befriended with some of the demons/monsters he caught previously. Meanwhile in the city, an assistant to the local sheriff named Yan Fei (Austin Lin - At Cafe 6 etc) was investigating petty theft cases when he bumped into Songling and immediately decided to become his apprentice, despite the reluctance of Songling.
Apart from those cases, a mirror demon (Peng Lin) and her younger sister Xiao Qian (Elane Zhong - Dude's Manual etc) were creating havoc and terrorizing the city. Songling and Yan Fei were trying their best to capture these demons. Things also became complicated when a mysterious man Ning Cai Cheng (Ethan Juan - Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings etc) was also trying to capture Xiao Qian.
So could Songling and Yan Fei save Pi Huan city? What was Cai Cheng's motive for capturing Xiao Qian? Find them all in this fantasy comedy movie.
End of Brief Story Line
As usual, when it was a Jackie Chan movie, my wife and I would not hesitate and definitely would see it because we were such huge fans of him. And this one was a movie that we saw purely because of Jackie Chan. Otherwise, most likely I would probably just wait till the film is shown in the cable TV. This time the film's genre was a fantasy which required a lot of imagination plus high tolerance for seeing lots of CGI. The quality of the CGI itself sometimes were pretty decent, but at other times they were not as smooth as we would have liked.
Apart from the many scenes that involved CGI, the main story was actually pretty good. It had some beautiful love story, and there was also the funny relationship between Jackie Chan and his apprentice. He was portrayed nicely by Austin Lin who provided some comedic relief together with Jackie Chan. Meanwhile the other lead characters Elane Zhong and Ethan Juan to my surprise were given quite a large role. Only thing was, this made the screen time of Jackie Chan felt a bit too brief to my opinion.
The movie did have some of the standard Jackie Chan's fights using whatever things available in the room which we always loved. There were also fights that maximize the use of CGI which I thought was a lot better in the ultimate fight rather than the earlier fight scenes. The monsters created in here were a bit comical and despite having 4 of them, the only ones that I found memorable were Breezy the cute monster who could wipe memory and Handsy. In the monsters area, I personally thought that another Chinese movie titled Monster Hunt and its sequel was probably better as they were a lot cuter and felt more natural. But in the demons area, this movie certainly excelled as we could actually root for the demons.
This movie was not directed by Jackie Chan, but by Vash Yan who did not seem to have any major successful film credit prior to this one. However, during the end credit scene, we were given some scenes during the making of the movie, with few of the casts goofing off in the set which we would normally see in Jackie Chan's directed movies. It was also accompanied by a fun song by Jackie Chan & Kun titled Laugh Together and another lovely song which unfortunately I was unable to catch the title. (Perhaps someone could help me on this).
The film was categorized for 13+ in Indonesian theaters which I thought was perfect, due to some monsters scenes that were not scary for adults, but maybe too much for the very young audience. We were pretty disturbed by some audience who were very inconsiderate and brought their very small child who made a lot of noise during the film.
Overall I thought that this was quite a standard Jackie Chan movie with some comedic scenes but due to its fantasy genre, it might be rather specific that may or may not be to everyone's liking. Audience who preferred to see him use his fists all the time or wanted to see a lot of him might not get what they wished for. For me and my wife, we have quite adequate enjoyable time. Personally I thought this one was fun enough but if I compared to his other movies, the film might be less superior. For a movie targeted for audience during the Chinese New Year, I think this one was spot on. People who just wanted to have fun should be able to enjoy it as long as they do not expect a very high quality movie with great characters development or amazing plots. The choice is yours.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment