Brief Story Line
Story focused on a Yaoguai (demon) in the form of pig (Chen Ziping) who worked together with his friend the toad demon (Lu Yang) as cleaner for the Cave King. When Pig heard he could become a Budha by getting scriptures like the Tang Monk who was travelling together with his group in their journey to the West, he decided to do the same thing.
Pig and Toad later convinced Weasel demon (Dong Wenliang) who was very talkative and the shy Ape demon (Liu Cong) to accompany them in their own journey which was full of challenges and difficulties.
So what would happen to them and how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Okay I got to be honest when I found out about this film, I really thought it was about Journey to the West stories especially after looking at the poster. But once I saw the movie, I realized it was about something else entirely as the focus was on different characters, although the ones from that famous story were a big part of the premise here. In the beginning I was a bit unclear where it was heading, but it did not take long till both of us understood what the main story was all about and frankly it was clear the comedic moments would arise from the Pig's mission.
The humor in the movie was pretty consistent though they were not the kind that made us truly laugh out loud (or perhaps because the studio was not full & the people who saw this with us were rather serious). Anyway my wife and I did chuckled several time and we liked the main characters here. Obviously underdogs almost always going to be symphatized by audience and these four were the perfect kind which was why the movie's title was Nobody. In the final third of the film, the story became heavier but in a good way as the Pig and friends had to face harsh reality of their actions. It also had a climax that was fantastic and a very nice ending, although I would have loved it better if there was a bit more clarity. There was a brief funny post end credit scene but not exactly what I was hoping for to see. The film's duration was 118 minutes which included the closing credits where a nice song was playing in the background.
The movie was promoted as the All Time 2D Animated Movie in China which said a lot about its box office performance. After reading more info, apparently it won several awards there as well. The film itself was based on an episode of the anthology series Yao-Chinese Folktales that was written and directed by Yu Shui. He was also the director of this movie and co-wrote it together with Liu Jia. Now I have not watched the series at all as it's not available in Indonesian streaming service, but I guess it should be pretty good too.
In the end, to me and my wife, this movie was quite entertaining. Though the film was not the animated adaptation of the famed Journey to the West book as I expected, but the story was very good and I thought it was creative and intelligent to connect them. With characters that we rooted for & humor that might not be totally hilarious but still fun and a heart warming ending made this enjoyable to watch. So if you like adventure movie focusing on some demons who had big dreams with some inspiration from Journey to the West (or at least knew about the very famous Sun Wukong), I think you would enjoy it like we did. If you are unfamiliar though, you might find it a bit hard to comprehend the humor, although you could still be entertained by their adventures. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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