Verdict
Summary
It’s not really a martial arts movie, but more along the lines of a fantasy epic like The Wizard of Oz, and given that Chinese culture reveres stories about The Monkey King, I suppose the movie does an adequate enough job of giving the rascal creature an adventure worthy of his character. Just don’t expect something that will resonate in any way.
Plot:
Three rascally demons destroy a sacred tree that bears an extremely rare fruit, inciting the wrath of the King of Demons, who captures the benevolent master of the three demons.
Review:
In a netherworld dimension populated by demons and celestial beings (and fairies and other creatures too), a benevolent monk named Tang is travelling with his three underlings: likable, rascally demons, each without a heart. The most flamboyant of the three demons is The Monkey King, a powerful, but petulant and self-centered creature, and the others include a big, bubbly pig demon, and a fish demon. When they encounter a monastery that protects a massive, magical tree that only every 10 thousand years or so yields about thirty pieces of fruit that give anyone who eats them 47,000 years of prolonged life, the three demons head straight up the tree whose top reaches beyond the clouds, and they take the fruit and eat some, but in a chaotic battle with the monks there, the demons destroy the sacred tree. This act unearths the King of the Demons, who captures Tang Monk, and in his wrath, he unleashes a horde of demons, creatures, and all sorts of power against The Monkey King and his two buddies. If the King of the Demons isn’t destroyed or stopped within three days, the very earth itself will be destroyed, and so The Monkey King and his two companions – along with the unexpected help of a fruit fairy (a naked little globule baby that giggles a lot) – go to war against the King of the Demons and wreak all kinds of damage and chaos in their wake.
An overly wordy (even in the dubbed option) Chinese CGI animated film, Monkey King Reborn is pretty much in one ear and out the other with all its mystical mumbo jumbo, but I watched it with my kids, who seemed to enjoy all the sound and fury of the movie. It’s not really a martial arts movie, but more along the lines of a fantasy epic like The Wizard of Oz, and given that Chinese culture reveres stories about The Monkey King, I suppose the movie does an adequate enough job of giving the rascal creature an adventure worthy of his character. Just don’t expect something that will resonate in any way. From director Yunfei Wang.
Well Go USA recently released a DVD and a Blu-ray of Monkey King Reborn, and it comes with a Chinese and English language audio tracks, as well as English subtitles. Trailers are also included.
