lasttimeisaw With a subtitle "conquering the demons", JOURNEY TO THE WEST is Hong Kong megastar-turned-filmmaker Stephen Chow's re-imagination of the Chinese proverbial fantasy story, almost two decades after his iconic incarnation of Monkey King in Jeffrey Lau's by turns infectiously funny and archly romantic two-parts pan-Chinese comedy apotheosis A CHINESE ODYSSEY (1995). Here, strictly hewing to his onus behind the camera, Stephen Chow tactically visualizes an enlightenment-seeking adventure of the young Buddhist Tang Sanzang (Wen Zhang), an unorthodox demon hunter who inclines to chant nursery rhymes to elicit a demon's innate goodness, is under persistent courtship from a more practical-minded fellow hunter Miss Duan (Shu Qi), and the story basically pertains to how Sanzang tames his three unruly half-human-half-beast disciples, the Monkey King aka. Sun Wukong (Huang Bo), the Pig Demon aka. Zhu Bajie (Chen Bingqiang) and the Water Buffalo, aka. Sha Wujing (Li Shangzheng), a prequel of the quartet's journey westward to quest for Buddhist sutra.It is unexpectedly riveting to discover that the most distinctive characteristic in the screenplay is Chow's U-turn stratagem of depicting the three disciples, in their most primordial and feral predator mindset, a pre-teen girl is swallowed alive by the Water Buffalo, whereas in the Pig Demon's restaurant, corpses are embedded inside the roast pigs served to entice unsuspecting clientele, as for the Monkey King, whose bumptious temperament and indiscriminately blood-thirsty propensity is magnified to an appalling scope that ludicrously disproportionate to his diminutive and ferocious animal form (played by child actor Ge Xingyu under special makeups), all of which are poles away from audience's entrenched preconception. Conversely, Chow's trademark comedic bent is significantly pared down in service of his dramatic revelation (including an almost sadistically suicidal devotion which duly triggers the deus ex machina in the eleventh hour), a mid-section ploy arouses most laughter with Miss Duan's riff-raff, but this is fairly standard treatment for those who are au fait with Chow's track record (both as directors and top-notch comedian actors), not to mention a cringe-worthy reaction toward Prince Important's elongated important/impotent faux pas (played by Taiwan red-hot entertainer Show Lo). The tenor of the story is more or less the same from A CHINESE ODYSSEY, no happy ending is preordained, only this time, the protagonist is the master Sanzang, after a belated confession of love to Miss Duan, he finally gets the satori that love should not be divided by "big" and "small", but it is equally banal and frustrating when one can only that through a tragic loss, also there is an uneasy feeling to watch a woman repeatedly debases herself to solicit her unrequited feeling from a man, especially in this day and age. The cast is, for the most part, adept, although Wen Zhang is far cry from a hardened comedian, but Shu Qi compensates with her aptitude in making Miss Duan as fey as her own quavering singing voice and dance moves, however, the biggest boon is Huang Bo, who plays the Monkey King in human form, effortlessly shifting between obsequious and treacherous, and generates more spark with Shu Qi even in half-hearted improvisation, why it is not him in the center of the story is one's knee-jerking question to Stephen Chow's VFX-heavy crowd-pleaser arbitrarily cashes in on his audience's nostalgia for a bygone era.

lileonhirth Journey to the West is about an odd Buddhist monk named Xuan Zang. Xuan Zang is a young demon hunter who must vanquish all of the demons he can find. In the beginning of this film, he is helping a bunch of frightened villagers to take down a giant, hungry, fish that is leaping from the water starting chaos. Xuan Zang has a preferred method of attacking and capturing the demons. He has this book called "300 Nursery Rhymes." Xuan Zang uses this book as a guide to capture and kill all demons. A rival demon hunter named Miss Duan keeps running into Xuan Zang. Miss Duan is a hardcore demon hunter, who is a fearless female that is not afraid of death. Miss Duan fights demons using her magical golden bracelet which is called "The Infinite Flying Rings". She uses these rings to duplicate them and then fling the circles through the air. Xuan Zang and Miss Duan go on many adventures together trying to capture demons. These two characters come across and face many different types of demons. With a sudden change of events Miss Duan finds herself falling hard for Xuan Zang. This film was extremely entertaining to watch. I like how there was so much action involved, and how the plot was constantly changing. One major theme tied into this film was the Buddha.

lilopez I do not know if I liked Journey to the West or not. It was certainly different from other movies that I have seen. It was also overly dramatized, but I guess that is what makes the movie funny. Something that I do like about this movie is the reverse gender role. Usually, in movies, there is a guy trying to save a helpless girl; however, Duan, the female lead, is stronger and more capable Sanzang, the leading male. She is also the leader of her demon slaying party and saves Sanzang many times. On the other hand I did not like romance part of the Journey to the West. It seems forced and unnecessary. In the movie, they do not build to being in love, it just happens out of the blue.

empty-bin This is a Buddhist story. Let's get that out of the way. It illustrates the path to spiritual enlightenment.The thing that struck me about Stephen Chow's iteration of the classical illustration was its universality. This story is only confusing to people who've never read any spiritual thing and asked, "What's the point of this?"The Demon Hunters are a metaphorical community of humanists, basically. People who regard themselves to be in control of their destinies - leveraging technologies and magic in their fight for mastery over the evil that lives in all of us. The meek kid with the book of 300 Nursery Rhymes states early in the film, "I don't want to kill (demons), I want to bring out their goodness." This is the person leveraging love which, by the end of the film, we figure out is the power of God (Buddha).It's a beautiful story, beautifully illustrated and enriched by the performances of some seriously talented actors and actresses. I've seen many of these actors in other Stephen Chow productions but everyone really appeared to have brought their A-Game. All the performances were inspired. My favorites being the main character, his sifu and the actor who portrayed the Monkey King (WuKong).I rate NOTHING 10/10 - that's perfection and nothing is that. So I give this movie 9/10 for what it was, what it set out to do and how well it did it as well as the experience it afforded me.