Journey to the West

2013 martial arts movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A inept Buddhist demon battler encounters a trio of dangerous demons while getting help from a female demon hunter desperately trying to get his romantic attention.

The special effects can't catch up with Stephen Chow's ambitions or imagination here. I'm sure that if we all could see the movie in Chow's head, this would be one of the greatest fantasy/action movies of all time. At the very least, it would be the greatest movie featuring a demon fish, pig-headed guys, and a monkey king of all time. Of course, some sort of invention that would allow cinephiles the ability to crawl inside director's heads would completely change the movie industry. People watching this movie could also just ignore how bad some of the CGI in this looks and just appreciate the ideas that went into the whole thing. I found that impossible, however. If you're used to other Stephen Chow stuff, you'll know what to expect here: a completely disregard for physics, a lot of cartoonish slapstick, a protagonist who's a bit of an underdog, probably way too many ideas for a single movie. The pace for the whole movie feels a little spastic although individual set pieces are paced really well. The opening sequence with the devil fish is fantastic. You actually know you're in for something special when the camera zooms in on the setting, a multi-leveled fishing village with a giant water wheel. I don't know if everybody would do this, but I immediately started imagining characters flying all over that set before any character was introduced or any action took place. When the story does begin, it's the sort of dark humor you'd expect from Chow--a father traumatizes his little girl before a demon further traumatizes her. That fish attack is very well done, and the little girl's "You're so silly" is about as fun as tragedy can be. The rest of the scene features a giant CGI fish and some other sketchy affects, but the artificiality kind of gives this a tone that I like. And the creative action choreography more than makes up for it. And like I said, you forgive the effects because it's all so ambitious and hilarious. I also really enjoy how people scream in this movie, and there's some great facial hair. If the entire movie had looked as good as the extended opening scene in the fishing village, I would have scored it a lot higher. Unfortunately, the effects seem to get worse as this goes. There's a restaurant scene with allusions to cannibalism, an ugly-CGI demon, and several gruesome images, and the scenes that take place there are fine. I also liked a bulky cartoonish steamship contraption some competing demon hunters used to move around. The way that motors around is very funny, but the special effects that show that off get in the way. Once we get to the climactic scenes with the Monkey King--his "Hi!" cracked me up at one point, and the whole character was pretty awesome--you can see way too much computer in this thing. Blood spurts, giggles, the "Almighty Foot," the flamboyant and oily "Master of Meat," Prince Important (or Impotent) and his entourage of middle-aged women, squeaky toy sound effects to accompany punches to the head, and a magic bracelet weapon that might be the niftiest weapon I've ever seen in a kung-fu movie. But I've probably said too much because the less you know going in, the more fun you're probably going to have. There's a lot of Buddha stuff at the end of this that ties all the random bits of this together into some kind of allegory that I only marginally understood. It shifted the tone in a jarring way, but it would make me pay a little more attention to the finer details of the story if I ever watched this again. It's fun enough, so I just might.