Journey to the WTF
This weekend's review is actually a double feature, with reviews to be posted today and tomorrow. In fact, it's actually a triple review, but two of the movies were clearly filmed concurrently and thus I'll be posting them in one review. Thus, today's review is for A Chinese Odyssey: Part 1--Pandora's Box and A Chinese Odyssey: Part 2-- Cinderella.
It’s going to be very, very hard for me to write a review of this triple feature, and especially the two interconnected movies, A Chinese Odyssey: Part One-Pandora’s Box and A Chinese Odyssey: Part Two-Cinderella. This is because the movies are very difficult to follow, and I suspect that would be true even if you’re familiar with the source material. However, they’re just so out there that the confusion may wind up adding to the experience in a positive way.
The story is clearly based on the tale Journey to the West, a famous Chinese tale. Admittedly, most of my knowledge of that story comes from this series of Youtube videos, but it was enough that I could at least figure out some of what was going on. Even so, I was lost more often than not, so here’s my best stab at the two plots. In Pandora’s Box, we get a prologue featuring the Monkey King (Stephen Chow) being punished by a goddess, and then jump ahead five hundred years, where a beautiful and dangerous woman (Karen Mok) comes across a bandit camp, looking for a man with a birthmark on his foot. None of them have the mark, so she basically takes over the group, to the displeasure of the leader, Joker (also played by Chow). Shortly thereafter, the camp gets attacked by a spider woman (Kit Ying Lam), but it turns out the two women are related in some way, and both of them are looking for the Monkey King. One wants to marry him and the other wants him to lead him to his master, the Longevity Monk, in order to eat the monk. This then leads to a whole bunch of shenanigans, including characters falling in love with each other, pregnancies, fight scenes, and the reveal of various destinies, a lot of which tie into the Journey to the West story. The second movie, Cinderella, pretty much picks up right where Part One left off, right down to replaying the ending scene from the last movie. At this point, time travel has gotten involved, and new characters enter the scene. One is Zixia (Athena Chu), a woman who apparently has two souls in one body, one nice and one evil, that come out kind of arbitrarily. Another (he did appear in Part One, but has a larger role to play here) is the Bull King (Shuming Lu) and his wife, Princess Iron Fan (Ada Choi). Zixia falls in with Joker and falls in love with him, Joker is attracted to her but still wants to seek out the woman he fell in love with in Part One, the Bull King falls in love with Zixia and wants to marry her, while Princess Iron Fan simultaneously objects to this but also was carrying on an affair with the Monkey King, which means she starts putting the moves on Joker when he shows up because he looks so similar to her lover. Once again, we get a lot of action and drama that’s hard to parse, as well as getting to meet the Longevity Monk (Kar-Ying Law) who’s defining character trait is that he’s very annoying. I’m sure someone with more knowledge of Journey to the West (or perhaps with movies from China/Hong Kong) could give you a more coherent summary, but that’s the best I can do. Besides, it’s probably indicative of what most Western audiences will get out of this movie.
When I put these movies on my “To Watch” list, I had assumed based on the summaries that they were action-adventure dramas. The fact that the movies were decidedly comedic, therefore, threw me for a loop as much as the plot did. However, despite spending most of the movies alternating between saying “what the…” and “I have no idea what’s going on!”, I quickly got into the swing of things, and wound up really enjoying myself. Sure, some of the humor is decidedly crude (Joker’s groin takes a lot of punishment in Part One), but it’s all so over-the-top, and the actors seem to be having so much fun, that you kind of get pulled in, and the insanity ends up becoming part of the entertainment. The pacing is also generally well-handled, moving along quickly enough that neither movie feels like it’s ninety minutes long, while also slowing down and occasionally getting slightly serious so you have a chance to catch your breath now and then. On a personal note, I absolutely love that all the major female characters get to participate in the fight scenes, and overall prove that they’re just as awesome, if not more so, than the male characters, thus guaranteeing that they make it onto my “Best Female Characters” list. Now add in the fact that the special effects and makeup (which are almost all practical instead of digital) are cheesy in the best “so bad it’s good” way, and you have a movie you can enjoy either ironically or unironically. And to be honest, I’m not sure which camp I fall into.
While these are absolutely movies that you’d be best served not thinking about too much and instead just letting wash over you, I think I’d highly recommend watching them. They’re surreal, and yet have just enough coherence to them that it doesn’t just feel wacky for wacky’s sake. So grab a drink (alcoholic or non-alcoholic), kick back, and enjoy the insanity. And then, if you’re so inclined, you may want to look at the twenty-one years later sequel. Be warned, however, that that one is a slightly different experience…
It’s going to be very, very hard for me to write a review of this triple feature, and especially the two interconnected movies, A Chinese Odyssey: Part One-Pandora’s Box and A Chinese Odyssey: Part Two-Cinderella. This is because the movies are very difficult to follow, and I suspect that would be true even if you’re familiar with the source material. However, they’re just so out there that the confusion may wind up adding to the experience in a positive way.
The story is clearly based on the tale Journey to the West, a famous Chinese tale. Admittedly, most of my knowledge of that story comes from this series of Youtube videos, but it was enough that I could at least figure out some of what was going on. Even so, I was lost more often than not, so here’s my best stab at the two plots. In Pandora’s Box, we get a prologue featuring the Monkey King (Stephen Chow) being punished by a goddess, and then jump ahead five hundred years, where a beautiful and dangerous woman (Karen Mok) comes across a bandit camp, looking for a man with a birthmark on his foot. None of them have the mark, so she basically takes over the group, to the displeasure of the leader, Joker (also played by Chow). Shortly thereafter, the camp gets attacked by a spider woman (Kit Ying Lam), but it turns out the two women are related in some way, and both of them are looking for the Monkey King. One wants to marry him and the other wants him to lead him to his master, the Longevity Monk, in order to eat the monk. This then leads to a whole bunch of shenanigans, including characters falling in love with each other, pregnancies, fight scenes, and the reveal of various destinies, a lot of which tie into the Journey to the West story. The second movie, Cinderella, pretty much picks up right where Part One left off, right down to replaying the ending scene from the last movie. At this point, time travel has gotten involved, and new characters enter the scene. One is Zixia (Athena Chu), a woman who apparently has two souls in one body, one nice and one evil, that come out kind of arbitrarily. Another (he did appear in Part One, but has a larger role to play here) is the Bull King (Shuming Lu) and his wife, Princess Iron Fan (Ada Choi). Zixia falls in with Joker and falls in love with him, Joker is attracted to her but still wants to seek out the woman he fell in love with in Part One, the Bull King falls in love with Zixia and wants to marry her, while Princess Iron Fan simultaneously objects to this but also was carrying on an affair with the Monkey King, which means she starts putting the moves on Joker when he shows up because he looks so similar to her lover. Once again, we get a lot of action and drama that’s hard to parse, as well as getting to meet the Longevity Monk (Kar-Ying Law) who’s defining character trait is that he’s very annoying. I’m sure someone with more knowledge of Journey to the West (or perhaps with movies from China/Hong Kong) could give you a more coherent summary, but that’s the best I can do. Besides, it’s probably indicative of what most Western audiences will get out of this movie.
When I put these movies on my “To Watch” list, I had assumed based on the summaries that they were action-adventure dramas. The fact that the movies were decidedly comedic, therefore, threw me for a loop as much as the plot did. However, despite spending most of the movies alternating between saying “what the…” and “I have no idea what’s going on!”, I quickly got into the swing of things, and wound up really enjoying myself. Sure, some of the humor is decidedly crude (Joker’s groin takes a lot of punishment in Part One), but it’s all so over-the-top, and the actors seem to be having so much fun, that you kind of get pulled in, and the insanity ends up becoming part of the entertainment. The pacing is also generally well-handled, moving along quickly enough that neither movie feels like it’s ninety minutes long, while also slowing down and occasionally getting slightly serious so you have a chance to catch your breath now and then. On a personal note, I absolutely love that all the major female characters get to participate in the fight scenes, and overall prove that they’re just as awesome, if not more so, than the male characters, thus guaranteeing that they make it onto my “Best Female Characters” list. Now add in the fact that the special effects and makeup (which are almost all practical instead of digital) are cheesy in the best “so bad it’s good” way, and you have a movie you can enjoy either ironically or unironically. And to be honest, I’m not sure which camp I fall into.
While these are absolutely movies that you’d be best served not thinking about too much and instead just letting wash over you, I think I’d highly recommend watching them. They’re surreal, and yet have just enough coherence to them that it doesn’t just feel wacky for wacky’s sake. So grab a drink (alcoholic or non-alcoholic), kick back, and enjoy the insanity. And then, if you’re so inclined, you may want to look at the twenty-one years later sequel. Be warned, however, that that one is a slightly different experience…