NYAFF ’17: Journey to the West—The Demons Strike Back

The good thing about pilgrimages is they are long and can thus accommodate sequels. Of course, epics never got any more epic than Wu Cheng’en’s Journey to the West. Slivers and segments of the classical tome have been endlessly adapted by Chinese-language film and television, so it is not so surprising Stephen Chow came back for seconds. This time around, he serves as screenwriter and producer, but Tsui Hark replaces him at the helm of Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Frankly, Tang Sanzang (a.k.a. Xuan Zang, a.k.. Tang Seng, a.k.a. Tripitaka) should not be having dreams of glory, but he will soon be brought back down to earth. At the end of Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, the mischievous demigods Pigsy, Sandy (who is now unexpectedly fishy), and Sun Wukong, better known as the Monkey King, were redeemed and subsequently pledged themselves as Tang’s disciples. Tang is firm in his purpose, but his heart still grieves for Miss Duan, his demon-busting colleague and true love.

However, life on the road has weakened their solidarity. The Monkey King is erratic at the best of times, but lately he has practically been at Tang’s throat, with Pigsy and Sandy quietly egging him on. They are no longer a cohesive unit, even when they blunder into country lodge filled with demons. Sun Wukong always senses them first. Partly it is probably due to his nose and partly due to Tang’s supernatural lack of intuition. However, their internal fissures threaten to violently cleave apart when they enter the kingdom of a mad, child-like prince worthy of Lewis Carroll. It is only thanks to his elegant minister Guanyin that his realm continues to function at all. Fortunately, she takes a bit of a shine to Tang or he would probably be executed for being a party-pooper. However, the slave-girl songstress Felicity really complicates matters.

Visually, Strike Back is an utter marvel of set-piece lunacy. Never intimidated by a little spectacle, Tsui’s strategy is clearly to go big, then bigger, and then bigger still. Who needs acid when we have Tsui’s candy-colored surreal wuxia fantasyscapes? He has the macro and then some, but the micro level of character development is a little thin. In all honesty, the film misses Shu Qi’s Miss Duan for reasons beyond the obvious. Perhaps recognizing the charisma gap, Hark and Chow periodically bring her back like Ben Kenobi in the later Star Wars films, but it is not enough.

Still, Kenny Lin holds up his end as the Monkey King. He does not go as completely feral-creature nuts as Aaron Kwok rocking out in The Monkey King 2, but he definitely came to play. In contrast, Kris Wu mostly comes across like a petulant jerk as Tang. However, Yao Chen is wonderfully regal as Guanyin and Jelly Lin is quite poignant (and arguably helps bail out Wu) as Felicity.

Even if you think you dig bombast and over-the-top special effects, Strike Back still might wear you out. One has to admire its inventiveness, but too often the human element is overshadowed by the maelstroms on screen. Ticketholders should also be advised there is a stinger worth sitting through the credits for. Recommended mostly for the oh’s and ah’s of its surface razzle-dazzle, Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back screens this Saturday (7/8) at the Walter Reade, as part of the 2017 NYAFF.

NYAFF ’16: The Mermaid

It is the highest grossing domestic film in China, easily surpassing Monster Hunt in a fracture of the time, without any sort of book-cooking game-playing. Therefore, it is probably safe to say demand for Stephen Chow slapstick lunacy is inexhaustibly rabid. Unfortunately, this one is a major disappointment. Brace yourself for the didacticism that drags down the manic spectacle of Chow’s The Mermaid (trailer here), starring Screen International Rising Star Asia Award Recipient Jelly Lin, which screens during the 2016 New York Asian Film Festival.

Liu Xuan is a flashy real estate developer, who just pulled off a coup. He plans to soon reclaim a protected stretch of coastal property after chasing away the dolphins with a super-strong sonar installation. I bet you always thought dolphins used sonar themselves, but fortunately Chow is here to correct your zoological misperceptions. Turns out they can’t stand the stuff and neither can a secret colony of mermaids. As their numbers dwindle, the mega-cute Shan is recruited to assassinate Liu using poisonous sea urchins.

However, Shan and Liu fall in love quicker than you can say Splash. Needless to say, this does not sit well with Ruolan, Liu’s on-again-off-again business partner and longtime flirting interest. She is also a major femme fatale, who is hatching a sinister plan of her own.

Let’s face it, The Mermaid should be way more fun than it is. Unfortunately, Chow just loses control of his message (aren’t you supposed to use Western Union to send those?), inflicting interminable scenes of Mermaids getting machine-gunned down (by primarily Anglo henchmen) on the audience. That’s right, there are a ton of dead mermaids in this film. Oh, such good times. At least he makes his environmental points with bludgeoning force.

The film’s saving grace is Kitty Zhang Yuqi’s wonderfully sassy and seductive performance as the villainous Ruolan. You won’t think from appearances in films like CJ7 she had such cattiness in her, but that is how she supplies ninety-five percent of the fun to be found in The Mermaid. Jelly Lin is also quite soulful and vulnerable as Shan, which makes it even more disturbing to see legions of mermen getting slaughtered around her. As for Deng Chao’s Liu, most viewers will want to stab him with a poisoned sea urchin after the first fifteen minutes.

To an extent, Chow deserves credit for directly criticizing China’s environmental protection policies—or lack thereof to be more accurate. By just about every objective measure, the People’s Republic is the dirtiest nation in the history of pollution. (Check out Beijing Besieged by Waste sometime, on an empty stomach.) However, when he starts literally stacking up the body bags filled with mermaid carcasses, he sabotages the film for the sake of the message. Never in our wildest dreams did we ever imagine a Stephen Chow film could be described as a buzz-kill, but here we are. Not recommended—especially not for children because of the slaughtered mermaids—Chow’s The Mermaid screens this Saturday (7/2) with a special Q&A scheduled with breakthrough star Jelly Lin at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s NYAFF.

Journey to the West: Stephen Chow Unleashes the Monkey King

Wu Cheng’en’s classic Ming era novel is a big thick multi-volume work that has inspired many film adaptations drawn from various points throughout its epic time frame. Still, you might not find the exact story of Stephen Chow’s latest comedic spectacle in there, but several of the characters will certainly be familiar. The Monkey King and his fellow demons will tangle with a young and awkward Xuan Zang in Chow & co-director Derek Kwok’s Journey to the West (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

As a novice demon hunter, Xuan Zang hardly seems likely to reach enlightenment. However, he will do his best to fight the water demon plaguing a provincial fishing village in the go-for-broke opening sequence. While he is more effective than the charlatan that took the first crack at the creature, he is no match for the prowess of Miss Duan, a demon hunter extraordinaire. She does not think much of his use of a collection of nursery rhymes to appeal to the demons’ inner youthful goodness. Nevertheless, she falls for Xuan Zang hard, which confuses the devout Buddhist no end.

While Miss Duan handles the Water Demon with relative ease, KL Hogg (the Pig Demon) turns out to be elusively slippery.  Their pursuit of the latter will bring them into uncomfortably close contact with Sun Wukong, the Monkey King. At this point, all bets are off.

Wen Zhang (recognizable from Ocean Heaven) is appropriately wide-eyed and innocent as Xuan Zang, but the film is completely dominated by Shu Qi. As Miss Duan she shows all kinds of moves and a flair for physical humor we never knew she had in her. Watching her kick demon butt is a sight to behold, but it demonstrates the superior action opportunities for actresses in Chinese language cinema, especially when contrasted with their Hollywood counterpoints.

The prospective Expendabelles film is a case in point, with the embarrassing casting rumors centering around Meryl Streep (all dingos beware), Geena Davis (because nobody could ever get enough of Cutthroat Island), and Linda Hamilton (granted, T2 was great action film, over twenty years ago). On the other hand, every major Chinese language star takes on action roles throughout their careers, as a matter of course. Recent examples include Gwei Lun Mei in Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, Zhou Xun in the same film, as well as The Great Magician, Michelle Yeoh in nearly all her films, with Reign of Assassins being a recent example, Angelababy in Tai Chi Zero, Ziyi Zhang in The Grandmaster, and Mi Yang in Wu Dang. Now its Shu Qi’s turn and she makes the most of it.

When Shu Qi does her thing, Journey is wildly fun. Nevertheless, Chow did not return to the Monkey King character that made his name and reputation in A Chinese Odyssey just for a quick paycheck. As a reboot/prequel/film-within-the-margins, Journey starts as a massive beatdown and explodes on a cosmic scale, ending with more divine retribution than you will find in the entire Left Behind franchise. The message is simple—do not tick off Buddha.

So you have Shu Qi, a trio of demons, and an apocalyptic showdown. What more could you possibly need?  On the micro level, Ku Huen Chiu’s action choreography is impressively cinematic yet true to Chow’s eccentric aesthetic. On the macro level, Ken Law’s special effects really do not look like anything we have seen before. Plus “pseudo-model”-turned actress Chrissie Chau appears as Miss Duan’s lieutenant, Killer Four, giving her lessons in seduction that go fantastically awry. This is indeed the full assault to the senses Chow’s fans have been waiting for. Recommended with the enthusiasm of a fanboy, Journey to the West opens this Friday (3/7) in New York at the Cinema Village.

CJ7 3/7

In many respects, Hong Kong actor-director Stephen Chow is the closest thing to a post-modern Charlie Chaplin in contemporary cinema. There is definitely an element of the Little Tramp in Ti, Chow’s character in his latest film, CJ7, opening tomorrow (trailer here).

Ti is a widowed, barely competent construction worker, struggling to send his son, Dicky Chow played by Xu Jiao, to an exclusive private school. While young Chow is surrounded by wealth at school, he literally lives in a hovel and wears stitched together clothes. Most of his father’s shopping entails foraging at the local dump. It is there that Ti finds a substitute for the CJ1, the robotic toy dog his son covets. The rather nondescript toy he unearths and dubs CJ7 eventually morphs into an E.T. style alien that seems to have some sort of mysterious power.

Despite Chow’s enormous Hong Kong box office success, he plays a supporting role to the Dicky Chow character. Until the CJ7 arrives, the young Chow lives an almost Dickensian life. He is bullied by rich, mean-spirited classmates, and the faculty treats him little better. With the exception of the compassionate Miss Yuen, played by Kitty Zhang, his teachers are cold, bordering on the outright hostile.

The alien CJ7 is aggressively cute. Chow acknowledges a debt of inspiration to Spielberg’s E.T., and one can also see dash of Gremlins thrown in as well. Unfortunately, that Spielberg influence also manifests itself in a marked sentimentality. Indeed, Chow’s hyper-kinetic Kung Fu Hustle also displayed a similar sensibility at times. In CJ7 it is all the more pronounced.

As a filmmaker, Chow deserves credit for throwing himself into projects with total enthusiasm and honesty, and CJ7 is no exception. Yet the film hits an odd series of notes. The whimsical alien scenes would skew towards a younger audience, but young Chow faces some starkly dramatic crises which could upset sensitive children.

Arguably, CJ7 is the antithesis of City of Men, in that it celebrates the sacrifices Ti makes to raise his son, refusing to use their abject poverty as an excuse for failure. Whether you enjoy the film or not depends on how you feel about cute aliens and precocious kids zipping across the screen. The trailer is actually a fair representative sampling. CJ7 opens in New York tomorrow at the Landmark Sunshine.