As
the age of legends comes to a close, veterans of the Monster Hunt Bureau are
facing some pretty severe structural unemployment. They have just been too good
at their job, but when a civil war in the monster realms spills over into the
human world, their skills will be needed again. However, choosing sides will be
trickier than they imagine in Raman Hui’s CGI-live action Chinese blockbuster, Monster Hunt (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in New York with both subtitled and dubbed screenings.
Song
Tianyin is not much, but his absentee palace swordsman father still set him up
as the mayor of their provincial village. He is about to be swept up into the
monster’s civil strife when junior monster hunter Huo Xiaolan tracks two
monsters in disguise to Song’s inn. Zhugao and Fat Ying are desperately
protecting the pregnant queen, whose unborn baby is some sort of prophesized
Jedi-Matrix Chosen One. The evil monster rebels have followed her into the
human lands to end their royal line—and they are really big.
Although
Huo initially captures Zhugao and Fat Ying, they manage to wriggle away, but
she knows they will not get far. Since the Monster Queen was able to transfer
her unborn baby to Song, Huo knows they will always be close by. Huo convinces
Song to carry the baby, despite his understandable gender-role confusion, so
they can sell him to a dealer. Evidently, monster babies are quite a delicacy.
Yet, when the little “radish” springs into the world, they inevitably cannot stop
themselves from getting emotionally attached.
So
why can’t humans and monsters live together Alan Yuen asks us with his
heavy-handed script. Maybe because those big marauding beasts really seem
pretty darned dangerous. Nevertheless, the little radish is rather cute. Hui,
who co-directed Shrek the Third,
gives the monsters a good deal of personality, specifically tailoring them for
the Chinese-centric market. It is easy to see why little boys would flock to Monster Hunt, even though it is somewhat
more bittersweet than most mainstream American animated films. Of course, some
of that is necessitated by the set-up for the sequel already in production.
Bai
Baihe’s freshly minted superstar status is largely due to her breakout work in Hunt. She is indeed slyly engaging as
Huo, especially in her scenes with older rival Luo Gang, nicely played Jiang
Wu, who manages to maintain his hardboiled gravitas amid all the chaos and
cuteness. On the other hand, Jing Boran is an awkward combination of klutzy
shtick and faceless blandness, but to be fair, he probably did not expect to be
stepping into Song’s shoes. Well after production began, he replaced Kai Ko,
when the Tiny Times actor was swept
up in the Jaycee Chan business.
Monster Hunt also features Tang
Wei and Yao Chen in goofy, slightly macabre Tim Burton-esque cameos that bizarrely
play down their glamour. Sandra Ng and Eric Tsang add further star power,
fitting comfortably into the roles of bickering monsters Zhugao and Fat Ying,
when they are wearing their human skins.
