‘The Monkey King 3’ is a slapstick- and CGI-heavy Chinese fantasy adventure
SUPERNATURAL beings repeatedly attack the heroes of ‘The Monkey King 3', but love, not war, is the principal threat in this CGI-heavy Chinese adventure.
Pious monk Xuanzang (William Feng) is travelling to the fabled West to retrieve essential Buddhist scriptures when he encounters an elkriding queen (Zanilia Zhao) who's never seen a man before. She falls for him, and Xuanzang is tempted as well, although his calling is to love all creation, not just a single, doe-eyed beauty.
Xuanzang is the central character, as he is in the movie's source, ‘Journey to the West', a much-adapted, 16th-century novel. But when there's fighting to be done, director Soi Cheang shifts his focus to the monk's playful companion, man-monkey Wukong (Aaron Kwok).
Also on the quest are blueskinned Wujing (Him Law) and pig-faced Bajie (Xiaoshenyang). All four are male, which is a problem after they follow the queen to her home, the Womanland, where, as we are told, “being a man is a capital offence.” Escaping execution at the hands of the queen's dogmatic enforcer (Gigi Leung) becomes foremost on the pilgrims' agenda.
Wukong and his pals tangle with giant scorpions and a lovelorn river god (Lin Chiling) who can take the form of a dragon-whale. But much of ‘The Monkey King 3' is devoted to philosophical musing and romantic mooning, the latter cued to a drippy ballad.
Viewers who aren't in the mood for star-crossed love will prefer the slapstick and earthy humour, including a sequence in which three of the guys get pregnant. It's another fine mess the resourceful monkey king has to rescue his comrades from. — WP-Bloomberg
* Two stars. Unrated. Contains cartoonish violence and a subplot about abortion. In Mandarin with subtitles. 116 minutes.
• Ratings Guide: Four stars masterpiece, three stars very good, two stars OK, one star poor, no stars waste of time. — WP-Bloomberg