The Monkey King

For F*** Magazine

The Monkey King (西游記之大鬧天宮)

Director: Soi Cheang Pou-soi
Cast: Donnie Yen, Chow Yun-Fat, Aaron Kwok, Joe Chen, Peter Ho, Kelly Chen, Zhang Zilin, Gigi Leung, Xia Zitong
Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Run Time: 120 mins
Opens: 6 February 2014
Rating: PG

It’s the Year of the Horse, but Sun Wukong will have none of it, barging into theatres two years before the Year of the Monkey. The classical 16th Century novel Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en has inspired countless works across various forms of media, its opening chapters forming the basis for this origin story film. Starring Donnie Yen in the title role, this take on The Monkey King has been in the works for four years, with its release date postponed several times. Perhaps it should have never been released.






A catastrophic battle in the heavens is waged between the forces of the Bull Demon King (Kwok) and the Jade Emperor (Chow). In the aftermath of the fighting, the goddess Nüwa patches up the swathes of the sky that have been torn apart, resulting in the formation of a crystal egg on Flower Fruit Mountain. A magical monkey (Yen) hatches from the egg, more inquisitive, bolder and mischievous than his fellow monkeys who call the Mountain home. He forms a friendship/kinda-romance with a fox vixen (Xia) and trains under Master Puti (Hai Yitian), who christens the monkey “Sun Wukong”. The Bull Demon King has his sights set on Wukong as the key to taking over the Jade Emperor’s realm; Wukong going about wreaking havoc in the heavens.



There’s no questioning the cultural and historical importance of Journey to the West, a novel that definitely deserves as epic a cinematic treatment as can be given. The only thing “epic” about The Monkey King is the sheer levels of fail. Trying to take in the mind-boggling mess that is this film, one can only imagine the chaos that must have gone on behind the scenes, that in the span of four years, this sorry slop is the best director Cheang Pou-soi and his crew could come up with. The cluttered screenplay by Szeto Kam Yuen and Edmond Wong heaves with exposition and pointless dialogue, robbing the film of the spirit of grand adventure that is a signature element of Journey to the West.



Chief of the cinematic crimes committed by The Monkey King is just how ghastly it all looks. One of the most important tasks every fantasy film has to accomplish is that of inviting its audience to partake in its world; to woo the viewer with breath-taking scenery and convince them of the reality of a fabricated, cinematic world. The Monkey King does none of this, looking staggeringly, ridiculously phony at every turn. Given the many mythical creatures in the story and its settings of heaven, hell, the paradise of Flower Fruit Mountain and the undersea domain of the Dragon King of the East Sea, The Monkey King is heavily reliant on green screen work. This reviewer didn’t buy the digitally-created backgrounds for a half second.


Veteran Hollywood visual effects supervisors Kevin Rafferty and David Ebner were in charge of the CGI work on this film, Rafferty’s credits including The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Casper, Deep Impact and The Perfect Storm and Ebner’s including Spider-Man 3, Underworld: Evolution and Sin City. What exactly happened here?! Most of the effects work looks jarringly half-rendered, textureless and incomplete and the creature designs, looking like they belong at a school play instead of a major motion picture, are laughable. The 3D effects are noticeable – by that, we mean they are constantly hammered into your eyes. The intention is for this…thing to be presented in IMAX 3D, a format which would surely make the myriad flaws in the execution of the film’s effects work all the more painfully obvious.

Caked in prosthetic makeup, zipped into an unintentionally hilarious orange fur suit and looking a whole lot like Jim Carrey’s Grinch, Donnie Yen takes on the legendary role of the simian troublemaker, in addition to choreographing the film’s action. Yen’s physicality is admirable, but it’s clearly hampered by the costume and the armour on top of that, and his impression of a monkey mostly involves blinking really fast. Yes, Sun Wukong is meant to be an unapologetic trickster who gets in everybody’s business, but boy, he certainly makes for a supremely annoying protagonist. It’s not impossible to make Wukong sympathetic, seeing as he’s the kind of character that earns a free pass from the audience by dint of his antics just being that entertaining, but Yen is unable to do so. Worst of all, Yen is given barely one scene to strut his martial arts prowess, and that’s the thing he’s the best at.



The rest of the supporting cast stands around a whole lot, with nothing required from Chow Yun Fat except looking royal and respectable, which he does well enough given that it’s impossible to take anyone seriously up against that terrible CGI backdrop. Aaron Kwok’s take on the Bull Demon King is less “monstrous” and more “sexy”, so this is achieved by gluing horns to his forehead. Joe Chen’s Princess Iron Fan is reduced to “constantly nagging wife”. Kelly Chen, Zhang Zilin and Gigi Leung’s roles as Nüwa, Chang’e and Guan Yin respectively are but cameos. There is a mildly amusing mid-air chase sequence involving Calvin Cheng’s Nezha.

The name “Wukong” means “to be awakened to emptiness”. If only those responsible for The Monkey King had been awakened to the futility of this exercise. It’s inauspicious to break things during Chinese New Year. Well, this movie just broke Journey to the West.

Summary: Donnie Yen said of putting on the makeup and costume, "it's very painful." After sitting through this, we can totally relate.

RATING: 1 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

From Vegas to Macau

For F*** Magazine

Director: Wong Jing
Cast: Chow Yun Fat, Nicholas Tse, Chapman To, Jing Tian, Gao Hu, Annie Wu, Michael Wong, Max Zhang, Philip Ng, Meng Yao
Genre: Comedy, Action
Run Time: 94 mins
Opens: 30 January 2014
Rating: PG13 (Some Coarse Language And Violence)

Chinese New Year has rolled around again, and “luck” and “prosperity” are the operating words, many taking the season to hit the tables. Writer-director Wong Jing re-teams with star Chow Yun Fat for From Vegas to Macau, a kinda-sorta fourth entry in the God of Gamblers film series. The title is a misnomer as there are no globe-trotting hijinks and none of the film is set in Vegas. It is mostly set in Macau so the title isn’t a total bamboozle. Still, our advice is to keep away from this gambling den and do something more worthwhile with your hongbao money.







Benz (Hui), his son Cool (Tse) and buffoonish nephew Karl (To) operate as self-proclaimed Robin Hoods of the Hong Kong underworld, tripping up and humiliating criminals. Benz receives a call from his old friend, master con artist and gifted gambler Master Ken (Chow), who has left behind his life of crime to become a security consultant for casinos in Vegas. Master Ken invites Benz, Cool and Karl to Macau, both Cool and Karl falling for his daughter Rainbow (Tong). In the meantime, Cool’s half-brother Lionel (Ng) and his police partner Luo Xin (Jing) are undercover, attempting to unravel a match-fixing conspiracy. The mastermind is Mr. Ko (Gao), the head of the D.O.A. foundation, which is really a front for a money-laundering syndicate. The police goes to Master Ken for help, and Mr. Ko puts out a hit on Ken, sending assassin Ghost Eyes (Zhang) after the gambler. Benz, Cool, Karl and Ken’s beloved daughter soon find themselves in danger too, Master Ken having to summon all his skills to defeat Mr. Ko.

“Now ev’ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin'/Is knowin' what to throw away and knowin’ what to keep,” so sang Kenny Rogers. There’s a lot in From Vegas to Macau that should have been thrown away, and wasn’t. This is a crime caper forcefully injected with an overdose of mo lei tau (nonsense talk); the humour broad, aggressive and mostly painfully unfunny. It’s a loud, brash assault on the senses, from the unnecessary stylistic flourishes to the cartoon sound effects to the gross-out sight gags. The film wants us to care about a treacherous criminal scheme and root for the protagonists to put an end to it, but the gags and pratfalls are so boorishly unsophisticated that they completely undermine any drama or tension and render the stakes null.



The “it’s a comedy! It’s supposed to be goofy!” defence will eventually pop up, so allow us to say this: the tone that would work best given the premise is something along the lines of the Ocean’s Eleven reboot series: sharp, wry, occasionally quite silly but never insultingly so. Here, Chapman To makes so many references to his genitals we probably could draw them, but would rather not. The D.O.A. assembly, with its national stereotypes, recalls the S.P.E.C.T.R.E. organization from the old Bond flicks and the distasteful handling of female characters is even more misogynistic here than in those films. There’s a racist jibe and a fat joke literally within two seconds of each other – it’s more casually offensive than it is intentionally un-PC, but in some ways, that makes the tone of the jokes worse.

There are some ideas and sequences which manage to be mildly amusing or fairly thrilling. Philip Ng, a skilled martial artist, has a fight scene in the D.O.A. offices which ends with him bailing out by way of BASE jump. However, most of the stuff is derivative – the “bungee ballet” performed in the mansion hall by Kimmy Tong is lifted directly from Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Said mansion is also bizarrely booby-trapped: motorised suits of armour function as a home security system and full-sized antique cannons magically pop out of the floor. It’s something you’d expect to find in a Scooby Doo cartoon. And yes, there are the showy displays of card-shuffling skill, where it’s constantly and painfully obvious that those are computer-generated clubs, spades, diamonds and hearts.



Chow Yun Fat is likeable, charismatic and charming rather than brooding and badass, and there’s nothing wrong with that. He’s forced to make a fool of himself, engaging in not one but two cringe worthy musical numbers, but the guy is cool no matter what and at least he looks like he’s having fun. His Master Ken character is given such ludicrous abilities that it seems more like sorcery than sleight of hand. He can perfectly duplicate the sound of gunfire with nothing but his voice and there’s a scene in which he magically extracts truth serum from a glass of wine, as if it was some kind of spell. Nicholas Tse is a serviceable straight man, mercifully spared from having to ham it up alongside his cast-mates.

Watch this movie and you’ll find that Chapman To’s Karl will become the annoying comic relief sidekick you think of whenever the phrase “annoying comic relief sidekick” is uttered. He provides little comedy and zero relief and his grating tomfoolery is so pervasive it gives Jar Jar Binks and Ruby Rhod a run for their money. Yes, we went there. Jing Tian has become a hot property in the Hong Kong and China film industry and while it looks like her character is a capable policewoman, it’s not long before she’s compromised by truth serum and ends up thoroughly embarrassing herself in front of Ken. Kimmy Tong’s turn as flighty heiress Rainbow is pretty inconsequential; she’s depicted being able to fend for herself but is promptly put in jeopardy during the climax. At least Max Zhang’s pretty cool as the deadly killer henchman.



Wong Jing has been very open about his contempt for critics, and the self-referential, self-aggrandizing “meta” jokes in From Vegas to Macau will not help his case. Apropos of nothing, Karl exclaims “I love Wong Jing!” and the director ends up being integral to pulling off the final gambit. For something clearly intended as a crowd-pleasing Chinese New Year blockbuster, this reviewer found From Vegas to Macau alienating and annoying, too aimlessly madcap to entertain. Stick around during the end credits for a stinger scene, featuring a cameo that…huh? How does that even work?!

Summary: For the love of the god of gamblers, please go blow on somebody else’s dice. From Vegas to Macau to the rubbish heap.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong