Better to spend your money elsewhere

ll1923

This is one movie school case study where big names will not carry a story if there is simply no story! I was lured into watching this movie by the big names heading it – but it was a waste of talent. The writing was shoddy and we ended up amusing ourselves by playing "spot the movie scene / fairy tale". It was like watching Lord of the Rings – yes here Ji Lei looks for the Sword of Legends while Frodo was looking for a ring, then there was AngelaBaby aka Pinocchio who was made alive by a CG riding panther General Louis Koo, acting as if she walked out of 50 First Dates, with her memory loss (she actually doesn't question why she was on the Porta-Boat with a stranger –ok the question is how does she remember that she forgets…). Then there was the scene from Excalibur with the one worthy or in this case, "woody" one pulling out the sword with a Star Wars /Battle Star Galactica fighting scene going on in the background. There was also the General turned monster scene that looked like one of the monsters from Lord of the Rings, the giant centipede that that resembled scenes from Men in Black, there was every a scene with the "eye" which reminded me of Stardust where the blind witch sisters fought for a look. Fang BingBing's octopus "tails" were like Spiderman's Octavius. The palaces / castles looked like Thor's Asgard palace, the Pool of Spring looked like the dungeon pools in Harry Potter and the list goes on.

I hated that they dubbed Tony Leung speaking Mandarin with a Cantonese accent – come on, if you are going to dub, at least let the character speak normally. I love Huang Xiaomin but his costume made him look like a golden cob of corn (or a golden walking condom)– and not the mortal enemy of fox demoness Daji (Fan Bingbing)! And what was it with Ao Guang's (Emperor of the East Ocean) underwater palace being destroyed by a farting Nezha?!

I was looking forward to some good old-fashion ku-fung fighting but all we got was some poorly executed CGI. In this day and age, the quality of the CGI was quite unforgivable. Even the Scorpio King was loads better.

Waste of acting talent and budget!

score 2/10

ll1923 3 August 2016

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3517662/