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One of the most famous pieces of Chinese mythos is the 16th Century novel ‘Journey to the West’ by Wu Cheng’en, and it has inspired many, many adaptations. One of the best is the prequel version by director Stephen Chow, and he is already the master of combining kung fu, comedy, and surprising pathos. There are a lot of imitators, and the 2014 movie The Monkey King by director Cheang Pou-soi was one of those. It was quite popular in China, so naturally there was a sequel which did decently, but competed against Stephen Chow’s The Mermaid, which naturally became the highest grossing film in Chinese history.
The Monkey King 3 returns with Cheang Pou-soi as the director, and reunites the cast from the second movie. The general concept of the novel was a series of episodes about serene and holy Buddhist monk Tang Sanzang (played here by Feng Shaofeng) who is on a quest to the West to find holy Scriptures that he can use to help out humanity. There are a lot of weird, violent adventures he and his friends experience, so they could probably make another fifty of these movies easily.
Sanzang has three disciples that travel with him, the extremely powerful Monkey King Sun Wukong (Aaron Kwok), the weird pig-man-demon Zhu Bajie (Xiaoshenyang), and the taciturn blue man “water-buffalo” Sha Wujing (Him Law). These characters all have different personalities, Sanzang is calm to a fault, and always extremely serene. Wukong is brash, emotional, but extremely loyal to his Master. Bajie is an odd creature, more of a realist and connected than his more spiritual friends, and he can change his face. Wujing is the least interesting, being a straight man with muscles who’s blue with a red beard.
The movie has a lot of fun production design, getting legitimately and enjoyably bizarre, although sometimes it’s a bit too similar and thus hard to differentiate. There is also a lot (a lot) of CGI and special effects, some of which is cool, and much of which is too slick and plastic, clearly unreal. But there’s also great makeup work and costuming, and a story that’s very simple.
The men accidentally enrage a river god (Lin Chi-ling) while traveling, and end up stranded near a strange kingdom. It turns out it’s a mystical land of only women, and naturally, the price for being a man is death. But before they get captured, Sanzang saves the life of a mysterious woman (Zanilia Zhao), who of course is the princess and “ruler” of this woman-only kingdom.
The travelers are all imprisoned and sentenced to death, but the princess is unsure, despite pressure from her advisors. What follows is a combination of a mild romance, an extremely mild fantasy faerie tale, and a mild comedy. One of the issues that becomes clear here is that the rapid switching between serious philosophical exposition and slapstick comedy. Some of this comedy will not translate that well to American audiences, and some probably will.
The elements I enjoyed more were the world building and the rapport between the master and his disciples. The Monkey King is a delightful jerk with a heart of gold, and despite layers of heavy makeup and prosthetics, Aaron Kwok has a lot of charisma. The action scenes are really too SFX-heavy and aren’t quite as dynamic as I’d hoped.
The romance is fine, really, but I did like the eventual arc. The comedy gave me whiplash with its juxtaposition, even if there were individual moments that were pretty funny. The acting was pretty okay, with the two “romantic leads” making their ultra-fast courtship more believable. This is really not a movie for just anyone, or even a fan of Chinese cinema.
Instead, if you’re craving a new thing in the style of Stephen Chow, this isn’t a bad choice until he comes out with a new movie.
The Monkey King 3 has a run time of 1 hour 54 minutes and is not rated.
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