The Monkey King

I liked the Far East setting, quality of animation and the overall crazy energy of the film, but it didn't quite work - for me at least. The characters felt clichéd, except for Monkey King himself, who stood out as surprisingly arrogant/unsympathetic for a main character.

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Honestly, thought this was kind of fun. Does not work at all on a storytelling level, and new rules and plot points are introduced in nearly every scene. But there’s a mile-a-minute charm to the film’s making-it-up-as-it-goes-along sensibility and it looks surprisingly good. This is the kind of breakneck nonsense my Rock-a-Doodle-loving heart can get behind.

The Monkey King is a fun animated film with good animation & a decent voice cast, but one that falls short of telling a good story. Monkey is an unsympathetic protagonist, though that's consistent with the source material, hence the introduction of Lin; but it's Yang's metaphoric-moustache-twirling Dragon King that really brings the story down. Gone are most of the true cultural beats, instead we get a Disneyfied tale complete with musical numbers, which is a shame. Entertaining but forgettable.

Plenty of monkey business. Good dose of action and laughs in between. Hardly anything original, but I had a good time with it. More like a decent timewaster than anything lasting.