I can only feel sorry for the Chinese people fond of their cultural heritage. Donnie Yen's Monkey King was painful to watch. Specially the costumes were so kitsch I wanted to shout of annoyment: 'What the hell have U done with the 100M$ budget, fools!" Next and near as bad as the costumes, the CGI/special effects pathetically trying to imitate a bunch of various styles in an awkward way bordering the look of a college project movie. It's actually hard to believe that such mediocre production can be achieved today with that kind of budget, particularly since a few 'international experts' were working on this flick and anyone who has any idea about what these people could do with that kind of money will be bewildered to witness the end result. Finally, I have read from Chinese reviewers that the original story has gone very much out of tracks with this movie and it is a pity to think that such a classic part of their culture is being mixed up by modern 'story tellers' who have no respect for the very material they use to make money. If Donnie Yen wished to do one more take on the Monkey King, He could at least have respected the source material rather than releasing a distorted and immature production for the whole world to absorb, thus diluting slowly the accuracy of the original epic story. For one thing, if U are just someone who wanna take kids to the theater to see some Asian movie, then this might be working for them at the condition that they are under 6-7 or didn't yet develop a critical sense about movies. Hehe. I give it a 4/10 for some OK sequences, and I feel somehow generous.
