Journey to the West

Studio: Magnet
Directed by Stephen Chow

Mar 06, 2014 By Austin Trunick Web Exclusive

Xuan Zang sucks at demon-hunting, but his heart is in the right place. He vanquishes demons—dangerous monsters born of anguished souls—not for the generous bounties being offered for their hides, but for the good of helping others. He’s not up to the task, though, and repeatedly requires rescuing by the skilled (and beautiful) Miss Duan, a rival demon-hunter who casts a lusty eye towards him. Along his quest to prove his worth, the in-over-his-head hero goes up against rival hunters, a water-demon, a pig-demon, and the Monkey King: the most powerful demon of them all.

The latest film from director Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle) is a perversely comic take on the oft-adapted Chinese folk novel of the same name. Chow’s inimitable chops for comedic action are on full display in Journey to the West’s many over-the-top scenes, ranging from Three Stooges-level slapfights in smaller moments, to huge, (slapstick) Cirque du Soleil-style set pieces in others. An extended introduction, which turns an ancient Chinese fishing village into a Rube Goldberg-ian device that—among other things—places a baby in increasing levels of danger, sells the film’s twisted sense of humor from the get-go. Chow mines chuckles from some incredibly dark beats; the amount of blood and violence played for laughs here is comparable to Dead Alive, and the cartoonish-yet-believable CGI effects may also remind viewers of Peter Jackson’s mid-career output. (It’s not all hokey, though: a showdown in a pig-demon’s layer contains a bit of nightmarish and hard-to-shake imagery.) Though some plot elements—in particular, the ending—might not make sense to anyone unfamiliar with the source tale, the film is wildly funny. Journey to the West is lowbrow humor at its broadest, but we’ll be damned if we weren’t entertained by almost every scene.

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