The Fantastic Magic Baby

It’s all dancing, spinning and magical centaur monsters in Chang Cheh’s stage-to-screen production.

“Goddess of mercy is here. Don’t be rude!”

OK let’s do this quickly. There’ll be very little need to go into too much detail with the story in Fantastic Magic Baby. It’s the Red Boy story, and for once, Red Boy (Ting Wa Chung) actually looks like a kid. He wants to capture the Tang Monk (Tang Gok-yan) for his parents, but Sun Wukong (Lau Chung-chun), Zhu Bajie (Chin I-ho) and Sha Wujing (Yeung Fui-yuk) are having none of it. You know the story.

The Fantastic Magic Baby might be the most concise retelling of any Journey to the West story I’ve ever seen. The plot is astonishingly straightforward, with few twists to extend its runtime – as in so many other versions of the story. Because of this, the movie only clocks in at about 65 minutes, but if you’re wondering why there’s another half hour of movie after the end card, it’s because a good third of the entire runtime is taken up by a demonstration of real Chinese opera.

Honestly, it’s a pretty cool thing to add to any movie, kind of like a DVD special feature. Seeing real opera after the movie is kind of fitting too, it’s almost like it’s telling us “now you’ve seen it on film, check out the real thing” and it works. That is all beside the point as it doesn’t really change how you view the movie.

And it really does feel like a Chinese Opera. The other Shaw Brothers productions, starting with Monkey Goes West have all felt like stage productions, with their painted backgrounds and Star Trek­-level set designs, but Fantastic Magic Babyblows them all out of the water. Like I mentioned above, there really is no story short of a simplified version of the book events. Roughly 70% of the entire runtime is dedicated to acrobatics and complex dance choreography disguised as fight scenes.

In a way, this might be the most accurate way to depict Journey to the West, with so many battles described in the form of poems, displaying them as opera dance numbers seems really fitting. As fights, they’re not exactly great: not a single strike actually looks like it hits, but that’s really not the point. The movie’s intentions are shown straight away when we see Wukong for the first time: he pretty much never takes a normal step forward, choosing instead to cartwheel, somersault and leap his way across the stage in a performance that must be absolutely exhausting – so props to Lau Chung-chun’s efforts.

The Fantastic Magic Baby is a movie that does absolutely nothing new, but that’s been par for the course for these Shaw Brothers movies, so don’t begin to expect much more. But even though they might not be the most unique iterations, they are some of the more faithful retellings, serving more as visual accompaniments to their respective Journey to the West chapters than standalone stories. It’s worth checking out, for its theatrical qualities, and for the fascinating display of actual theatre later one.

Verdict: Bringing nothing fresh to the formula, the bafflingly-titled Fantastic Magic Baby is nonetheless a treat to the eyes and the ears – if you can stomach endlessly clashing cymbals.

Overall entertainment: 7/10, for theatricality alone
Violence: 0/10, despite the film being one endless fight
Sex: 0/10
Blood: Just absolute gallons on that statue
Wukong makeup: 10/10. That shit looks bonkers and I love it.
Cuts to make things appear or disappear: Nonstop

The Fantastic Magic Baby (1975)
Also known as: 紅孩兒 (Hong Hai Er)
Mandarin

Director: Chang Cheh
Writer: Ni Kuang, Chang Cheh

CAST

Ting Wa Chung – Red Boy
Lau Chung-Chun – Sun Wukong
Tang Gok-Yan – Tang Priest Tripitaka
Chen I-Ho – Zhu Bajie
Yeung Fui-Yuk – Sha Wujing
Chiang Tao – Bull Demon King
Woo Gam – Princess Iron Fan
Fung Hak-On – Erlang Shen
Chao Li-Chuan – Guan Yin
Tsai Hung – Juling Shen