The Asian Cinema Critic

Nonsense comedies don’t get more nonsensical than here.

“I have killed. I can’t be a charitable monk anymore.”

I think I’ve been too spoilt with good Journey to the West adaptations lately. I watched the wonderful Nobody earlier this year and even made a video detailing some of the best movies the book has seen over the years. So it’s been a real drag back to earth to be reminded that Journey to the West has seen – and will likely continue to see – absolutely awful adaptations too. Anyway, this is A Chinese Tall Story.

Brought to you by the man who brought you A Chinese Odyssey, A Chinese Tall Story is a comedy not unlike Odyssey but it’s one that feels more like a series of unconnected scenes and doesn’t work on any conceivable level. It’s a film that deals with the Tang Monk Tripitaka (Nicholas Tse) who flees after demons capture his disciples, and goes on his own journey. He meets the  imp Meiyan (Charlene Choi) whose love machinations cause the monk to suffer the ire of the gods. Stuff happens, but it’s often hard to say exactly what.

A Chinese Tall Story often feels like it doesn’t know what it wants to be. At times it’s taking itself way too seriously, as if it wants to tell a meaningful story that preaches Buddhist lessons, and other times it chooses to embrace its comic style and often overcorrects to such a massive degree that it veers past funny and into the realm of the loud, tiresome and sorely lacking in good vibes.

The stuff that’s good is that the focus is more on Tripitaka, who gets the lion’s share of scenes. Nicholas Tse is a strong lead, but when nothing matters – when your film devolves into a mess of CGI aerial dogfights and machine guns – it’s hard to pretend like your movie actually means anything. If it was going to be this messy and loud and incomprehensibly stupid then they could have at least kept Wukong (Chen Bolin) as the main character, as this is a lot more his style.

Instead he gets stung by a caterpillar, makes a bunch of child clones of himself and promptly disappears for most of the film’s runtime, including the even-less-used-than-usual companions Sandy (Steven Cheung) and Pigsy (Steven Cheung). I want to give credit to the cast, who are all largely trying, especially Charlene Choi, who has the unenviable job of trying to make bad jokes land through layers of unfunny prosthetics.

Lau’s Chinese Odyssey films were good if largely tangential to the Journey story. Tall Story is still tangential, but doesn’t even have to good graces to be anything worth watching. Thankfully Tripitaka would get another go-around as the lead character with Stephen Chow ‘s Conquering the Demons, a film that does the Tang Monk, the jokes and everything else considerably more competently. Go see that instead.

Verdict: Neither a parody nor a good adaptation I’m not even sure A Chinese Tall Story should be allowed to call itself a story.

Overall entertainment: 3/10
Violence: 2/10
Sex: 0/10
Jokes: I found a couple
References: At some point Tripitaka is Spiderman? Who cares

A Chinese Tall Story (2005)
Also known as: 情癲大聖
Cantonese

Director: Jeffrey Lau
Writer: Wu Cheng’en (debatably), Jeffrey Lau

CAST

Nicholas Tse – Tang Sanzang
Charlene Choi – Yue Meiyan
Fan Bingbing – Princess Xiaoshan
Chen Bolin– Sun Wukong
Kenny Kwan – Zhu Bajie
Steven Cheung – Sha Wujing
Isabella Leong – Red Child