|
|
|
|
|
Zhong Kui: Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal
Based on a Chinese folktale, Zhong Kui: Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal (recently released in North America by Well Go USA under the shortened title Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal) is a perfect movie for today's new generation of movie watchers who have been weaned on a steady cinematic diet of CGI and rapid fire editing. Most other viewers will probably find the proceedings a bit underwhelming. The movie is co-directed by Peter Pau, a long-time cinematographer who won an Oscar for his work on Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, so you would expect Zhong Kui to have amazing visuals. In parts, that is the case, with some lovely set design and even lovelier stars, including the gorgeous Li Bing-Bing. But as for the CGI? To paraphrase Mad magazine's mascot Alfred E. Neuman: ech.
At times, the visuals come off like a low-tier Playstation 2 era fighting game -- and this is coming from someone that proudly identifies themselves as a gamer. Even most of the minor visual tweaks are just poor looking; this comes off as the sort of stuff that would be test footage for a Hollywood production -- and puzzingly, many of those same productions also employ the same sort of Chinese companies used here with much better results. As an aside, one of the CGI demons is a dead ringer for the one used in This is the End, minus the comically exaggerated genitalia. Was this effect reused? Anyway, if you can get past the sub-par no-so-special effects, the rest of the film isn't so bad; it's just that there's nothing present here that hasn't been done in a myriad of previous Chinese fantasy films, and without anything displayed that has much imagination or panache, it's hard to give Zhong Kui anything other than a very mild recommendation for fans of the genre. RATING: 5 This movie is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Amazon. Besides the title change, Well Go USA's version is uncut and in the original Mandarin language. |
