'The Monkey King' Review: Monkeys Need Love Too
Netflix's kids-friendly animated fantasy-action adventure is a lot of fun to watch.
Now Streaming: Happily depicting the origin of its titular character, as related centuries ago in the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, the new, generically-titled Netflix animated adventure The Monkey King leans hard on the character's mischevious, trouble-making, and entirely self-centered (and self-serving) antics.
Thus, it amusingly and effectively spends nearly all its concise, 96-minute running time on that fun-loving monkey with laser eyes, voiced as a baby by Dee Bradley Baker (The Bad Batch and a million others) and as an adult by Jimmy O. Yang (Wish Dragon), as he endeavors to earn immortality by slaying 100 demons with the help of a trusty, mumble-talking magical stick, dubbed "Stick," which he stole from the the undersea Dragon King (Bowen Yang).
That demon-killing sequence switches to a notably different, 2D style of animation, before returning for the balance of the film to its incredibly colorful, more usual (nowadays) and fleshed-out 3D animation. During a sequence that references Dragon Inn and The Seven Samurai, Monkey King is joined by Lin (Jolie Hoang-Rapaport), who seems to come out of nowhere and foists herself upon Monkey King as his assistant. (This sequence also features funny, juicy voice work by Stephanie Hsu as the wife of the town's mayor.)
Lin has her own (honorable) motives for helping Monkey King, but he remains a very irresponsible, juvenile sort of wanna-be god, even as Lin's less tricky personality exerts an influence upon him to the good. They form a team where each can help the other, yet Monkey King is very reluctant to acknowledge any assistance from Lin.
On the ostensible villain side of things -- to call him a "villain" grants him greater malicious power than he exudes in the story -- Dragon King has two fumbling, bumbling comical assistants, Benbo (Jo Koy) and (Babbo), to add further leaven. Buddha is the god of this universe, and his magnificent, all-powerful presence is voiced by the appropriately mighty BD Wong.
All the many action sequences are punctuated by witty dialogue and enough one-liners for two movies, making it easy for the movie to gallop over its occasional rough spots and sometimes bloated battle scenes. Mostly, it's just a giddy good time, a silly twist on the usual expectations that doesn't pretend to be anything more than what it is. Its modesty contributes greatly to making The Monkey Dive an easy dive into Chinese fantasy. [Netflix]
Now Streaming: Happily depicting the origin of its titular character, as related centuries ago in the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, the new, generically-titled Netflix animated adventure The Monkey King leans hard on the character's mischevious, trouble-making, and entirely self-centered (and self-serving) antics.
Thus, it amusingly and effectively spends nearly all its concise, 96-minute running time on that fun-loving monkey with laser eyes, voiced as a baby by Dee Bradley Baker (The Bad Batch and a million others) and as an adult by Jimmy O. Yang (Wish Dragon), as he endeavors to earn immortality by slaying 100 demons with the help of a trusty, mumble-talking magical stick, dubbed "Stick," which he stole from the the undersea Dragon King (Bowen Yang).
That demon-killing sequence switches to a notably different, 2D style of animation, before returning for the balance of the film to its incredibly colorful, more usual (nowadays) and fleshed-out 3D animation. During a sequence that references Dragon Inn and The Seven Samurai, Monkey King is joined by Lin (Jolie Hoang-Rapaport), who seems to come out of nowhere and foists herself upon Monkey King as his assistant. (This sequence also features funny, juicy voice work by Stephanie Hsu as the wife of the town's mayor.)
Lin has her own (honorable) motives for helping Monkey King, but he remains a very irresponsible, juvenile sort of wanna-be god, even as Lin's less tricky personality exerts an influence upon him to the good. They form a team where each can help the other, yet Monkey King is very reluctant to acknowledge any assistance from Lin.
On the ostensible villain side of things -- though to call him a "villian" grants him greater maclicious power than he displays in the story -- Dragon King has two fumbling, bumbling comical assistants, Benbo (Jo Koy) and (Babbo), to add further leaven. Buddha is the god of this universe, and his magnificent, all-powerful presence is voiced by the appropriately mighty BD Wong.
All the many action sequences are punctuated by witty dialogue and enough one-liners for two movies, making it easy for the movie to gallop over its occasional rough spots and sometimes bloated battle scenes. Mostly, it's just a giddy good time, a silly twist on the usual expectations that doesn't pretend to be anything more than what it is. Its modesty contributes greatly to making The Monkey Dive an easy dive into Chinese fantasy. [Netflix]
I love my Favorite Netflix movie The Monkey King(2023) but *Sad sigh* I wish There's gonna be a series of the monkey King journey to the west since my favorite Netflix movie ending has continued I just wanna see what happened next 😭