Loudly heralded by flattering headlines and a record-setting budget (and box office in China, supposedly), The Monkey King crashes onto our screens and torrent servers in all its kitsch glory. Will the verdict be kind? Of course not.First, let's get back to basics: the legend of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, is a cornerstone of Chinese folklore and literature, and deservedly so. It is one of the great written human myths, and a large part of its appeal is universal, which would make it an ideal flagship project for a transnational production effort. You could adapt only select bits and end up with a great crowd-pleaser, as was done to hilarious results by Stephen Chow's A Chinese Odyssey. The present effort aims to tell us the whole thing + prequel-style expansion in the form of a trilogy of 3D blockbusters. Ye shall be judged by the expectations ye set! Though the budget sets a record for China, the quality of the result in terms of effects (be they digital or makeup) is woefully sub-par, and the art direction is a mess, making this a frequently incoherent eyesore.Then, let's look at the talent involved: Chow Yun-Fat and Donnie Yen's charisma and comic sense (respectively) eclipse anything else thrown up on screen, and might have gobbled up most of the budget. Yen gets away with it, wisely playing it both ways and seemingly the only person involved who knows this is all a big joke. Another contributor who barely gets mention in the comments section is Christopher Young, who's marvelous score annihilates anything composed that year and is worth discovering on its own.It's worth pausing the sarcasm and shedding a regretful tear, for this whole enterprise could have amounted to something more tasteful - an animated feature could have been stupendous! - yet behold: the worst kind of fiasco, one that escapes financial disaster and thus runs the risk of spawning a whole host of similar horrors. But the real Monkey King is stronger than all that, and since filmmakers can't stay clear of his gravitational pull for long, one can hope in a few years time someone will do him justice.Avoid this garbage and read the source, preferably while listening to this film's unbelievably great score.

I really enjoyed this movie despite its obvious shortcomings. It it a good live-action remake of the 1965 animated feature of the same name (well worth checking out if you're a fan of art films). Donnie Yen does OK as the lead but western fans of his previous films may be left confused and/or disappointed a long time before the 120 mins of 'Fantasy Action' ends - It really helped that I was already familiar with the story as a lot happens in that time. I wonder how the second part will compare with the excellent Journey To The West: Conquering the Demons (2013) as the story from that follows this one - that's not a spoiler is it?

I have to say I'm not impressed at all, the story telling was very bad, all over the place.If you step back and think about it, you get the story, but you shouldn't have to, the director should tell it without much thought from you.This is one of those movies that should have been longer by breaking it up in to parts.This is an example of a lot of story telling crammed into too short of time.The special effects are very good and so is the 3D, but there were times like when the characters morph into dogs, the dogs were very badly done.I think they used big names like Donnie Yen combined with a lot of very good special effects to wow the viewer, but the story telling was bad, very bad.I've loved Chinese Martial Arts movies and actors ( such as Jet Li and Donnie Yen ) because you can see that even though it's a movie and it's all staged that the actors really do have Martial Arts backgrounds with their form etc, but in this movie I was disappointed because the quality of fighting, well you could have got Hollywood actors who had a weekend of lessons to do the job.The Monkey King's fighting scenes with the staff were bad too, fast forwarded most of the time and not much impact left me disappointed.I'm trying to elaborate further to explain myself better but I'm so disappointed at the moment I can't muster the energy to. Must be how the Director was when making this movie.Basically whats happened is, as life and stories go, there are chapters, all this story teller has done is taken a pinch from each chapter and merged it into the next, summarized them instead of going into it. They don't even take the time to tell the parts where The Monkey Kings Master trains him, he's "born" then next thing is he's released to go on his own way.The story only starts getting OK with some sort of feeling and substance to it towards the end when he returns to find his monkey "offspring" dead.I expected a lot more from a Donnie Yen movie and even more from a story being told of the Legendary Monkey King.The movie Forbidden Kingdom did a lot more justice to the story telling of The Monkey King and the movie didn't even have that much of The Monkey King in it. In this movie it was more like watching a circus monkey that got special powers than watching a story of The Monkey king.The only reason I gave it 2 stars was because of the good computer effects. There was so much more potential to this story and how it was told. I reiterate that it would have been better if they took more time for each chapter and split it in to multiple movie parts.The positive is I now understand better why movies like The Lord of the Ring are told in multiple parts.

...with a budget of almost 90 million US dollars(biggest Chinese movie budget to date), and this is what they came up with? there were many major problems with this movie, first off having Donnie Yen as the monkey king was a big big no no. the mans facial features are as expressive as wood and recently you can tell how egotistical he has become. he wants every big role in a big movie even if it isn't right for him and in this movie he makes a fool out of himself till 3/4's of the way thru. he is known for his action movies and there isn't much of that as the movie is almost all cgi and wire-fu.for most of the movie the cgi was almost laughable, i've literally seen better in video games, and they had help from the cgi team that did Avatar( i think the team took the money and ranned ). it was going to be hard to cgi the right way cause the book was so detailed and deep.i went into this movie not expecting much and wind up not getting much, there were no development of characters, some of the costumes were laughably bad and the other 2 leads weren't that interesting either. basically just about nothing works in this movie...and now for its saving grace.if you watch this movie make sure you finish it, because the last quarter of the movie is freakin awesome and makes up for sitting thru the first 2/3's to 3/4's of the movie. everything picked up close to the end...it almost seemed like a different team stepped in to finish the movie, in every aspect. the fighting got good( you actually see real fight moves from Donnie). the story and acting got tighter and best of all, the cgi looked as good as any that Hollywood can put out, and it was exciting.so, if the movie isn't that appealing...just make sure you watch the last third or quarter and you'll feel a lot less screwed...the ending of the movie was its saving grace and just might save the movie from disaster. i give this movie a 5.8 out of 10. save the popcorn for the last 30 minutes of the movie.