Although Jet Li is essentially the main actor, Raymond Lam steals the show (in my opinion) as herb picker Xu Xian. The beautiful Shengyi Huang is well cast as White Snake and the chemistry between Raymond and Shengyi is wonderful. This is a love story set against a fantasy action adventure backdrop, and the genres blend beautifully. The action is just as amazing as the love story. I did find some scenes to be a bit slapstick silly, but in general this CGI-heavy film was quite fascinating. The flood scene in the final act was truly awesome. I did find the ending a bit overuse of CGI to a point where I almost lost what was actually happening, but the love story portrayed by Raymond and Shengyi swiftly pulled me back to their reality and it was simply spectacular. This is a very imaginative film.

This was a good action packed film with stunning special effects and CGI. The film featured a love struck demon snake who falls in love with a mortal man. It has monks who battle against the evil demons. It features an epic battle between good and evil while at the same time you feel empathy for the evil because it is motivated by love. It is not a martial arts film by any means but more of a love story that just happens to have monks who know some form of martial arts but the rely heavily on supernatural powers given to them by a deity or higher power. Even though it was in Mandarin with captions, it was still a good film for anyone who enjoys foreign films and enjoys watching a variety of films from many cultures.

This is an absolutely awful film which I watched on the strength of a Jet Li leading role alone. Sadly, Li isn't enough to save what soon becomes a mire of inanity and endless fantasy drivel about a romance between a snake demon woman and the human who has the misfortune to fall in love with her. The tone is vapid and silly throughout, and the film is clearly aimed at child viewers with its extremely poor CGI effects and silly fight sequences.The thing that surprises me most about this movie is how poorly judged it is when it comes to sympathising with the characters. Li is presented as a misguided monk who's forced to learn the error of his ways, but he comes across as a paragon of decency and virtue when it comes to the outrageously irritating white snake, played by the terrible Shengyi Huang. Huang's character is presented as childish, stupid, selfish and completely self-obsessed, yet come the climax we're supposed to identify and empathise with her character's plight. Err…no, thanks. She's just a brat, and it's a shame that her character never receives the ass-whupping that she so clearly deserves.As for Jet, well, he's gone on record to complain about this movie; in the first place, he was told he wouldn't have much fighting to do (pretty much all his scenes involve fighting), and secondly, he found the action scenes hard to film because he had to go easy on his opponents while they beat the hell out of him. The action scenes are very poor, I admit, wushu-derivative and singularly lacking in impact. I won't even mention the calibre of the acting or the storyline, which goes on and on until the OTT climax which sees the actors absolutely dwarfed by wave upon wave of lame CGI. And the nonsensical retitling for western audiences? For crying out loud, there isn't even an emperor in the film! How stupid do they think we are?

I'm a big Jet Li fan and I have to say that this is just very disappointing on all fronts. Giving this 4/10 is being generous.This is a very childish fantasy story with poor plot and dialogue and vulgar CGI effects. I'm not against fantasy in martial arts but this should probably have been a PG rating. At least this would have given some indication of the level we're aiming at here. A randomly picked episode of Monkey would contain a better execution of fantasy, martial arts, character development and (for my money) special effects... and that was made in the late 70's.The love story was probably the most successful part of this movie. You have been warned - Here be CGI Snakes!