Review: A Chinese Odyssey Part Three
A Chinese Odyssey Part III is a sequel to A Chinese Odyssey Part I and Part II, that were released back-to-back in 1995. The story still revolves around the Journey to the West with many twists along the way due to the existence of the Pandora’s Box, which allows time-travel. The film mainly follows Zixia (Tiffany Tang) who wants to prevent Joker (Han Geng) from loving her as she saw her own death in the future, which would leave Joker devastated and alone.
That would be an oversimplification of the plot, though. While the story is engaging enough and has interesting twists due to the time-travel element, it is overly complicated. It is confusing from the start. While it gets easier to follow as the movie progresses, it is generally still hard to follow the many strands of stories and various incarnations of characters. There are too many characters which appear briefly without contributing much to the plot progression, such as Bak Jing-Jing, White Snake, and Guan Yin, among others. I have not watched Part I and II but I seriously doubt that it would make the plot easier to follow.
Despite the fantasy elements in this movie, the computer-generated imagery (CGI) work is subpar by today’s standards. It is often distracting and it is used heavily throughout. There were many fight scenes throughout, but they feel disjointed from the plot. I often wonder why they are fighting each other.
The movie is sprinkled with some humour, especially from the character of the Longevity Monk (Wu Jing) who occasionally brings in pop-culture references into the movie. He gets a few laughs from the audience, but his jokes sometimes fall flat. Jade Emperor is another character who is supposed to be funny but often gives cringeworthy, over-the-top performance that feels out of place.
The saving grace of the film is the performance of the ensemble cast. The lead couple, Zixia and Joker, are generally likeable and have good chemistry. Tiffany Tang also plays the role of Zixia’s twin sister, Qingxia. She succeeds in making both characters distinct and portraying the sisterly relationship between them well. Han Geng also plays two roles: Joker and Monkey King. Joker could easily be an annoying clown role, but Han Geng plays him earnestly enough. Other characters stand out as well such as the Bull King, his sister, and Longevity Monk.
Overall, this movie certainly has the potential to entertain and sometimes it does. Nevertheless, “keep it simple” would be a mantra that it should have adopted. It would have benefited from a lot of trimming of plots and characters, focusing on Zixia and Joker instead. - Freddy
