Journey to the West might be one of the most influential stories in the world. The story of a Buddhist monk traveling westward to central Asia and India greatly impacts the Eastern world. At least in modern terms, the star character from the story is the mischievous and powerful Monkey King. A special Monkey born from a stone that, after being not accepted, swears to become the most powerful being, mostly for acknowledgment. There’s a lot more, but this animated film, The Monkey King, is about his part of the story. His origins before meeting the monk. Here you see the young Monkey King trying to and failing to connect with the community of monkeys he lives near. He trains his body to get strong and saves them from a demigod but is still shunned. From there, he ends up finding a huge column that turns out to be a magical, sentient weapon that chooses to go with him. What he didn’t know was that The Dragon King owned it. The Dragon King (Bowen Yang), feeling disrespected, chases after The Monkey King (Jimmy O. Yang) to get it back. The Monkey King instead is focused on beating 100 demons to reach the higher level of gods in that he meets Lin (Jolie Haong-Rappaport), a young girl who also has dreams.
The film is pretty fun overall, and the design and animation are smooth. I really like the look of The Monkey King. He has great energy and a good silhouette for his design. They put a lot of work into him on screen. While there aren’t a ton of extra characters, it lets them focus on all the main characters. The Dragon King looks great with a nice color palette. Yet overall, this film didn’t really keep my focus and attention. While the action is fluid, it’s a bit far and few between to have more jokes. The story loses itself a bit and tries to center again on The Monkey King’s ego to get to the place where his story begins in Journey to the West. It makes me wonder why they didn’t just do that story, as that’s what many of the previous takes have done. Focusing on this prequel didn’t work well as an entire feature-length movie. While I found it pretty decently made on a craft level, the storytelling and construction were lacking.
Score: C
