Review of The Monkey King (2023) by Infrarecon — 20 Aug 2023

I am a little confused with this one. The monkey king is a good-looking animation, with good action, and characterisation but is plagued by the worst pacing I've seen.

Not only that the story and the motivation of the characters are a bit off, all due to pacing.

It's different, as the main character "Monkey" is quite an @sshole, but it's done on purpose. I don't have a problem with the main character being unlikable but there needs to be a full and lasting reason as to why he is. They try to add a lot of them, but the problem is we don't necessarily get to feel it, as the film is just rushing to fit as much content as possible.

This movie could have taken notes from Kung Fu Panda but it didn't. Let us spend time with the character. Even if the movie stopped for a bit to let the audience think a little about what he went through it would have done wonders.

Only at the ~50 min mark did I start to see the relatability, and from there onwards it was becoming solid.

So half the film is in rush mode and the other half kind of saves it.

It took me two sessions to finish this film, which shows that it didn't grab me at first.

Ratings:

Visuals: 8/10, not too bad, but maybe there could have been a little bit more particles, magic, and atmosphere in some scenes, maybe an overall design rework of some characters, but overall the animation is clean and excellent to look at.

Characters: 6/10, Nice set of characters, spoiled by pacing issues.

Story: 6/10, Not bad, I can see this working, if again the movie wasn't rushing in the first half.

Plot and Pacing: 5/10, Half Right, half wrong.

Action and Adventure: 6/10, it's above standard.

Overall we have a 6/10, The animation is better than Nimona, I was thinking maybe a 7/10, but I thought to myself, would I watch this again? Probably not, there aren't scenes where they satisfy the Audience completely. They were alluding to something near the end showing the true scale of his power, but it never happens. (I honestly would have liked to see the destruction of the h.....s).

Anyway, this is a step up from Nimona, there is no wokeness here, just a nice animation to waste some time with. This is something you would watch when there is nothing to watch. Also, it has a nice message, you'll have to sieve for it a bit but it's there.

Would I like a sequel to this movie? Probably, I think if it's done right the sequel can overthrow its predecessor.

Now a little nitpick I have is with the Monkey Kings'Design, I don't like it so much, I dig the armour he is wearing but his face is weird looking.

Hopefully, the designers can revise everyone's look just a little so it's better to understand their designs and the history and folklore behind them.

Ok, that's all, this movie is safe to watch and enjoy.