Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons

A scene from Jourey to the West: Conquering the Demons. Photo provided to China Daily

Stephen Chow elevated himself into a realm of movie gods when his 1994 A Chinese Odyssey became the equivalent of the United Kingdom's Monty Python a cross college campuses in China. Chow's retake on the Monkey King story is a 3-D exercise in unalloyed adventure and typical Chow-style humor. This time, it does not have much room for reinterpretation or tea-leaf analysis.

A scene from Jourey to the West: Conquering the Demons. Photo provided to China Daily

The movie cuts a very thin slice from the literary classic, i.e. the coming together of the three disciples of the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) monk before they embark on their epic expedition to India, but imbues it with a rich tapestry of details. The three parts vary in tone and length, but who cares? The fun is non-stop and it's closer to Stephen Chow than to Wu Cheng'en the author of the book, even though Chow worked only behind the camera as the director.