Da Nao Tiangong

This review is on the 1:24 hour long blue ray release. It's unclear how much it differs from the original, there's been some scenes that has been removed and some scenes that has been sped up according to wikipedia, but it wasn't very obvious.

Imagine going into an elaborately decorated Taoist temple high on LSD and spending the trip watching the different paintings, statues and decorations come to life. It pretty much sums up how this movie feels. It is incredibly vibrant and fluidly animated. Every scene is eye candy, the backgrounds are full of details, and things like fire and clouds are done with precision ... that seems to have taken weeks to animate. The choreography is fantastic, it looks like they have been done by someone fluent in Qi Gong and martial arts. The traditional Chinese music really carries the movie as well, it's probably using many elements from Chinese opera or some similar tradition, it feels very integrated with the plot which is impressive for a movie this old.

What the movie is lacking is a coherent plot and a proper introduction to the characters, it seems like the crew expected the audience to be so well versed in "The Journey to the West" (a famous Chinese 16th century novel) that no proper introduction was needed. The Monkey King is still a very interesting character, as he is so chaotic. He's not portrayed as neither good or bad, he does both reasonable things and unreasonable things, and I'd say Kishimoto Masashi found lots of inspiration in him when making the character Naruto. There's also a funny homage to Sneezy from Snow White put in there which was a bit surprising.

For a movie this old it's a treasure. I recommend it for anyone with interest in a broader scope of East Asian culture. It's amazing to see something so inherently Chinese and yet appealing to a broader audience.