Ever seen that tacky live-action Dragonball movie that Joe Chan directed? Probably you haven't, but the Hong Kong-produced Monkey King: Quest for the Sutra is a lot like it, in terms of style and tone and general silliness. That both are adaptations (very loose, in Dragonball's case) of the Chinese classic Journey to the West seems incidental; I'm talking more about their cinematic similarities here. Both are filled with goofy characters wearing weird makeup, who wander around getting into cartoony martial arts fights and making mischief -- and both are utterly lacking when it comes to providing the viewer with a cohesive narrative. The characters are always jumping directly from one nonsensical situation into another, with rarely a break to be had between them. The effect of this erratic storytelling can be jarring.





The first episode of the series begins with a tale about a "celestial meteor" that crashes somewhere in China and "absorbs the essence of the Earth" over ten billion years. A flower, sent from heaven, is planted near it. Why is this scene so exceedingly long? Who knows?

Anyway, later on, we see a group of monkey-people laughing it up by the shore of some river. Remember that new Land of the Lost TV series that aired on ABC for a while? These monkey-people all look vaguely like a cross between the monkey-dude from that show and Bert Lahr from the Wizard of Oz...kinda like a Z-grade Planet of the Apes thing (and considering how stupid people tend to look in Planet of the Apes makeup, that's really saying something. Dignity is not an easy thing to achieve when you're dressed up as an animal that, let's face it, is generally considered to be rather clownish in its appearance and mannerisms). Luckily, no one here is taking their role too seriously -- least of all "Stone Monkey", our hero (played by Dicky Cheung) who explodes into the world fully-formed from the meteor, with great strength and fighting powers. He later becomes the titular Monkey King, Sun Wukong, but not until wresting the title from the cruel current monkey king, a tyrant who enjoys breaking coconuts over the heads of little monkeys.

It's a lot to absorb in the first five minutes.





As the new Flower Fruit Mountain King, "Stone Monkey" teaches his subjects songs and merriment, but after many years he begins to notice that his beloved people are aging rapidly, whereas he doesn't seem to be, so he sets out on a mission to learn the magical arts and bestow immortality upon them.

At a (human) village, he saves a fellow monkey that is being mistreated, and gets attacked for his trouble by a flying-sword wielding warrior hired by the villagers to exterminate what they consider to be a pest. Indeed, I can see how an upright-walking, talking (and trash-talking), semi-human creature with enormous stength lurking on the outskirts of their village might be considered a problem. Anyway, the hired warrior is no match for the monkey, and ends up with a flying sword in the ass. The Monkey King helps him out, which leads to the warrior telling him where he might be able to find a school to teach him the magical arts business.

At the school (we're shown nothing of the apparently long journey to the school) we learn that the Monkey King's application has been rejected (we're not shown this scene either) and he's waiting outside for the administration to change their minds. Here he meets Bodhi (inexplicably played by Eric Tsang), a celestial being who split himself in two in order to divulge himself of his negative emotions: one side is good, the other evil. The evil one has been running the school into the ground, so the good one, after meeting the Monkey King, decides to finally stand up to him and attacks him with his magical eyebrows. He's defeated, but he gives the Monkey King a badge that will let the administration at some other school know that he's been sent by him, and that he should be taught the magical arts.





The Monkey King goes to the school, learns the magical arts, achieves mastery over death and the ability to ride on a floating cloud, and goes home (he also gets his new name here, Sun Wukong).

Back at the Flower Fruit Mountain, Sun Wukong rejoins his people (many years have passed), but that night, two agents of Hell appear and bid him come with them: his time in the world is up, they say. Sun Wukong explains that he's immortal now, and beats up these hellish goons, but realizes that he won't get any peace until he heads down to Hell itself to deal personally with the King of Hell, Zhong Kuai. He does this, and gets into a spiritual fight with him, eventually (kinda) winning. They kick around the body of a tiger spirit for a while, using their elbows and knees and feet and hands and heads, and the episode ends.

See what I mean about the narrative? It's complete gibberish! What sense does it make, ending the episode in such a weird spot? Why aren't we shown anything of what Sun Wukong learned at the school? I mean, c'mon: magical eyebrows? What in the world?





All that said, The Monkey King looks, from this first episode, like it might be a reasonably entertaining series: the special effects are not extraordinary, but they're not bad; it stars plenty of noteworthy Hong Kong actors, like Eric Tsang, Eric Kot, Sam Lee, and of course, Gillian Chung and Charlene Choi; and although the narrative problems might get on your nerves a little, the show itself isn't too demanding -- this is light, fluffy stuff, and was obviously never intended to be too substantive a program. Turn your brain off, I guess, and let the oddball comedy just kinda ooze into you, and you might end up enjoying it.

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