Once Upon A Time in Lingjian Mountain

A comedic gem. Witty and brilliant. The repartee between master Wang Wu (Sandrine Pinna) and student Wang Lu (Xu Kai) had me in stitches. Sandrine Pinna's comedic timing is impeccable. Xu Kai is equally superb. Absurdly hammed scenes like those parodying "Meteor Garden" are hilarious. I haven't laughed this much since the movie "Airplane!" But this is not just a comedy. Action, romance, mystery and Wuxia elements are alive and kicking in this delightful production.

Watched this series through Netflix. At the beginning it was a promising series. Adventure, fiction, mystery, action...has the tell tale of a good movie. Sat down through the subtitles... being very patient... Started having doubts and questions around episode 4. I am not sure why the writers, directors, producers went from being mysterious to being "not funny, funny.. but it's not funny, more like slapstick silly that's not funny. Did I say not funny ? It's not supposed to be funny, but that is the direction they went, and it's not funny, and lost all the mystery, and adventure. OK, let me put it this way, it went from rated MA to R to PG to Y7, then to General Audience. So I am not going to go through the punishing adventure switched to something I have no idea what... I wanted to keep watching it, but my curiosity lost it's appeal... I am not gonna go through this promising, lost it's appeal movie series. They should've stuck to their original plan of making it ACTION FILLED, Thrilling CGI, Fiction filled fantasy story, with MA Rating instead of this floozy funny not funny story. I was saddened because I thought it was going to be a good story...but then it did not... so disappointed. Maybe if they dubbed it in English, it might be good but no way I am watching it subtitled in a very difficult twists and turn of a funny, not funny adventure, and no adventure fantasy, and no fantasy, fictional ... story.

Season starts off fun and intriguing but a little slow. The final 8-10 episodes are fantastic and you see how the whole series builds to that point. It's very campy for sure so you have to like that style, but it's pretty subtly funny and has a lot of gems in it too.

Finally something different on screen. The series is a chinese comic (manhua) like story. Sometimes difficult to understand because I am not chinese and do not always have the background, other than having read a handfull of the comics. I was hooked from the start and am half way through the series. Explanation about the artifacts, fruits and herbs were absent in the first few episodes but they started explaining after a while. Although I still think they could do more about it because it would give more feeling how importand and valuable some of the artifacts are. Also the refining proces of the Qi could be more elaborated. Subtitles are only in rapid english on Netflix.

Why I still like the series is because I love the characters, the costumes, the settings, the story and there are some good fighting scenes. It is refeshing and funny. The humor is typical chinese with over the top overacting but it is more spot on than not. Sandrine Pinna plays the master Wang character which she does perfectly with good timing.

Even the original language doesn't sync with the mouthes. Who on Earth dubs the original language?

On top of that it is just a not funny comedy.