The story of a fairy baby sent down from heaven to fight an evil demon. The parallels to the Superman movie are numerous down to a cheesy ripoff of the Superman theme. But since it's set in mythical ancient Chinese kingdom the ripoff factor ends up minimal. This is a magic kung-fu film with no pretensions for realism.
The production is very elaborate and has the excellent set design one can see in other Yuen Chor film. There is a level of garishness that might be hard to take depending on your tastes. The lighting designer seems to have been instructed to use every color of light on the same set. The colors are like the Technicolor musicals from the 1940's. On a good large screen this might look great. Unfortunately, the soundtrack is permeated with cheap synthesizer sounds which are repeated beyond endurance. The music is also a mixed bag of traditional Chinese music and 1980's synthesizer schmaltz.
The plot follows the fairy baby (hey that's what he's called) as he grows up and eventually confronts the evil demon. Along the way the fairy protects a beautiful princess. The film is paced very well until a long comedy segment that slows it down for a few minutes. After that the film picks up through the crazy finale where the motto apparently was "excess is entertainment".
I enjoyed it as you usually don't see anything like this.
The production is very elaborate and has the excellent set design one can see in other Yuen Chor film. There is a level of garishness that might be hard to take depending on your tastes. The lighting designer seems to have been instructed to use every color of light on the same set. The colors are like the Technicolor musicals from the 1940's. On a good large screen this might look great. Unfortunately, the soundtrack is permeated with cheap synthesizer sounds which are repeated beyond endurance. The music is also a mixed bag of traditional Chinese music and 1980's synthesizer schmaltz.
The plot follows the fairy baby (hey that's what he's called) as he grows up and eventually confronts the evil demon. Along the way the fairy protects a beautiful princess. The film is paced very well until a long comedy segment that slows it down for a few minutes. After that the film picks up through the crazy finale where the motto apparently was "excess is entertainment".
I enjoyed it as you usually don't see anything like this.