Zhongkui: Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal

If you love fairy tales, this film is for you. If you are interested by Chinese mythology , this film could be usefull. Because it is easy to blame it when you expect what it is not. And a delight to discover smart and interesting use of CGI for resurrect a fascinating universe. A story of appearences, well crafted , giving beautiful show and nice moral lessons. Sure, it is not a Hollywood blockbuster but it has the virtue to be what you know , if you are familiar with the Chinese films from same genre. It is not a perfect film. But it is a real good one. Maybe, because the purpoise is not exactly to impress for visual force - it does that in many scenes in decent manner - but to propose a great love story and a coherent and interesting story about power and its high price. So, a beautiful fairy tale.

A Visually exciting mesh of live actors/actresses perfectly blended with State of the art CGI to produce a story and characters that bring passion and action to the viewer. A banquet for the eyes. Li Bing Bing, a veteran actress performs superbly and will be every young man's heart throb. Also, there is the new multifaceted and talented actress/singer Jike Junyi. In only her second film, already she delivers enticingly believable characters who add the "thrill" to going to a movie. Jike Junyi's performance, while brief, delivers magical surprises at exactly the right moment to wow and astonish the viewer. A most entertaining film that I will watch again.

Zhong Kui (Chen Kun) has been trained as a scholar and a demon- hunter; the God Zhang has taken him as a pupil in preparation for stealing the Dark Crystal, which the demons of hell own and use to store stolen human spirits. Zhong achieves that quest, but the King of the demons enlists the aid of Snow Girl (Li Bingbing) to steal the Crystal back. Matters become more complicated when it becomes clear that Zhong and Snow Girl were former lovers, and they still mean more to each other than human and demon should. Will their love save - or destroy - the three realms of Heaven, Earth and Hell?

This is a beautifully striking film, filled with gorgeous scenery and marvelous fight scenes. The film-makers went all out with CGI monsters and other effects, using a number of different companies (including Weta Workshop), although that decision results in uneven effects from time to time. For example, some scenes look more like a video game than a movie. But overall, the spectacle holds up well, although I think I might need repeated viewings to understand the whole thing!

It's no understatement that half of Zhong Kui is made of video game CG animation, which is not a bad thing visual-wise. This is probably one of the better looking animations from Chinese films, it is much more detailed and graphically pleasant from other recent works, though not every scene is gold. With aesthetically pleasing production value of costume and setting, the movie changes an average myth story into an eye candy.

Story follows Zhong Kui, a demon slayer with tragic past and his love interest the Snow Girl. As fate has it, they would meet in a struggle for a magical relic called Dark Crystal, so far the title is on point. The script stumbles a bit as the heavenly endeavor has too many plot devices masked as supreme powers and also much of the film is invested on Romeo and Juliet theme.

This is usual in mythical flick, the character or item has overpowered attribute so there's little consistency. Fortunately, the two leads perform well, especially Li Bing Bing as Snow Girl. If a comparison should be made, she's dressed and presented much like Disney's Cinderella. Her pale visage and good acting will delight the audiences, moreover the film utilizes the beauty in majestic set pieces throughout.

Pacing is rather slow, the film serves also as drama between the two, this can be exhausting as the predictable romantic plot takes a bulk of the movie. It employs a couple of decent twists at latter half only to end up on an anticlimactic conclusion. Nevertheless, each scene is presented with elaborate colorful vistas and dashing outfits.

Furthermore, half of it is well crafted CGI animation, everyone who have played any video games will see the resemblances. This is much better than previous Chinese animation, the details of face and clever way it paints the environment outweighs some occasions where the effect seems plastic or slow. There are times that the graphic might look jarring and outdated, but for most important part it is quite presentable.

Zhong Kui doesn't stray far from typical myth of heaven and hell or forbidden love cliché, although it has stylish production and gorgeous set pieces to paint an ordinary tale with more fascinating colors.

Nothing is what it seems in this cleverly done movie. In this epic adventure, the thin line separating good from evil is often blurred and crossed, leaving the audience wondering about who the true hero really is. The only constant is immortal love. A must watch for those who love this genre, you won't be disappointed!