Avis des critiques

It's heartening that this is the biggest blockbuster event of China's 2013, as it's quite good and — out of cultural context — winningly idiosyncratic, spending its money on a Buddhist parable rather than the usual hero's quest to prevent the end of the universe.

Journey to the West, adapted extremely loosely from a very famous 16th-century Chinese novel, is one of those movies that dares to mix unspeakable horror with laugh-out-loud slapstick, high-minded themes with dumb humor. Stephen Chow, who also made a name for himself Stateside with the hitsShaolin Soccer and Kung-fu Hustle, specializes in this kind of gonzo action comedy, and this is the most ambitious and spectacular movie he's made yet.

Conquering The Demons feels like a Chow movie through and through; as in his other films, much of its charm rests in the intermingling of the very high-concept and the very lowbrow. Long, effects-heavy set pieces... are peppered with fat suits, grimacing reaction shots, and sped-up Benny Hill-style running. Chow's humor is coarse and facile, but it becomes surprising when placed against a backdrop of large-scale, pile-up action.

This isn't all executed with clean, skintight computer animation, mind you: Miss Duan, for example, flings infinite golden attack rings like a video game character and busts up baddies into clouds of rather chunky dust. But there's a physical immediacy to the sometimes humble magic made by Mr. Chow and his visual effects supervisor, Ken Law.

Crammed with so much CGI it occasionally feels like a video-game cutscene, Journey is kept tethered to reality by its emotional heft and by Chow's deeply felt depictions of cruelty and mercy. A kung fu comedy, a Chinese fairy story, a Buddhist action movie, a prequel to a mega-series that makes James Cameron's ambitions look puny, Chow'sJourney to the West is everything that is good about China's mega-blockbuster inclinations.

As a director of kinetic slapstick action, Chow remains unparalleled... At the same time, though, he still likes his humor extremely broad, and isn't above, say, capping a teeter-totter gag by having an enormous woman suddenly appear, and use her massive body as the ultimate catapult. His cartoonish approach always benefited from his own blustery onscreen persona, and Wen, with his boyish diffidence, just doesn't possess the same natural charisma.

This is the kind of ceaselessly inventive film in which pop songs are used as potential soothing agents for demons, a warrior grows a giant foot while doing battle with a demon, and a seduction attempt involving a kind of miming spell goes wrong in uproarious fashion... Rarely is it that a CGI-heavy spectacle such as this could be called both entertaining and inspiring in the same breath, but such is the unexpectedly special magic of Journey to the West.

Journey to the West is an action-comic marvel, never quite achieving the heights of Kung Fu Hustle (Chow's masterpiece) but certainly equaling fine earlier work such as God of Cookery or Shaolin Soccer... [The encounter with the fish demon] is expertly choreographed peril staged as black comedy, and its visual language recalls both Bong's The Host and Altman's Popeye.