Summary
A convoluted fantasy CG shambles, strung together with crazy glue and cliché. It might have some pretty backgrounds, but the foreground characters are paper thin.
The directorial debut of Zhao Xiaoding, co-directing with Anthony LaMolinara, was something to get excited about. As Zhang Yimou’s Academy Award nominated cinematographer, Zhao’s work on House of Flying Daggers defined the look of a genre. Unfortunately for romantic fantasy flick ONCE UPON A TIME (三生三世十里桃花), even his involvement isn’t enough to save this mess.
Based on the fantasy novel Three Lives Three Worlds, Ten Miles Peach Blossoms by TangQi Gongzi, it tells the story of immortal royal Bai Qian (Liu Yifei) and the love she shares across the ages with Ye Hua (Yang Yang).
If nothing else, ONCE UPON A TIME sure is pretty to look at. What seems like an endless supply of production company logos at the start of the film are indicative of the CN¥150 million budget that went into the tale, although one gets the impression that the lushly illustrated aesthetics were about the only concern here. The fact that there doesn’t seem to be a writing credit beyond the novel that inspired it is indicative of this approach.
Like an extended scene set where the Venn Diagram intersects on Rivendell in Lord of the Rings and James Cameron’s Avatar, the CG behind some of the sequences is impressive – until it spectacularly isn’t. For every glorious Eastern Sea garden, there’s the shoddy work behind Bai Qian’s constant companion MiGu, a cross between Dobby the House Elf and a Boobah. By the same token, while some of the action is blockbuster in nature, other scenes may have been choreographed by the original Power Rangers series (complete with their own Rita Repulsa).
There’s so much going on at times, it is difficult to know exactly which bit of digital window-dressing to fix your eyeballs on. Never lacking in ambition or imagination, there’s multi-tailed foxes, giant organic monsters, and armies of flying critters pouring out of every corner of the picture. The problem is that it is all sort of throw into a giant melting pop, shaken about, and handed back to the audience in an episodic potpourri.
This is all to mask that ONCE UPON A TIME appears to be building to a “twist” of sorts, but that too is telegraphed from the opening scenes. Nevertheless, the story that inspired the film was also the basis of the Chinese TV show Eternal Love, so if it still intrigues you then this might be the version to seek out. It’s more than likely less confusing and more linear than this shambolic outing.
