Summary
By streamlining the narrative and making a more judicious use of CG feature creatures, this sequel achieves the fun rompyness that eluded its predecessor.
Animator Raman Hui’s sequel to his 2015 adventure knows how to have fun. The original Monster Hunt was China’s biggest ever box office draw upon release, and the follow-up is targeted to win over the hearts and wallets of Lunar New Year audiences. MONSTER HUNT 2 (捉妖记2) finds a tonal balance that the first entry was never quite able to achieve, and has an inherent good nature makes it difficult not to like.
Compared with the anarchic plotting of the first film, the narrative here is simplicity itself. The adorable little monster Wuba has found a new home for himself among his own kind, at least until he is attacked by giant monsters and goes on the run. He soon falls in with the swindler Tu (Tony Chiu-Wai Leung) and his gentle monster friend BenBen. However, when monster hunters/Wuba’s adoptive “parents” Huo Xiaolan (Bai Baihe) and Song Tiayin (Jing Boran) sense Wuba is in trouble, they set out to find him.
The big drawcard for MONSTER HUNT 2 is, of course, the ridiculously adorable Wuba. A cross between a radish and a human baby, his antics have filled everything from the animated marketing to the New Year McDonald’s commercials across China. Edko Films have reportedly doubled the number of effects shots in the production, and it shows mostly in the interplay Wuba has with his environment and other characters. There’s an extended sequence of Wuba wandering through the wilderness that could function as an animation test-reel – it’s that charming. The other creatures, including the lumbering BenBen and a variety of animated foes, lean toward the DreamWorks end of character design.
Which by no means discounts the huge attention to detail that’s been put into all the practical elements on screen. The sets and locations are some of the most lavish seen on screen in a massive Chinese production, so it’s curious to note that the production designer Guillaume Aretos is best known for animated fodder like Puss in Boots. Costuming and backgrounds are impeccable, and even with the extra CG elements, Hui gives as much attention to the ‘real’ world as the digital one. Regular martial arts sequence actually give this an old-school flavour at times, or maybe that’s just the presence of Tony Leung.
Where Monster Hunt struggled to find the right balance between family-friendly and adult-aware, MONSTER HUNT 2 finds a compact way of telling an event. Reuniting us with the squabbling couple Xiaolan and Tiayin, and dazzling us with special effects, Raman Hui never forgets to have fun with his concept. This is, after all, a film where armored paper soldiers ride bees into a monster’s blowholes. Jump aboard the train now before the inevitable sequel comes along, probably just in time for the year of the Ox.
2018 | China | DIRECTOR: Raman Hui | WRITERS: Jack Ng, Sunny Chan, Su Liang | CAST: Tony Leung, Bai Baihe, Jing Boran, Li Yuchun, Tony Yang | DISTRIBUTOR: Magnum Films/ChopFlix (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 110 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 16 February 2018 (AUS)
