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TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Wizard-8 I wanted to see this movie for quite some time after hearing that it was a smash hit in its native China; I wanted to see what regular Chinese people found so appealing. After seeing it, in some ways I am at a loss for words. The movie is a fantasy comedy, though both the fantasy and the comedy will seem very strange to most westerners. The fantasy portions are unlike anything in Hollywood movies, and they sometimes seem to depend on viewers having an extensive knowledge of ancient Chinese culture; if you don't have that, you'll probably be lost at times, like I was. And the humor is far from subtle, much of it being extreme slapstick that westerns might find extremely excessive. But the movie is so different in these two regards, that I was always interested to see what was coming next, since I had never seen a movie like this before. This is definitely not a boring movie. And the movie looks extremely polished for the most part, though the CGI is a bit too cartoony at times.... though this might have been intentional, to give the movie a goofy feel. While I think that many casual western moviegoers might find the whole package a bit bewildering, viewers who want something different and fun will probably find this an amusing diversion.

Mark Turner What would happen if you took the digitally animated creatures from nearly any Disney or Pixar film and inserted them into a martial arts flick with a touch of comedy added in for good measure? You'd get one heck of a fun movie is what. And it's already been made, ready for viewing! Made in China, MONTER HUNT tells the story of an ancient history when monsters and man lived side by side at one time. Fearful of the monsters man drove them out to a land all their own required never to return. But something is happening and the monsters are slowly crossing back into our world.A civil war has broken out among the monsters. The monster queen is with child and the evil monsters are quickly tracking her down. Aided by a several good monsters, she heads to the world of man in the hopes of finding sanctuary there for her and her child. But the odds are against her as humans still fear the monsters and monster hunters track them down for the bounty on them.Enter Song Tianyin, the harmless mayor of a small town on the fringe of the separation between these two worlds. Brow beaten by his aunts he seems less a leader and more a follower. But somehow the queen lands up in his hut and sends her unborn child into him before dying. We now have a pregnant man! At the same time a female monster hunter has shown in the area named Huo Xiaolan. But rather than harm the child she helps Song deal with his "pregnancy" and then protect the child.The two are off on an adventure that will find them followed by both monsters and monster hunters. Along the way they'll get assistance from two fairly comedic monsters who were the protectors of the queen and now this new monster child. Yes the child, Wuba, is born and that leads to problems as well since it is a newborn and curious. Along the way both monster and human villains will unite to try and kill the child. But some things are just not what they seem and heroes will rise in the most unlikely places.There are strengths and weaknesses in the film but that never stopped it from being a huge money maker in China. It was the highest grossing film in history in that country until the release of THE MERMAID in 2016. It's easy to see why as the film offers plenty for everyone, from children to adults alike.Perhaps the weakest part of the film is the monsters themselves. None are particularly frightening, the main character of Wuba looking more like a cross between a plant and the Pillsbury doughboy. Even the dangerous monsters aren't all that scary. But perhaps that's a good thing when you consider that small children are the target audience for films like these. At the same time there is plenty to keep adults interested as well.To begin with the best parts of the film are the interaction between the two lead characters. It's a nice role reversal here with the woman being the stronger fighter of the two and the man more the comedic foil for all that goes on. While at odds with one another when they first meet a mutual attraction develops. Perhaps this isn't a rom com but that element is there in small part.The action and martial arts moments in the film are fun to watch. The wire work on display is fascinating and entertains at all times. The special effects are well done and not overused. But best of all is that all of these elements combine to make an entertaining and fun movie to watch. And for those who hate subtitles don't fear, the film is dubbed. This is one that the whole family can enjoy together and one I highly recommend.

CelluloidDog I watch animated films once in a while and I watched this right after another foreign animated film, Hero Quest (on Netflix). In contrast to the muddled, flat, at times horrific Hero Quest (probably a 3.5 rating out of 10, 4.1 on IMDb), Monster Hunt is a thoroughly enjoyable film. It fits more with the animated humor of the Dreamworks genre (more so than Pixar). Not surprisingly, Raman Hui, who worked with Shrek and other Dreamworks productions takes his energy and infuses Monster Quest into a well-done tale.Overall, it's one of the best foreign animated films but does fall a bit short of Pixar's and Dreamworks' top 10 films. So it has a bit of Monsters Inc or Shrek or How to Train Your Dragon but falls a bit short. Nevertheless, it should rank in the middle of the pack of the better CGI animated films of the last two decades. The strength of the film is actually(!) the human characters: the lead Boran Jing who plays the bumbling Tianyin. And Baihe Bai who plays Xiaolan, the Monster Hunter and Elaine Jin, the grandmother were the strengths of the film with comedic acting that's among the best anywhere. For that, the human comedy roles get a 9.5/10. And some of the gags were terrific humor such as when Tianyin plays hide-and-seek with the Wuba, the baby king, to lure him into the cage. The chemistry between Boran Jing and Baihe Bai is terrific, it rarely gets better.However, the storyline gets a bit complicated and it's easy to lose track. Then the couple songs in the film just don't really make the grade. In addition, it's hard to really warm up to the monsters except maybe the Baby King (Radish). The monsters had faceless qualities and never really developed strong characters unlike Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, or Sulley or Mike Wazowski (from Monsters Inc). The CGI was fabulous but it had some blandness. It's like looking at some really beautiful and delicious pizza but when you bite in, it does really have a great flavor. Hence, it never really pulls out the emotional connection. Still, the film is wonderful fun. It just doesn't make the top 15-20 animated film list. Yet, its uniqueness and wuxia antics make it a darling for fans of Chinese films. Hence, it deserves to be #1 in China. It's better than the 6.2 rating, surprisingly low, and should move up with time. I gave a 9 to balance the act but the real rating is 7.2-7.5.

lasttimeisaw MONSTER HUNT has broken the all-time box office record in the booming domestic market, and officially it is the highest-grossing film in China, with an estimate $391.2 million. So it really piques my curiosity and decided to give it a try (since I rarely watch Chinese films nowadays).Flagrantly branded as a film made by "the father of Shrek", which the slogan is blatantly printed in all its posters, its director Raman Hui is just a supervising animator of SHREK (2001, 7/10) and SHREK 2 (2004, 7/10), and the co-director of the substandard SHREK 3 (2007, 6/10), so I assume Dreamworks might have the right to sue the overblown statement.Probing into the film itself, one possibly finds it is a cringe-worthy journey from the very start, thanks to the kids-friendly creations of the monsters by the so-called "the father of Shrek", 2- dimensional and cartoonish in the worst way, which betrays its overt ambition to exploit the lowest common denominator at its maximum. The storyline fictionalises a world where humans and monsters (who can hide among men with a human skin) co-exist in ancient China, after an internal war between monsters, the pregnant monster queen lams with two protectors Zhu Gao and Pang Ying (whose human shapes are played by Tsang and Ng). And our hero is a young cripple Tianyin (Jing), living with his lunatic grandmother (Jin) in a remote village. He chances upon a monster hunt Xiaolan (Bai), and farcically becomes pregnant with the monster baby from the dying queen.This role-switch between man and woman might turn out to be the most recommendable part in the story, after giving birth to the baby monster, later named as Huba, a surrogate nuclear family is formed, while Xiaolan takes on the tough father's role and the limp Tianyin becomes the protective mother. Then the narrative navigates inevitably to a predictable standard mainstream product, Huba's life is hanging by a thread (with an uncomfortable reference of Chinese people's non-selective culinary fetish) and a final battle between the good and the evil, with a stiff twist doesn't make any sense for the villain's motivation, it is par for the course Tianyin have to progress into a valiant monster slayer (bad monsters only), conforms to the traditional value of preserve a man's dignity, despite it is Xiaolan who is the real heroine in the whole escapade and Bai is the best thing among the cast, the most bankable Chinese actress presently.Trying to blend as many genres as possible, action, comedy, fantasy, romance, even musical (it is utterly mortifying to watch the tasteless and jejune music numbers jammed into the story), in addition with a cast complemented with a string of household names with special appearances, namely Wei Tang, Chen Yao and Ni Yan, along with child stars from a topical reality TV show, MONSTER HUNT is meticulously calculated to its core, in order to cash in on viewers' attraction, but at the expense of dumbing down the story to a frag-mental absurdity. But a dispiriting truth is that this picture IS the record-holder, bearing that in mind, one must wail for the future of Chinese cinema rooted deeply in the unhealthy soil, and one day, hope not too late, this seemingly prosperous bubble will burst and a wake-up call is imminent, but right now, undeniably it is rather difficult to be a true cinephile in China.