Directed By Yu Yang

Starring – Crystal Lee, Aleks Le, Michelle Yeoh

The Plot – After a great catastrophe, the souls of Nez ha (Lee) and Aobing (Le) are saved, but their bodies face ruin. To give them new life, Taiyi Zhenren (Rick Zeiff) turns to the mystical seven-colored lotus in a daring bid to rebuild them and change their fate.

This film is currently not rated

Ne Zha 2 | Official Trailer HD | A24

POSITIVES

All hyperbole aside, this is easily the most breathtakingly entrancing animated movie that I’ve ever seen, featuring tremendously endless detail and ample expressiveness that makes the textures move and physically interact with the likeness and consistencies of gravitational pull. In everything from scope, scale, and spectacle, the film flourishes with a transfixing combination of colorful radiance and stunning scenery that left me glued to the screen, and considering they reach their highest form of flattery during these imaginatively fun and thunderously epic action sequences, they transpire the kind of meaningful iconography that deserves to be studied within each individual frame, alongside Chinese lore that fantastically opens the door for any kind of possibility within character capabilities. Part of what I love about this particular appeal is that the film wastes very little time hooking its audience into the captivating elements of its action, with an intensely riveting opening sequence that effortlessly attains urgency and commanding emphasis, while indulging us once more in the familiarities of this world-building, and from here it only improves with each passing sequence, with bigger and bolder displays of its enhanced budget from its predecessor that absolutely begs to be seen on the biggest screen imaginable, without a single glaring flaw in the depiction of the captures that reaches Lord of the Rings-like escapism in the grandeur of the growing magnitude. Beyond the stylistic splendor, the film’s script also exceeds expectations with its thematic substance, featuring vital themes within the movie’s creativity that challenges child audiences a lot deeper and honestly than a majority of kids movies, today. Explorations pertaining to everything from identity, to destiny, to even self-determination through societal prejudice and expectations, give the film a thought-provoking tapestry that helps to hook the audience into heavily emotional resonance, even throughout a first half in tone that is dominantly humorous and light-hearted, all seen through the eyes of an immature and flawed child protagonist who acts as the eyes and ears of the audience throughout his endlessly irresponsible actions. On the subject of that aforementioned tone, untrained audiences might consider this movie to feature tonal clashes that hinder the impact of the material, but in reality it’s quite the opposite, as the tone, like Ne Zha, feels like it evolves and mature the deeper and darker that we dive into the twists and turns of the storytelling, and while this might make the film feel like a story of two halves from completely contrasting movies, I found the division between them offering ample opportunity for each to shine in the roller-coaster of emotions that the movie was prescribing, with an abundance of laughter and heart-tugging sentiments that appraise more intricate value to the family dynamic than anything that Disney or Pixar has crafted over the last decade. Another vital contributing factor to a nearly two-and-a-half hour engagement to help alleviate the shakiness of inconsistent child attention spans, are the multitude of personality for performances donated to these characters that underline emphasis in the cast’s approach to such complex concepts and emotions, especially considering that the actors listed above carry the immense task of following in the footsteps of the original voice actors of the Chinese language version. Considering I experienced the English-dubbed version of this engagement, I will supplant my praises to the work of Michelle Yeoh, Rick Zeiff, and especially Crystal Lee, who each inspire versatility to these larger than life characters tasked with protecting their people. While Yeoh and Zeiff weave such personality and prestige to their respective outlines, to unload professionalism and legitimacy to the movie’s cause, it’s undeniably a showcase vehicle for Lee, who as the titular protagonist not only naturally captures the rambunctious eagerness and immaturity of the distinguished age, but also the mesmerizingly elevating rage from within that comes to drive his eventual road to vengeance, opening the flood gates of Lee’s unbridled registry that are often so unpredictable to interpret just when and what her impulsive responses contain. One thing that won’t be mentioned in my negatives is the strange volume levels of the movie’s mixing, which does isolate these performances away from the enhancement of Wan Pin Chu’s absorbing score, but never in ways that Lee or her co-stars continuously rise to the occasion, carrying the meaning and magnitude of the scenes in their gifted vocalizing that feel untouched in post-production. Last but not least, the film serves as an opportunity to indulge in Asian cinema, particularly the differences to its presentation and storytelling that feel like the exact opposite of the familiarity of American cinema. Not only does the film feature this on-screen text conveying who an invading character is, but also its script doesn’t abide by the typical three act structure, which can undeniably create challenges towards finding your footing with the pacing and consistencies of the script’s developments, but for me helped get me head over heels invested with a lack of preconceived expectations from other films. Whether you love or hate this movie, it’s always a great thing to indulge in other cultures, and I personally couldn’t be happier that A24 took a chance on redistributing this film because its 2 billion dollar intake has made it not only one of the five highest grossing movies of all-time, but also the highest grossing animated movie of all-time.

NEGATIVES

As far as inferiorities go, the movie does feel every mile of its 138-minute runtime, particularly during the opening act, which took slightly longer than I would’ve liked to get fully invested to the depths of the storytelling. This is because this section of the film not only served as a re-establishing point for the majority of the audience who undeniably didn’t experience the first movie, but also the repetition in exposition that hammered the intention home with a complete lack of subtlety, all the while stacking repetitious scenes to a runtime that easily could’ve deducted a half hour from the finished product, without losing anything integral as a result. It isn’t until around the half hour mark where I finally felt fully committed to what was transpiring in the story, and considering a majority of this film’s audience will be antsy and patience-testing children, I can’t imagine nearly two-and-a-half hours will be any easier for them or their attention spans. The first act also features more of a comedy-heavy emphasis, as previously articulated in my positives, and while I don’t have any problems whatsoever with levity being used in between a movie overcome by connective emotion during the second half, some of the comedic material during this section was flat out disgusting and in poor taste, making it feel like they were catering to childlike audiences whose whole world is toilet humor of the most desperate variety. I’m not someone who considers themselves sensitive to gross-out material, but when it comes to characters eating vomit, staring a pig’s ass in the face as it passes gas, or even drinking urine, it starts to become a bit tastelessly tedious in the consequence, and perhaps it serves as one of those many aforementioned cultural differences, as I found nothing about it endearing or even remotely funny. Finally, though not exactly a hinderance to the movie’s integrity, the film and its fantastical imagery will serve as a bit of a challenge to people not fully knowledgeable to 16th century Chinese folklore, undercutting the sentimental meaning to certain aspects of the story that can definitely grant a much higher level of satisfying significance to those that can accurately read through the lines of what’s transpiring. Does this necessarily make “Ne Zha 2” difficult to invest in? I don’t think so, but some of the wildness of these scenarios such as a character shedding human form to become an animal certainly might come off as a bit random to somebody not experienced with the history that it is artistically tapping into, serving as a movie that is definitely smart, but perhaps universally for its own good.

OVERALL
“Ne Zha 2” is a visually spectacular and scroll-sweeping epic in every sense of the term, combining 16th century Chinese folklore with an enhanced production from its predecessor, all towards solidifying a one-of-a-kind experience that doesn’t sacrifice soul for spectacle. With meaningfully merited vocal work from the cast, as well as thematic impulses that cut deep with a kitana blade, the film serves as a bridge to seeking out foreign cultures of filmmaking, and in a world more divided than ever by its preconceived biases, that can never be a bad thing.

My Grade: 8.5 or B+