INTERNATIONAL

Visual effects producer: Ellen Poon.
Sound designer (for monster creatures): Randy Thom.
Sound designer: Kinson Tsang.
An Edko Films Limited, Dream Sky Pictures Co., Ltd.,
BDU Films Inc., Shenzhen Tencent Video Culture Communication
Ltd., Heyi Pictures Co., Limited, Beijing
Union Picures Co., Ltd., Zhejiang Star River Artiste
Management Company Limited, San-Le Films Limited,
Zhejiang Films & TV (Group) Co., Ltd. and Edko (Beijing)
Films Limited presentation of a Champion Star
Pictures Ltd. production.
In Mandarin with English subtitles.
Bounty hunters try to save a monster
queen’s baby from ruthless killers in a special-effects
comedy that has become China’s
top-grossing movie.
Although it’s set
in an indeterminate
past Chinese empire,
Monster Hunt will look
very familiar to fantasy
fans. Its monsters,
fighters and battles
Wuba
fit comfortably into a
world that includes Shrek, How to Train Your
Dragon, and the Harry Potter series. Right now
the movie’s Mandarin language and Chinese
sensibilities are the biggest drawbacks for
U.S. viewers.
Polished and occasionally a lot of fun, Monster
Hunt is also far-fetched and jarringly sentimental.
Viewers here won’t have any trouble
understanding the movie’s court intrigues,
ruthless bounty hunters, or even the monsters
themselves. A bit trickier to follow are things
like mahjong battles, freezing spells, fertility
practices, and treacly song-and-dance routines
that exclaim, “I won’t forget the caring and
love from the ones who brought me up.”
Exiled from humanity, evil monsters are
threatening to return to take over the world.
To do that, they first need to find and kill the
monster queen’s baby. Bounty hunters, or
“monster hunters” as they’re called here, are
led by the imperious, wealthy Ge (Wallace
Chung). He orders his followers to bring him
the baby monster, soon to be called Wuba.
In the rural village of Yongning, the hapless
Tianyin (Jing Boran) serves as mayor, tailor
and part-time chef. When the monster queen,
guarded by Gao (Eric Tsang) and Ying (Sandra
Ng), seeks sanctuary in the village, she brings
the bounty hunters right to Tianyin’s door.
Before she dies, the queen impregnates
Tianyin with her fetus. That complicates matters
for beautiful monster hunter Huo Xiaolin
(Bai Baihe), who takes Tianyin prisoner until
she can sell the baby monster in a nearby city.
Born in an inn (to the consternation of
a couple in an adjoining room seeking fertility
treatments), Wuba resembles a doughy
daikon radish with big eyes and four limbs.
Wuba also has a taste for blood, and as its
“mother,” Tianyin has to pay the price.
Huo sells Wuba in a pawn shop even as
rival monster hunter Luo Gan (Jiang Wu)
closes in on her. Will Wuba become the main
course in Ge’s monster banquet? Or will Huo
and Tianyin team up to rescue the monster
before it’s too late?
Among subplots involving cannibalism
(two cute kids are marinated for the
banquet), monster dung, how to induce labor
in a pregnant man, and monster sing-alongs,
veteran Hong Kong comedians Eric Tsang and
Sandra Ng get to fool around a bit. Comic
relief from Yao Chen as a conceited chef and
Yan Ni and Bao Jianfeng as a couple trying to
conceive is less effective.
Jing Boran joined the project late after
the original lead was arrested for drug possession;
the movie is almost over before he
comes to life as a performer. Bai Baihe, on
the other hand, is a delight throughout, with
killer moves and confused morals to go along
with her tomboy costume.
Born in Hong Kong, director Raman Hui
worked as a supervising animator at Dream-
Works, and played an important role in the
Shrek franchise (he co-directed the third
episode). Monster Hunt, his first live-action
feature, may not be a total artistic success,
but Hui knows what his audience wants—essentially
a remake of Stephen Chow’s Journey
to the West, with all the textual history and
comedic rough edges rubbed away.
Currently the box-office champ in Asia,
the movie is being released in four versions
in the U.S.: Mandarin-language in 2D and 3D,
and a slightly shorter cut dubbed into English,
also in 2D and 3D.
—Daniel Eagan
RIDE ALONG 2
UNIVERSAL/Color/2.35/Dolby Digital & Datasat
Digital/101 Mins./Rated PG-13
Cast: Ice Cube, Kevin Hart, Ken Jeong, Benjamin Bratt,
Olivia Munn, Bruce McGill, Tika Sumpter, Sherri
Shepherd, Tyrese Gibson.
Directed by Tim Story.
Screenplay: Phil Hay, Matt Manfredi, based on characters
created by Greg Coolidge.
Produced by Will Packer, Ice Cube, Matt Alvarez, Larry
Brezner.
Executive producers: Nicolas Stern, Ron Muhammad,
Scott Bernstein, Chris Bender, JC Spink.
Director of photography: Mitchell Amundsen.
Production designer: Chris Cornwell.
Editor: Peter Elliot.
Costume designer: Olivia Miles.
Music: Christopher Lennertz.
Sound designer: Benjamin L. Cook.
A Universal Pictures presentation of a Will Packer Prods.
and Cubevision production.
Atlanta police detective and rookie cop
travel to Miami to break up a drug ring in a
bigger, splashier follow-up to the 2014 hit.
Dressing up its
tired storyline with
explosions and bling,
Ride Along 2 offers exactly
what the original
did—the opportunity
to spend time with
Ice Cube & Kevin Hart
Kevin Hart. That should be enough for his
fans to make this a similar-sized hit.
Hart plays Ben Barber, now a probationary
Atlanta police officer thanks to his heroics
in Ride Along. About to marry Angela (Tika
Sumpter), he’s desperate to win the respect
of her brother James Payton (Ice Cube), a
hard-bitten homicide detective.
That won’t be easy, especially after Ben’s
intervention botches a drug sting and gets
Payton’s partner Mayfield (Tyrese Gibson)
shot. The future brothers-in-law head to
Miami, where clues point to computer hacker
AJ (Ken Jeong).
Teaming up with Miami cop Maya (Olivia
Munn), Ben and Payton close in on millionaire
philanthropist Antonio Pope (Benjamin
Bratt), who uses his shipping empire to
smuggle drugs and weapons. The cops and
AJ have to devise a plan to break into Pope’s
computer without getting killed first.
Movies may not write themselves, but the
script to Ride Along 2 feels close to automatic:
giant parties on yachts and in nightclubs, a car
chase so rote it becomes its own computer
game, confrontations and shootouts that
even the characters note are pointless.
You could say that the movie’s container
shipyard explosions, crashes in parking
garages and backyard chases are ironic
takes on an earlier generation of low-budget
action movies (like Ice Cube’s All About
the Benjamins). Perhaps they’re an attempt
to cash in on Universal’s Fast and Furious
franchise (which explains Gibson’s bit part).
Or maybe they’re just cheap, lazy shortcuts
by filmmakers who think their viewers don’t
deserve any better.
Even Hart seems a bit second-rate here.
His motormouth-coward shtick works best
when it’s bouncing off a strong character.
He’s great fighting Sherri Shepherd’s wedding
planner, for example, but surprisingly
less successful with the cold and remote Ice
Cube. Benjamin Bratt, meanwhile, looks like
he’s having fun sending up his crimelord role.
Olivia Munn looks stiff and uncomfortable in
a part that is almost completely humorless.
Hart’s fans won’t mind about Ride Along
2’s shortcomings, especially when he starts
ranting about ringtones, or sharing Star Wars
trivia with Jeong. Still, it would be nice to see
him take a few chances instead of milking this
kind of character dry. (Expect more of the
same when he teams with Dwayne Johnson
in Central Intelligence.) Until then, Ride Along
2 has enough laughs, action and scenery to
corner the market in escapist fluff.
—Daniel Eagan
IP MAN 3
WELL GO USA/Color/2.35/Dolby Digital/105 Mins./
Not Rated
Cast: Donnie Yen, Zhang Jin, Lynn Xiong, Patrick Tam,
Mike Tyson, Karena Ng, Kent Cheng, Leung Ka Yan,
Louis Cheung, Danny Chan Kwok Kwan, Baby John
Choi, Sarut Khanwilai.
42 WWW.FILMJOURNAL.COM FEBRUARY 2016