Sai yau gei: Yut gwong bou haap (1995)

Fantasy adventure about the arrival of Buddhism in China. When the Goddess of Happiness tosses the Longevity Monk and his disciples out of heaven (because the Monkey King tried to attain ... See full summary »

Director:

Jeffrey Lau

Writers:

Jeffrey Lau (as An Chi), Cheng'en Wu (novel) (as Ch'eng-En Wu)

Stars:

Stephen Chow, Man-Tat Ng, Kar-Ying Law

3 wins & 1 nomination.

Cast

Credited cast:
Stephen Chow	...	Joker / Monkey King
Man-Tat Ng	...	Assistant Master / Pigsy
Kar-Ying Law	...	Longevity Monk
Kit Ying Lam	...	Spider Woman
Karen Mok	...	Pak Jing-Jing
Johnnie Kong	...	Sha Wujing (as Johnny Kong)
Shuming Lu	...	Bull King
Jeffrey Lau	...	The Grapes
Athena Chu	...	Zixia
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Kin-Yan Lee
Li Po Lung	...	Monkey Servant

Storyline

Fantasy adventure about the arrival of Buddhism in China. When the Goddess of Happiness tosses the Longevity Monk and his disciples out of heaven (because the Monkey King tried to attain immortality), the Monkey King is reincarnated as the Joker. He now spends his time chasing two jealous women. When one of them is dying, the Joker goes back in time in an attempt to save her.

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Plot Keywords:

monkey king | magical box | spider woman | person on fire | magic | 

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Genres:

Action | Adventure | Comedy | Fantasy | Romance

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Details

Country:

Hong Kong China

Language:

Cantonese

Release Date:

21 January 1995 (Hong Kong)

Also Known As:

A Chinese Odyssey

Company Credits

Production Co:

Xi'an Film Studio

Technical Specs

Runtime:

87 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Connections

Version of Saiyûki (1960)

User Reviews

Great imagination ... on the journey to nowhere

This is a nice movie, including the second part.You can really appreciate the imagination and some twisted sense of humor. Decent fighting scenes, pretty woman and impressive art design. The story is, well, kind of freaky, so all this together make this film very surreal, but entertaining enough. Stephan Chow, genius as usual, is very helpful.

You can see that Jeffrey Lau got a lot on his mind. In this movie he presents identities in crisis, internal struggles, personal development and learning, some religious, cultural and social issues, including sexual problems. All this presented to the viewers through fantastic story, while completely ignoring the laws of Fisics.

But the way he chooses to make his statements or opinions looks strange, simplistic and not complete, at least to Western culture cynic like me. There a lot of movies dealing with the same stuff in another way, more realistic and, that's why, more powerful.

So, it's great Mr Lau are talking and presenting this sort of themes in his personal and interesting own way, but the movie is not for everyone. His extreme fantasy takes the viewers far away from reality, it's all very distant, like some alien world. The plot and the characters are very confusing sometimes, this unbelievable environment seems artificial and doubtful, so the movie has no real impact, no meaningful influence, it's like grabbing water with hand. You know you felt something, but there is nothing left.