TheRetroCritic

Based on the literary classic, Journey To The West: Conquering The Demons is actually a prequel setting up the iconic team of characters we all know and love and how Taoist priest Tang Sanzang (Wen Zhang) got to meet them and, eventually, journey with them. And, since Stephen Chow's in charge (along with co-director Derek Kwok), you can expect a pretty unique take on the familiar tale. To give you an idea, the film opens with a fish demon eating a father Jaws -style in front of his child (with blood spilling in the water) and, soon after, eating the child. From the get-go, this is a brutal, surprisingly dark affair. Which makes the more light-hearted tone of the humour feel quite mean-spirited. In a good way. Parts of this movie could comfortably be part of a horror movie in the vein of The Cell . Think a dark comedy like Delicatessen , with its odd bursts of disturbing moments, but with an omnipresent cartoonish feel. Chow is certainly not sugar-coating anything this time.

 Hey, remember that film where Joey from Friends befriends a chimp and they start sharing a flat and playing baseball together? Sure you do. Ed is one of those films which had a rubbishy trailer in every single VHS tape bought in and around 1995. You'd basically see it and rejoice that you only owned the trailer to this odd creation rather than the entire thing. 16 years later and there I was in a train witnessing Ed for the very first time in its entirety. Feeling the initial awkwardness of trying to figure out whether the ape was real or not (mostly not), flashing back to a simpler time when Matt Le Blanc was pretty much everywhere and feeling the slight embarrassment of being a grown man watching a fake ape and Joey piss in the same toilet 16 years prior. Although I can never fully relate to any sports movie, I know I would have enjoyed that little nonsensical treat as a kid. Even now it's pretty harmless and watchable, although when my adult brain is