★★★
(M) 109 minutes
There will never be an end of adaptations of Journey to the West, the most famous of Chinese adventure stories. This new one marks the first significant collaboration between two legends of Hong Kong cinema, both now working on the Chinese mainland: Stephen Chow, a master of burlesque, and Tsui Hark, whose special gift is for action and fantasy.
![In <i>Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back</i> there's more high-spirited whimsy than laugh-out-loud humour.](/web/20170217010931im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/2/y/w/4/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gu2u77.png/1485984637977.jpg)
Chow's brilliant 2013 Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons was a free riff on familiar material, with the pilgrimage of the title not launching till the very last moment. For this enjoyable if inferior sequel, Hark has taken over as director; Chow retains a script credit, though almost none of the 2013 cast return.
Originally, the leading role of the demon-busting monk Xuanzang was played by Wen Zhang as a buffoonish imposter not far removed from Chow's own screen persona. Here, Wen has been replaced by the internationally successful pop star Kris Wu, also appearing currently in XXX: The Return of Xander Cage.
His Xuanzang is basically a straight man to his wacky magical sidekicks, former demons obliged to mend their ways – the tricksy Monkey King (Lin Gengxin), the leering Pigsy (Yang Yiwei), and the cynical Sandy (Mengke Bateer), who spends most of the film as a giant digital fish.
The script repeats many of the narrative beats of its predecessor, with a series of confrontations with disguised demons culminating in a mystical finale. This time round, though, there's more high-spirited whimsy than laugh-out-loud humour. Tsui is comfortable with delirium – sudden transformations, situations pushed to impossible extremes – but doesn't have Chow's flair for anti-climax or ruthlessness with violent slapstick.
In any version, Journey to the West is an allegory, but not an entirely straightforward one. Xuanzang's companions could be taken to represent the earthly weaknesses that delay his arrival at enlightenment – and yet without them, he'd be unlikely to survive on earth. More than ever, the drama centres on his ambivalent relationship with the Monkey King, who's capable of deadly malevolence but remains, in some sense, his master's other self.
The corollary of this is that neither character has much use for women, even when they don't turn out to be demons, as they usually do. Still, Yao Chen is able to commandeer a good many scenes for herself as the chief minister of a cloud-cuckoo-land kingdom, whose welcoming but imperious smile announces her instantly as a force to be reckoned with.