Title: The Monkey King
MPA Rating: PG
Director: Anthony Stacchi
Starring: Jimmy O. Yang, Bowen Yang, Jolie Hoang-Rappaport
Runtime: 1 hr 37 mins

What It Is: Based and inspired by the Chinese folklore tale. This film tells the story of a monkey and his magical fighting stick as he battles demons, dragons and gods as he tries to defeat 100 creatures in the arena of battle. It turns out his biggest enemy my, in fact, be his own ego. As monkey wins battle and grows his list of wins his ego grows all the larger as well. That all changes when he run into a tiny village girl with ambitions.

What We Think: There isn’t much here that grabs you. A flaw in this is similar to that of most middle tier animated films. It wants to be for everyone and never quite gets to being for anyone. Kids will find some fun here in a similar (if not as well made) way they did with Kung Fu Panda. This comes off as a completely fine film that parents will end up throwing on to avoid their children. At some point though adults will tire of the jokes that are only relatively funny some of the time.

Our Grade: C-, I mean…this really is what it is. Nothing too spectacular to speak of. Netflix continues to sit in one of two camps with its animated features. It either brings something absolutely game changing (Nimona, The Mitchells vs the Machines) or you get old hat same ole same ole stuff that never does anything but fill a runtime. This isn’t REALLY so bad that it applies to the latter category but it doesn’t have anything to write home about. Simply put if you are a parent with children you will probably really like this because it will accomplish a goal. Outside of that. Tain’t much here.