Mojin: The Worm Valley
Director: Xing Fei
Year: 2018
Rating: 5.0
Happy Cheesy Morning to you. I feel as if I just
got up from a melted vat of thick endless cheese. It is called Mojin: The
Worm Valley, the sequel of sorts to Mojin: The Lost Legend. The characters
are back more Indiana Jones like than ever, but the actors and director are
all different. One source mistakenly has Shu Qi returning as Shirley but
that was a cruel prank, I guess. The actress is fine but she is no Shu Qi.
I wonder if every frame of this film wasn't special effects. Did they actually
ever have to leave the studio? There are stunning mountains, temples and
flowers and swarms of lightning bugs and monsters big and small and it is
a bit overwhelming.
The actors have to run, dodge, stab, shoot
arrows, jump on top of creatures and you know there is nothing there. It
makes me miss Ray Harryhausen and his stop-motion technique. Yes, in those
films the actors also had to pretend to be seeing and fighting monsters -
but we know how arduous and long it took to do it. So, there was a limit
to how much could be done based on time and cost. When there were a group
of skeletons fighting the hero at the same time, it was considered a masterpiece
of special effects. But with computers they can have an army of giant scorpions
attack our merry band of adventurers and it is no big deal anymore. The wonder
is gone.
Here we get Flying Viper Fish with teeth
as sharp as Jaws, there are giant crocodiles that will chase but never catch
you, an island floating in the air, a Crab as big as a house, that army of
giant scorpions and the snake as long as a football field. And they are done
reasonably well and yet at the time it is a cheesy mess. There is just too
much of it. The plot that this all hangs on is just as silly. A thousand
years ago Princess Jingjue put a curse on her people that has passed down
from generation to generation. The curse is shown by a marking on their shoulder
and means that you won't live past 40. The only way this curse can be reversed
is if you find the Dragon Bone Celestial Tome and combine it with the Mu
Chen Orb. The Dragon Bone has been found and our group of six brave souls
go off to deep Yunnan to discover the Mu Chen Orb. They all have the curse.
Among them are Bayi (Cai Heng), Shirley (Xuan Gu), Wang (Heng Yu) from the
first film and three others - the adorable Linglong (Chen Yusi), the Professor
(Taishen Cheng) and Goldtooth.
It is one CGI monster after another - as
they go through a tunnel on their rafts, they stir up a horde of man-eating
fish that can jump out of the water and bite. Shirley has a never- ending
supply of arrows, Linglong has her slingshot with explosives, the Professor
all sorts of gadgets and the other three blades. Once out of that danger
it is giant crocodiles chasing them. then that damn Crab that the Professor
identifies as the Deathless Crab of the Hua Clan. He knows everything. More
monsters lay ahead and our six do a hell of a lot of running. Two hours of
it. I needed an aspirin by the end. Some of this is imaginative and clever
but I need to give my brain a rest.
