Chinese blockbuster “Monster Hunt” is a sappy, crowd-pleasing, tonally wonky fantasy-adventure/comedy that pits dorky-looking monsters against over-acting cornball comedians/monster-hunters. It is silly, and ungainly, and weirdly violent (though in an appreciably cartoony, mostly implied kind of way). But, don’t be afraid parents, grandparents, and legal guardians. You should see this film. See it with your grade-school-aged kids, their equally young friends, and whatever kids you can find loitering around a theater near you that happens to be showing “Monster Hunt.” This film is pleasantly cheesy, and probably more interesting than anything that’s currently being marketed to your not-so-picky kids. Try it, they’ll like it.
“Monster Hunt,” a film that broke China’s opening day box office record, takes place in a fantasy, pre-industrial world where men and monsters co-exist. The monsters are CGI creatures that look like the companies that make Peeps and Beany Babies made an unholy alliance, and created cuddly, fat, sub-humanoid amphibian creatures with Peter Lorre’s sunken eyes and a physique like those creepy-looking Martian Popping Thing toys that still haunt my dreams.
The film’s plot is a bit convoluted, so let me break it down as simply as I can: monsters aren’t welcome in the human world, so they are banished to the forest … type area. But the humans’ Monster Hunter Bureau is getting antsy without monsters to hunt, so they hatch a plan to kill the newly-deposed—and heavily pregnant—monster queen’s baby, thereby causing anarchy in the monster world, and giving the otherwise dormant Monster Hunter Bureau new work. Rural mayor Tianyin (Boran Jing) gets impregnated by the monster queen despite the fact that he’s a male. And he has to bear the queen’s child and raise it with the help of amateur monster-hunter Xiaolan (Baihe Bai) while everyone tries to either eat or rescue the future monster king.
