A Chinese Odyssey Boxset : Pandora's Box + Cinderella DTS (Korean Version) DVD Region 3

The format of the original novel, made up of 81 various calamities that befall XuanZang and his companions Monkey King, Pigsy, and Sandy, leans itself more favourably to a lengthy TV series, but in 1995 comedic film writer/director Jeff Lau came up with a unique concept for re-imagining the Monkey legend by filling in the blanks of the 500 years that the Monkey King was imprisoned. His idea was what would happen if the Monkey King wasn't literally trapped under Five Finger Mountain all those years, but had been reincarnated as a human, one who would eventually fall in love. What trials and tribulations would he have to go through before reaching enlightenment and accepting the holy order to join XuanZang in his passage to India? Lau's choice for the leading role of the Monkey King was the reigning box office king of comedy: Stephen Chow, who had rose to superstardom working under Jeff Lau in the God of Gambler spoof All For the Winner. The partnership was one proven to work fantastically, and with the epic story split across two films and released for the 1995 Chinese New Year, A Chinese Odyssey became a smash hit and earned instant classic status by fans and critics alike.

A Chinese Odyssey Part One - Pandora's Box
Stephen Chow plays Joker, leader of a band of robbers known as the Axe Gang whose dirty old headquarters is situated in the barren desert, not too far away from Five Finger Mountain. One day a fearsome woman named Madam 30th (Yammie Nam) defeats the entire gang single-handedly and forces them to let her stay at the headquarters until she finds a man with three scars on his foot. Eventually, Joker musters up the courage to try and assassinate the Madam in the night, but he abandons the plan when he meets her "sister" (in the sense that they share the same teacher) Jing Jing. It's love at first sight for Joker, but for his 2nd in command, Assistant Manager (Ng Man Tat), the nightmare is just beginning. He overhears that Madam 30th is here to look for the reincarnated Monkey King in order to discover the whereabouts of the Longevity Monk XuanZang (Law Kar Ying), and feast on his flesh. You see, the two sisters are actually demons, and all demons wish to feast on the flesh of the Longevity Monk.

Ok, I feel I have to state up front right away that I am a huge fan of Stephen Chow, I've seen almost all his comedies and the majority of his early action dramas as well, and can say that he has made very few films that are worth avoiding. I'm often bemused when I read comments that Chow's distinctive Mo Lei Tau (nonsense) style of comedy often doesn't translate well to English at all, and most of his films are not very Western-friendly, because I can reel off title after title that have consistently kept me belly-laughing from beginning to end. I may not be picking up on all the gags, but Chow's films usually have so many that you can miss a load and still laugh twice as hard as other comedies.

A Chinese Odyssey: Pandora's Box is for me one of the funniest films in Chow's filmography, and more importantly, it's one of only a handful of comedies he's starred in to have enough of a plot that you can appreciate the film even if you don't actually get the humour. Jeff Lau's script plays out ostensibly like King Hu's Dragon Gate Inn on crack for the first half and then becomes much more narrative driven when the Bull King turns up looking for revenge, building up to an exciting finale that paves the way for the next film. Along the way, just about every aspect of the production adds its own personal layer to the film. Frankie Chan's score is extremely poignant in places and adds a level of dramatic gravitas to certain scenes that is missing in the script; he also regurgitates some of his work on the superb Ashes of Time score (the reasons for this would become clear in Part 2). So A Chinese Odyssey sounds great, but it's also a visually polished film, particularly during night exterior shots, which Poon Hang Sang has basked in multiple primary coloured neon lights, capturing an ethereal, almost cartoonish feel. This is appropriate after all, for in the Chinese Odyssey world, night time is when the monsters come out to play.

Although Pandora's Box is not an action-driven film, there are a few action sequences, most amounting to little more than brief scuffles, and all feature heavy use of wirework (sometimes slapstick, sometimes serious) that you'll find in any action fantasy from the mid 90s. When the Bull King arrives on the scene though, the action gets cranked up a notch and one battle in particular has action director Tony Ching Siu Tung making clever use of camera perspectives to convey the body size morphing abilities of the characters. The fact that the demons and immortals in the Journey to the West legend usually resemble some form of animal and have varying degrees of shape-shifting abilities presented an obvious problem for the special effects, and indeed it is the visual effects that prove to be the weakest element in the film. This was long before HK had adopted CGI as standard, so all the creature effects rely on extremely poor prosthetics. Even the easy prosthetics, like the make up that turns Stephen Chow into the Monkey King looks blatantly like bits of rubber stuck to his head; you're never fooled for one second, but ironically the poor effects add to the film's camp charm.

As for the comedy, there are gags flying everywhere, and almost all of them hit the mark. There really is something for everyone here. Most of the laughs come from Chow's character Joker either mishearing what people tell him, or just being plain ignorant to their point - which ensures that most of the exposition doesn't feel forced, but fresh and hilarious. Slapstick also features very heavily, although in keeping with Chow's usual style, the violence is particularly cruel on his character; there's a brilliant repetition grab where Joker always ends up in a situation where he repeatedly gets attacked in the nuts - sometimes the cheap shots are the best. Perhaps the most successful thing Chow and Lau have managed to do is to set up comedic set pieces that at first seem completely contrived and obvious, but then hit the viewer with something truly unexpected. There's one scene where Joker and his gang have been given Invisibility tokens that, if worn, render the wearer completely invisible. It's obvious they're going to use this to spy and ambush on the Demon Sisters, and it's obvious that Chow and co will resort to physical tomfoolery to find out whether the sisters can see them or not - what you're don't expect though, is for Joker to turn up dressed in a bow tie and robe made out of the invisible tokens and for Assistant Manager to be dressed up as a cheerleader complete with pom-pom tokens.

When the films become more narrative driven in the second half, the volume of gags reduces considerably, but it's a case of quality over quantity as many of the funniest moments in the film occur in the final half. Plus the shift in tone towards story and drama enables Lau to finish the film on a very neat plot twist that pretty much guarantees you can't wait to watch the next instalment. This makes A Chinese Odyssey: Pandora's Box an extremely fun, engaging opening act to the larger overall story.

A Chinese Odyssey Part Two - Cinderella
Picking up pretty much where the first film ended, Joker is now trapped 500 years in the past and has become the servant of the immortal ZiXia (Athena Chu). Seeing as she has possession of the Pandora's Box though, he's happy to fulfil this role if it keeps him close to the box and a way to get back to his beloved Jing Jing. There's more to ZiXia than meets the eye, for her sister QingXia also inhabits her body. Because the two sisters hated each other and were always arguing, Buddha turned them both into his lampwick, but the girls escaped in one human body and their hatred burns stronger than ever. So once again Joker is caught between two feuding women, but matters become more complicated when he draws ZiXia's magic sword from its sheath - an act that signifies who will be the man that she falls in love with. When King Bull arrives on the scene and falls in love with ZiXia, the scene is set for a complicated romantic triangle that threatens to destroy the chances of Joker ever getting hold of the Pandora's Box.

What is most surprising about Cinderella is how quickly the tone of the story has shifted, with the riotous comedy that drove Pandora's Box forward being downplayed and high drama coming to the forefront instead. The reason for this is mostly because the protagonist, Joker, has come a long way since the start of the tale. He is now a man who has loved and has a purpose in life (to get back to Jing Jing), but it's one that is allowing him to ignore the hand that fate has dealt him. Ultimately the film is about Joker's refusal to let go of the love he lost and embrace the new one he has found, and more importantly it's about his struggle to accept Buddha's holy order and take up his duties as Longevity Monk's travelling companion/protector. The change seems almost effortless because Jeff Lau has carefully plotted A Chinese Odyssey to create a strong, constantly changing character arc for Joker. The narrative in Cinderella is much more focused and cleverly unravels all the links and references to the first film as the story trundles along, ensuring that the film has a clear sense of direction, which Pandora's Box lacked. This doesn't mean that there's no room for comedy; in fact Cinderella is consistently funny - you're just not being bombarded with joke after joke like in the first. Many of the comedy interludes are laugh-out-loud, particularly the extensions to the confrontation between Monkey King and Goddess that opened the story up. To re-invent the Longevity Monk from the pious hero of the original novel into a similarly pious, but outrageously annoying goody-two-shoes who simply can't stop talking, is absolutely inspired and constantly provides laughs throughout the film. Also, fans of Wong Kar Wai will appreciate the cheeky spoofing of Wong Kar Wai's Ashes of Time and Chungking Express - parody being one of the staple elements of Jeff Lau and Stephen Chow's work.

Lau's script is very bold to try and change the romantic pairing that had been established between Joker and Jing Jing to Joker and ZiXia - not to mention the complications of having QingXia sharing the same body as her sister. Although Lau has developed the story well, I don't think it would have been possible to accept this change if it wasn't for the brilliant performances of its two leads, Athena Chu and Stephen Chow. Not only does Chu look gorgeous, she's also utterly adorable as ZiXia, a sparkling, effervescent screen presence that makes ZiXia so much cheerier than the callous Madam 30th and broken hearted Jing Jing from Pandora's Box. However, despite Athena Chu's undeniable screen presence, Stephen Chow's performance completely dominates the film. Cinderella represented a bold departure for Chow as an actor; it has much less comedy than pretty much any film he made leading into the mid 90s, and while he had handled romance before in triad dramas and the occasional romantic comedy, this was really his first starring role where romance and drama was the primary focus of the story. He rises to the occasion seemingly effortlessly, innately finding the right tone during the shifts from comedy to drama with surprisingly subtlety as the emotionally torn Joker. It is however his performance as the Monkey King that impresses the most. Playful and menacing, Chow portrays Monkey King as both jester and psychotic, completely capturing the heroic and dark, bestial side of the character - he also gets to deliver some of the best lines in the film. In fact, it wouldn't be too much hyperbole to say that his Monkey King is a perfect character performance, featuring very little of Chow's usual screen presence or acting style at all. The final showdown between Monkey King and King Bull also gives Tony Ching Siu Tung a chance to put his considerable imagination to good use, incorporating many of Monkey King's legendary abilities in a lengthy confrontation that features some outrageous techniques. So good is Chow's portrayal and Ching's action sequences that you're kinda left wishing they could have made a third film covering the actual journey to India.

But alas all good things come to an end, and if we're lucky, sometimes that end can even transcend what has come before. Whenever I think back on the great closing scenes of all the HK films I've watched, the finale to A Chinese Odyssey always springs to mind. For me, it is by far the most emotional moment in the film and a beautiful, poignant way to close the story. As the closing plays out, I always end up contemplating the complex character arc that has taken Joker from incompetent desert rat to heroic Monkey King, and appreciating what Jeff Lau has managed to achieve with these two films. When you look at A Chinese Odyssey as a singular, three hour epic fantasy comedy, it's quite simply one of the finest films of its type.

DVD
The Chinese Odyssey boxset comes encased in a fancy silver slipcase and bundled with a very nicely put together 64 page hardback book. Inside there's a mixture of comic strips made up of screenshots from the film, and movie stills. This is the third time A Chinese Odyssey has been released on DVD in HK; Mei AH covered the first releases a few years back, and MegaStar themselves put out a remastered DVD release of both films, complete with anamorphic transfer and DTS.

Video
Presented anamorphically at roughly 1.75:1 aspect ratio, the transfers for both films live up to the "HD Remastered" tag on the box. This is quite simply the best the films have ever looked since the theatrical showing.

Pandora's Box has a reasonably sharp, detailed transfer (that uses only minor Edge Enhancement in the occasional scene), and features excellent brightness and contrast levels. The print is also remarkably clean, save for the occasional vertical scratch and a strange vertical mark popping around the 35 minute mark (the scene where the grapes fall on Joker) that dances from side to side near the left edge of the screen. This lasts roughly 20 seconds. Poon Hang Sang's cinematography features some very bold, colourful lighting, which is brought vividly to life by the DVD transfer's strong colour reproduction. There's a little chroma noise, and reds are a touch too strong - leading to the occasional bleeding and lack of detail in certain scenes that have heavy red lighting. This is only a small gripe, the colours look absolutely fantastic. The transfer appears to be progressive for the most part, but infrequently frames are affected by aliasing and ghosting. The image also wobbles occasionally as well, but I can't say whether this is down to telecine wobble or the camera that took the shots, there does appear to be some object drift because of Digital Noise Reduction though.

Cinderella matches Pandora's Box for image quality; it too looks great and also has its own strange print marking in the form of a smudge on the print from roughly 06min 13sec to 06m:34s. Another strange quirk of Cinderella's transfer is that its aspect ratio temporarily shifts to 1.79: and 1.77:1 at various intervals during the film. This of course will be totally unnoticeable on a CRT TV set, but what some may notice is that there appears to be some cropping to these sequences where the aspect ratio changes.

Audio
MegaStar has pulled out all the stops in the audio department by providing full bitrate Cantonese DTS, Cantose DD5.1, and Mandarin DD5.1 tracks for each film in the set. For the purpose of this review I sat down and listened to both Cantonese tracks for each film, and can report that each track is more than good enough to do the wild action and poignant score justice in both films.

Pandora's Box has the better audio representation of the two. The DTS track is pretty loud and features surprisingly clean, audible dialogue throughout. The score also sounds crisp and clean but sounds a little hollow in comparison; this is probably down to the bass levels being a little low generally throughout the film, but when the score goes a little deep and the action sequences need a little punch, the bass does deliver. The 5.1 soundmix is very well done with an active, expansive soundstage that makes full use of the front and rear speakers. The only real negative I can say about the track is that there is a very faint but audible hiss coming from the center channel throughout the film. In comparison, the DD5.1 track exhibits pretty much the same audio quality, just at a much lower volume level. If there's anything that separates the Cantonese DD and DTS tracks, it's that the DTS sounds just a little more dynamic. A Chinese Odyssey was not shot synch sound, so the Mandarin track is comparable to the Cantonese in quality.

Cinderella is also blessed with two very good Cantonese tracks, but for some reason both the DTS and DD5.1 tracks suffer a little from weaker bass and a more hollow sound in general. The most noticeable difference is that the audio isn't quite so clean, with tearing occurring when voices are raised or loud sound effects kick in. Another minor distraction is that the audio hiss on the center channel is louder, and accompanied by a hum in certain scenes. Also, about 19 minutes in there is a chunk of dialogue that has been re-looped and sounds noticeably cleaner and louder than the normal dialogue; this only lasts for about half a minute.

Optional English, Japanese, Korean, Simplifies Chinese, and Traditional Chinese subtitles are included on all the MegaStar DVD releases. Every single HK DVD release of the A Chinese Odyssey films features the same English translation, which is going to dishearten fans who hoped an editor would have given the old translation a good going over. The grammar throughout both films is pretty poor and does make the complex narratives of both films harder to follow.

Extras
There are no more than two extra features on each disc in the set, but for some reason Megastar has decided to repeat the same Theatrical Trailer on each disc, so you could say that there are only three extra features. The Interview With Director Jeff Lau (in Cantonese with optional English subtitles) on each disc is different to the other, but it's clear that Megastar has taken one 20minute interview and cut it to spread across two discs, as neither of the interviews actually refer specifically to the film whose disc they're on. Indeed, if you haven't seen Cinderella, then I would strongly advise you to not watch the Lau interview on the Pandora's Box DVD. Both interviews are very informative; Jeff Lau is obviously very comfortable talking about his work and keeps a good sense of modesty about the films. He discusses many aspects of the films' production and various other films in his career. Make sure you check them out.

Overall
The first film, Pandora's Box, is hilarious; the second film, Cinderella, is poignant. Put them together and you have a 3hr+ epic called A Chinese Odyssey, which is without a doubt one of the best films in Stephen Chow's career and should be in the collection of any self-respecting Chow fan. MegaStar may have released remastered DVDs of the films before, but this time they have put together a truly tantalising package, offering excellent audio and visual, a quality interview with director Jeff Lau and a lovely hardback photo book. Even better is the price it's going for, and it's not the only cheap remastered release of a Stephen Chow film to come out of HK in the past few weeks. Fans of the legendary comic are being spoiled right now!

by Matt Shingleton - DVD Times