Animated

In a year that’s proven a bit soft at the box office, the biggest story (and just plain biggest film, period) is the monstrous power of “Ne Zha 2,” a Chinese CGI animated feature that, during its theatrical release in January, utterly annihilated the likes of “Fantastic Four,” “Superman,” and even “A Minecraft Movie” to become the highest global earning film this year. The competition isn’t tight, either: with $2.2 billion grossed so far, it has an absurd $1.2 billion lead over “Lilo & Stitch” and is the fifth highest-earning movie ever, no qualifications needed.

“Ne Zha 2” isn’t the first Chinese film to challenge Hollywood productions in terms of success, with the country having established itself as a highly important market for global productions. But its sheer impact still heavily outpaces any other Chinese film ever made. By comparison, the second-highest-grossing Chinese film of all-time is 2021’s “The Battle at Lake Changjin,” which “only” grossed a lowly $913 million. Even more impressive is “Ne Zha 2” managed to make all that money with barely any help from North American markets: the movie received a limited eight-week U.S. release by CMC Pictures in February, where — per Box Office Mojo — it managed around $20 million.

Which is where A24 comes in. With U.S. audiences still largely ignorant of what exactly “Ne Zha” is, the indie distributor acquired the rights to the film and gave it a glossy English dub for a second introduction to the market, complete with an IMAX rollout to better appreciate the film’s stunningly detailed backdrops and fight scenes.

What unsuspecting viewers will find at the theater is a film that’s not really anything like the animated films Hollywood produces: glossy and operatic in its scale, “Ne Zha 2” has a mammoth 150-minute running time that’s longer than expected for the average kids’ attention span (or the average attention span of a TikTok-rotted adult brain, to be frank). But in its emotional viewpoint and its streak of gleeful potty humor, “Ne Zha 2” is also quite blatantly a movie for children. The closest comparison to make isn’t Pixar’s “Elio” or Disney’s “Zootopia,” but the world of battle Shonen anime like “Dragon Ball Z” or “Naruto,” long shows characterized by excitable teen boys engaging in nonstop, over-the-top brawls with their own specialized power sets.

Like many products of this genre, “Ne Zha 2” can occasionally veer on the numbing, its barrage of setpieces blending in together into one amorphous blob. But at the same time, you can’t help but admire the sheer scale of the canvas director Yang Yu (alternatively credited as Jiaozi) uses to paint, and the often jaw-dropping artistry and detail of the animation speaks for itself.

As its title makes clear, “Ne Zha 2” is a sequel, and anyone who hasn’t taken the time to study up on the original 2019 “Ne Zha” is going to inevitably be a bit confused by this one, which starts with a very brief recap of the first movie, but nonetheless plunges the audience directly into this fantasy version of China with little context or effort to handhold. For American audiences this will inevitably jar, given how much the characters and story takes inspiration from the 16th-century novel “Investiture of the Gods” and various mythological and folk figures from Chinese history. After an opening that starts immediately after the first film introducing the titular Ne Zha and his best friend Ao Bing as spirits whose bodies need to be rebirthed, followed by a massive war sequence between characters just introduced, you would not be forgiven for getting a headache trying to keep up.

Once the movie slows down, the uninformed are able to ease more readily into the plot of the film. The first movie covered the story of how Ne Zha — a foul-mouthed, raccoon-eyed, rebellious youth who was born to demon hunters as the feared reincarnation of a demon orb — befriended the serene, properly mannered Ao Bing. In “Ne Zha 2,” master Taiyi Zhenren recreates their bodies, only for Ao Bing to lose his body in an attack from the dragons — led by the main villain, the sniveling but sympathetic Shen Gongbao — who mistakenly attack their hometown under the belief he is dead. With Ao Bing’s spirit now in Ne Zha’s body, the two manage a truce with dragons to venture to the land of the heavenly Chan sect and complete three tasks that will grant them immortality and restore Ao Bing’s body.

That journey to and through the divine world is long, and a plot synopsis in a review can’t really capture all of the characters and moving parts to this tale. There’s just too much of it. At 2 hours and 24 minutes, the movie sags in pacing, with a protracted first act to get to the real meat of things that could use a serious edit, jokes that linger a second too long, and fight scenes that drag to the point that you sometimes lose the emotional stakes of the story. The sheer amount of toilet humor — there’s a lot of mucus, snot, and jokes about people drinking piss stuffed into one film — often proves more annoying than fun.

Luckily, things click into place when Ne Zha begins his trials, and the tension between using Ao Bing’s greater power to win and remaining true to his own misfit self begins to wear at him. It’s also the point in which the often bratty, off-putting character clicks into place, and his simple desire to be accepted and prove his worth emerges as the real emotional heart of the story. The other characters emerge as complex figures rather than stock archtypes, as the Chan sect holds obvious secrets and biases towards demons while Shen Gongbao’s hidden soft side comes to light.

Most importantly, the trials gives “Ne Zha 2” a framework to showcase some of the most impressive and vibrant 3D animation that has been seen on film in quite some time. The product of roughly 138 Chinese companies and around 4,000 individual animators, “Ne Zha 2” looks vibrant and alive in every frame, striking an unusual balance between anime-inspired exaggeration and realism that works shockingly well in practice. The environments — from the white jade walls of the Chan sect palace to the dusty town of talking bandit moles that Ne Zha begins his trials in to the rushing waterfall where he fights a shapeshifting water demon — are astonishingly ornate and detailed, while the characters that inhabit them are creatively imagined and varied, from cartoonish old fat men to dragons with scales that shine like they’re truly alive.

Then there’s the action, which melds influences from anime, wuxia, and good old-fashioned “Looney Tune” pratfalls to create some jaw-dropping setpieces that zig and zag in new directions; you never know how a brawl will resolve or what a character will do next, and that unpredictability allows for real exhilaration. The climax, an operatic conflict that manages to successfully merge emotion with spectacle in a way the rest of the film sometimes struggles with, is a particular feat. In one stunning shot, two hordes of warriors on rival sides of a conflict are seen from afar, like two waves crashing into each other. And yet, the detail, attention, and artistry of every pixel in frame is very evidently displayed. In many respects, watching “Ne Zha 2” feels akin to viewing the “Avatar” films, as the film provides a visual experience that’s the absolute peak of what its medium is capable of.

It also benefits from a solid dubbing effort that gratifyingly features a mostly Asian cast and a absence of stunty A-list gets. The sole exception is Michelle Yeoh, who’s appropriately warm and heartbreaking as the title character’s mother Lady Yin. The rest of the cast is mostly unknowns or professional voice actors, including Crystal Lee and Aleks Le, a winning double act as Ne Zha and Ao Bing. Occasionally, the dialogue doesn’t quite match up with the character’s mouth flaps, but it’s a minor distraction in a mostly seamless experience.

All dubbing inevitably invites a debate over whether or not it’s necessary or if English speakers should learn to appreciate subtitles, but “Ne Zha 2” has a good case for why it’s necessary. When a movie is as stuffed with detail and action as this, better to make sure the audience has their eyes on the whole screen rather than just a tiny third of it.

Grade: B

A24‘s “Ne Zha 2” is currently playing in theaters.

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