The Sorcerer and the White Snake (2011)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Good movie but grossly overrated

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Although Jet Li is essentially the main actor, Raymond Lam steals the show (in my opinion) as herb picker Xu Xian. The beautiful Shengyi Huang is well cast as White Snake and the chemistry between Raymond and Shengyi is wonderful. This is a love story set against a fantasy action adventure backdrop, and the genres blend beautifully. The action is just as amazing as the love story. I did find some scenes to be a bit slapstick silly, but in general this CGI-heavy film was quite fascinating. The flood scene in the final act was truly awesome. I did find the ending a bit overuse of CGI to a point where I almost lost what was actually happening, but the love story portrayed by Raymond and Shengyi swiftly pulled me back to their reality and it was simply spectacular. This is a very imaginative film.

So many people reviewed this as bad and I will be damned if I understand why. The story is that of an old Chinese legend (well, a more modern interpretation), the actresses are very beautiful and the acting, for what it's worth, is not bad either. To bash a movie because the CGI is a little choppy and Jet Li fights magically instead of kicking behinds seems the height of triviality.The Legend of the White Snake starts a long time ago, way before there was a written version. The original is quite different from the modern version as well, being a horror story about a demon tricking a human to fall in love with her and her jealous demon buddies are doing everything in their power to break them up. At least this is what I got from Wikipedia. The film, though, presents it as a total love story where the White Snake and her sister are benevolent demons who visit the human world and eventually fall for two guys. The natural order, represented by the Buddhist monk Fahai, a non compromising demon hunter, doesn't allow this type of union and eventually it all escalates into a bad CGI extravaganza.I thought the morality of the story was a little bit confusing, but complex, worthy of a script. Nothing is completely black and white and in the end the message is tolerance, even if not everything turns out OK. This complexity has kept my eyes glued to the screen until the end. Yes, the CGI could have been better, but who really cares about that?Bottom line: I liked it. Popularizes a Chinese legend that I knew nothing about, shows people that a film can have a complex story that is not just black and white, stars really cute Chinese ladies and in end was quite entertaining for me. No masterpiece, but really better than average.

a fairy tale. few seductive fight scenes. a forbidden love story. short, a beautiful movie. far to be a masterpiece, it is a useful introduction in Chinese mythology and an occasion to discover Jet Li in a not bad role. the film uses many clichés and pink productions solutions but, if you are, in few moments, a romantic, dreamer or fan of classic fairy tales, its message and the solutions for create the story are not bad at whole. sure, it is not one of great films from Extreme East but it can be decent support for a form of entertainment in which romanticism, heroic virtues, sacrifice and magic are parts of same products. and the few doses of humor are not bad at whole. short, a beautiful film. maybe, the package is more important than the content but nothing is perfect.

This is an absolutely awful film which I watched on the strength of a Jet Li leading role alone. Sadly, Li isn't enough to save what soon becomes a mire of inanity and endless fantasy drivel about a romance between a snake demon woman and the human who has the misfortune to fall in love with her. The tone is vapid and silly throughout, and the film is clearly aimed at child viewers with its extremely poor CGI effects and silly fight sequences.The thing that surprises me most about this movie is how poorly judged it is when it comes to sympathising with the characters. Li is presented as a misguided monk who's forced to learn the error of his ways, but he comes across as a paragon of decency and virtue when it comes to the outrageously irritating white snake, played by the terrible Shengyi Huang. Huang's character is presented as childish, stupid, selfish and completely self-obsessed, yet come the climax we're supposed to identify and empathise with her character's plight. Err…no, thanks. She's just a brat, and it's a shame that her character never receives the ass-whupping that she so clearly deserves.As for Jet, well, he's gone on record to complain about this movie; in the first place, he was told he wouldn't have much fighting to do (pretty much all his scenes involve fighting), and secondly, he found the action scenes hard to film because he had to go easy on his opponents while they beat the hell out of him. The action scenes are very poor, I admit, wushu-derivative and singularly lacking in impact. I won't even mention the calibre of the acting or the storyline, which goes on and on until the OTT climax which sees the actors absolutely dwarfed by wave upon wave of lame CGI. And the nonsensical retitling for western audiences? For crying out loud, there isn't even an emperor in the film! How stupid do they think we are?