If you’ve heard anything about Ne Zha II, it’s likely about the insane box-office numbers that it did this past spring. The animated sequel to the pre-pandemic film Ne Zha managed to out-earn Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ entire global run, and did it in a week and a half before it played anywhere outside China. In the wake of that, it played briefly in Tarrant County theaters with its original Mandarin-language dialogue, but this weekend it’s re-opening with a newly dubbed English-language track and a publicity push from new American distributor A24 Films, so it should bring in more viewers in this country. If you’re one of those, you can see why this film was such a hit, even if that doesn’t necessarily make it good.
If you’re not familiar with the backstory, click on my review of the original Ne Zha. Seriously, my article does a better job of giving you background information than this sequel does. At the end of the first movie, the bratty Ne Zha (voiced by Crystal Lee) and his virtuous friend Ao Bing (voiced by Aleks Le) saved China at the expense of their physical bodies, so the sequel begins with the demigod Master Taiyi (voiced by Rick Zeiff) making new ones for them. Typically, the master bungles it, so the two heroes have to share Ne Zha’s body for a week. This is bad timing, because Ao Bing’s imprisoned dragon father Ao Guang (voiced by Christopher Swindle) hears that his son is dead and vows to escape and take revenge on the human race.
Even more than the first movie, this sequel cuts its story about gods and monsters with a ton of comedy. This film climaxes with millions of angels and demons battling in the sky, but it’s also a movie where Ne Zha visits Heaven and needs to pee, so he relieves himself into a urinal-shaped receptacle there, only to find the contents of said receptacle being served as a drink to the deities. When Ne Zha tries out new bodies, the animators have a great deal of fun parodying the look of Japanese anime heroes. On a more Chinese note, Ne Zha’s father (voiced by Vincent Rodriguez III) spars with his son, only for the boy to throw the muscular man into a boulder hard enough to crack the rock in half. Maybe the funniest bit is an extended set piece when Ne Zha takes on a clan of thieving marmots, and the heroes’ warring control of his body leads to him alternately beating up the massive marmot king and having his ass handed to him by the king’s much-smaller weasel sidekick.
Just as with the original, the comedy exists uneasily beside the more dramatic moments, such as when Ne Zha goes back to his home village to find it razed to the ground by Ao Guang. Writer-director Jiaozi adapted this from Xu Zhonglin’s 16th-century novel Investiture of the Gods, and Westerners might find it hard to reconcile Ne Zha’s knockabout troublemaking with his backstory as an angry kid who needs a hug. The big chunks of exposition about why these superpowers can and can’t do certain things at certain times are good places to take a bathroom break. A24 is pushing Michelle Yeoh as a voice actor, but the Oscar winner only voices the relatively small role of Ne Zha’s mother.
Then again, Ao Guang and his fellow dragons are great pieces of animation, as is the climactic battle, and one of the gods pulls a double heel turn by selling out our heroes to the dragons only to betray the dragons too. I first saw Ne Zha II on my laptop, which was a tactical error on my part, because it demands the big screen to appreciate its scale. It’s not the best animated movie this year or even this week, but it’s better than much of the stuff Hollywood has put out for kids this season, and if you’re new to Chinese animation, it’s an intro worth making.
Ne Zha II
Voices by Michelle Yeoh and Crystal Lee. Written and directed by Jiaozi, based on Xu Zhonglin’s novel. Not rated..
