- Director: Jiao Zi
- Disc Format: Dolby, NTSC, Subtitled, Surround Sound, Widescreen
- Language: Mandarin Chinese (Dolby Digital 5.1), Mandarin Chinese (DTS 5.1), English (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (DTS 5.1)
- Subtitles: English, Mandarin Chinese
- Region: Region A/1
- Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
- Number of discs: 2
- Studio: Well Go Usa
- Release Date: March 3, 2020
- Run Time: 110 minutes
I don’t have
extremely high expectations from animated children/family films. Even the
titans of American animation, Pixar, have been hit-or miss in recent years,
often making films that feel more designed for success than creative risks
(which was not always the case). Add to that my growing impatience with the
manner in which Chinese cinema has been dumbed down in the past decade, while
the industry has steadily been rewarded for this behavior in the same manner as
Hollywood has with their endless stream of brainless sequels and reboots (and
the fact that I used their nonsense word rather than ‘remake’ shows the
influence of their idiocy), and you will understand why I feel hesitant to
praise the mild artistic success of Ne
Zha. While it is certainly admirable that China has entered into the world
of internationally viewed animated films, the result feels more like something
I would have expected from a children’s TV network than a narrative I felt
obliged to see in theaters. Like much of the entertainment fed to younger
audiences these days, the message feels obvious and the execution unimpressive.
