Ne Zha 2 movie review: The movie is packed with action and humour. The animation is vibrantly coloured, and the overall visual palette is eye-catching
Still from the movie
Cast: Yanting Lü, Mo Han, Hao Chen
Director: Yu Yang
Rating: 3/5
Runtime: 143 min
The 2019 release, the kid-friendly Chinese animated fantasy “Ne Zha,” about a bratty pre-teen demon and a regal dragon prince, was the country’s most financially successful animated movie. This new sequel to that worldwide hit is also about feuding dragons, gods, humans, and ocean-dwelling monsters. The film boasts of some of the same qualities that made “Ne Zha” popular. “Ne Zha 2” reworks much of what worked in the original film. The action and drama gets amplified without sacrificing much of the winning qualities of the original blockbuster.
Sourced from the two-volume mythological adventure ‘The Investiture of the Gods’ the film focuses largely on human emotions. The film features a surfeit of main and supporting characters, connected by knotty backstories and convoluted social hierarchies. It’s not hard to get drawn in by the exploits of the demon child Ne Zha (Yanting Lü) and his noble dragon prince buddy Ao Bing (Mo Han). It’s not necessary to have watched “Ne Zha” before watching “Ne Zha 2,” because you can follow the story here without getting caught up in the tangled past. Ne Zha is still an immature kid who doesn’t know his own strength.
The titular mischievous demon child and his only best friend, Ao Bing no longer possess physical bodies but their souls remain intact after Taiyi (Zhang Jiaming) managed to preserve their lives using the Sacred Lotus. The sequel picks up from there.
A battle is waged between the human residents of Chentang Pass and the dragon rulers of the four seas. Ne Zha’s parents, Lady Yin (Qi Lü) and Li Jing (Hao Chen), try to keep the peace while their son flies off to Yu Xu Palace so that he can become an immortal. Apparently, becoming an immortal will give him access to a magical elixir that will restore Ao Bing to full health. Ao Bing was one of the victims in the last movie.
Ao Bing means a lot to Ne Zha, because they’re two halves of the same supernatural entity (the Chaos Pearl),and also because they bonded during the incidents of the last movie. They managed to uncover a conspiracy that pits the dragon kings against the Chan Sect immortals of Yu Xu Palace, represented by baby-faced god Wuliang (Deshun Wang).
Writer/director Yu Yang, returns to keep this sequel credible. The film reminds us about the importance of familial relationships and friendships. This mythological action-adventure runs on giant-sized action scenes as well as childish humor. The humor is not exactly funny but it manages to sound consistently bizarre. The obligatory toilet humour may seem offensively juvenile but it works quite well within the framework of this story. The action scenes are a credit to the animation team and they also are revelatory and goofy. This is a big-budget cartoon designed by its animators in an attempt to be bigger and better than the prequel and it scores well on that scale.
The movie is packed with action and humour. The animation is vibrantly coloured and the overall visual palette is eye-catching. Though the film is visually spectacular it gets hampered by a bloated runtime. This sequel’s 144-minute runtime is a challenge to say the least. The pacing also poses some problems. But overall, this film is a joyride provided the kids don’t get overly restive.
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