‘The Tiger’s Apprentice’ Review – Dazzles, But Never Shines

It’s beginning to sound like an old cliche. Along with ‘the good guys always win’ and ‘always pay your taxes’. Joining that list is ‘movies based on Chinese mythologies always miss the mark.’ It is now the third (no, fourth) film based on an ancient Chinese fable with some combination of Sandra Oh, Bowen Yang, Jo Koy, or Michelle Yeoh in it, and despite the incredible wealth of talent on display, they can’t quite get the formula down. Here, there’s a real improvement in some areas, but the flaws that these movies seem to keep exhibiting still haven’t gone away.

The film is based on a series of books written by Laurence Yep about a young Chinese American boy named Tom (Brandon Soo Hoo), living in San Francisco with his eccentric grandmother, Mrs. Lee (Tan Kheng Hua). We come to learn that she is the guardian of the phoenix, a coral rose pendant that houses the power to create or destroy life. In the film, the guardian is being hunted down by a violent shapeshifting being known as Loo (Michelle Yeoh). Her wish is to capture the phoenix and use it to reshape life without humans. The guardians are also protected by the creatures of the Chinese zodiac. Despite their being 12 creatures, the film mainly focuses on a handful: Mistral (Sandra Oh), the Dragon; Sidney (Bowen Yang), the Rat; Rooster (Jo Koy), Rabbit (Greta Lee); and Hu (Henry Golding), the Tiger.

What really stands out in this film is the animation styles it uses. The film is brightly colored and uses a combination of matte painting, stereoscoping, and computer graphics. It gives the film a clean, polished, and artistic look that wows and impresses during the action scenes. Carefully showcasing both the fight choreography and visual effects magic without distracting from either one. Then there are the quiet moments of the film that have that matte painting finish. It can sometimes look as if you’re seeing two different films put together, but the use of color and light make these moments a highlight of the film just in how impressive they look. It’s the kind of work that is astounding and impressive and leads to the animators potentially getting to showcase their skills in a stronger project.

Despite the dazzle of the animation, the story itself and how it is executed is flawed and frustratingly lazy. To be fair to this film, it spent a lot of time in development hell. It lost its initial director and its theatrical release due to the pandemic, but that doesn’t quite take away from what we still ended up with here. The screenplay written by David Magee and Christopher Yost changes one key aspect of the original story, and it may have been an unnecessary change. In the books, the guardian battles Vatten and the Clan of Nine instead of Loo. This change hurts the long-term potential of what could have been an animated franchise. Unless the goal is to return to this material again for another installment, with Vatten at the helm, not starting with him as the villain may have been a foolhardy mistake.

More importantly, is how the story is conducted. Throughout the film, the lack of character interactions and backstory means things move rapidly with little to no understanding of why they happen at all. The dissolution of the zodiacs is briefly touched upon, but not explored. How or why these characters even exist isn’t given any weight or consideration, and its connection to Chinese mythology is tenuous, if not downright glossed over completely. One of the things that make Chinese mythology stand out is the message they teach, often revolving around a moral lesson to follow for life. The film tries to invoke this, but it’s so lazily thrown in that when it comes up again, it doesn’t have the punch behind it they were hoping for.

You can tell the film is intended for a much younger audience, and therefore, very little ingenuity is put into it. What could have been a daring, bold, new take on ancient folklore with some modern twists manages to still feel dated despite its technological prowess and stylish animation choices. There’s still hope we could see the rest of Yep’s books turned into feature-length films, but let’s hope they put a little more oomph into it next time.

The Tiger’s Apprentice is currently available to stream on Paramount+. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnqPZR1amnA]