everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Recap: Chinese scholar Nicholas Orton is most unhappy. His wife has left him and he feel like he has betrayed himself by taking a position with a tourism corporate that wish to turn relics into a tourist attraction. But one night he is whisked away by a Chinese goddess. The world is threatened. Oppressive demons are trying to erase the story "The Journey into the West" from history and by doing so erase free will in the human world. Only Nick can save the world by going on a peculiar quest.Comments: A movie made for TV it tries to enter a land of magic and fantasy. However it seems to suffer from a meager budget as the special effects lack in quality. But not enough money can't explain a bad story. I am not familiar with the original story or myth but as it is presented in this movie it is childish, simple-minded and quite boring.The characters are stereotypic, arrogant and also childish in appearance. The monkey king resembles a human, that's true. But Pigsy, however true to the original story, is just too much. A walking, talking pig that can't resist eating all the time. He is worst, but every other character is almost as simple-minded and shallow as him. Or why people keep on driving as they crash through market stands just because the red light disappeared (because no one would ever use the brakes if the traffic lights weren't there? Sigh).Also the story is easily predictable, but not only predictable. Boring. Who will fall in love with whom, what someone will do when he is challenged and so on. When the story is too simple, the effects doesn't support the magic elements in the story and the characters are too shallow, the entire story becomes hard to believe in. Not accept as truth, but to believe in its own context. It doesn't carry it's own weight. It doesn't even seem the characters or actors believe in it.Why it must run then for more than two and a half hour is beyond me. If it can't develop some chemistry in an hour, two doesn't make it better. Only worse.2/10

This is the lamest movie I have EVER seen. It came with a Jet Li movie I got in a 2 pack. I'm not sure why it was made but it is pathetic! A Bruce Campbell wanna be who is a supposed expert on Chinese culture goes on a journey. He meets up with a hot girl and some ugly friends. The hero of the story is an immature guy that looks like a monkey. His friend is a really ugly greedy pig man. Although I know it is supposed to show the journey of some Chinese literature it speaks about throughout the movie it seems more like an insult than a tribute. Read the other guys post for more detailed information about the literature. Please if you are reading this...Never ever watch this horrible waste of a film...there is my public service for the week.

The Lost Empire, or The Monkey King, as it was called when I saw it on the Hallmark Network, is a silly film, but a very enjoyable one. It attempts to put a new spin on the Chinese classic, Journey to the West, which tells the story of how a monk went on an epic journey to recover some sacred scriptures, aided by the mischievous Monkey King, the gluttonous Pigsy and the sombre Sandy.In this modern version the companions are the same, but the monk is replaced by a modern American sinologist, and the "scripture" is the original manuscript of Journey to the West itself, which is about to be destroyed by the "five traditional masters", who represent the forces of conservatism. Confused? It gets worse; if the book is destroyed, all the human progress that has taken place since the book was written will be reversed and the world will revert to feudalism. To cap it all, the Jade Emperor, Confucius and Kuan Yin, the goddess of compassion, are all weighing in.With a scenario like this, the film cannot help but being absurd in places, but the absurdity, intentional or otherwise, is part of the fun, as it was in the original Journey to the West, which is a comedy as well as an analogy of the spiritual journey. Viewers who have read Journey to the West will enjoy the references to it; others can sit back and enjoy the visual richness, which as well as some spectacular scenes and SFX, includes Bai Ling as Kuan Yin, looking far more sexy than a goddess of compassion ought to (but then that's one of the twists in this tale as well).

This movie has a mediocre plot. It doesn't reflect the real story of the real chinese's Journey to the West story. A bit disappointment.The chinese's God is not accurate at all, most deities are not allowed to fall in love at all and in this story we can see not the fact but more on fiction.Maybe the script writer should plan this story earlier and have a total research before producing so that everybody will enjoy this one as its original.