A Chinese Odyssey, Parts One and Two (1995)

The one that argues the book is about loss.

Put Monkey through a love story he cannot win and the pilgrimage stops being an adventure and becomes a sentence he agreed to serve.

You want the version people are still quoting at each other thirty years later, and you do not need it to behave.

What it keeps and what it changes

Keeps: the premise and the characters, then runs them through time travel, farce and a genuinely devastating last ten minutes.
Changes: the genre, twice per scene. Jeffrey Lau directs, Stephen Chow plays Monkey, and the tonal whiplash is the technique, not a flaw.

Keeps the premise and the characters, then runs them through time travel, farce, romance and a last ten minutes that people describe rather than summarise. Changes the genre roughly twice a scene, which is the technique and not a defect.

Whose story is it?

Monkey’s, as a man who has to give up being a person in order to become the myth.

How much time does it ask?

Two films, watched together — Pandora’s Box and Cinderella.

Two parts, released in 1995, directed by Jeffrey Lau and starring Stephen Chow.

Where to find it

Find where it’s streaming — JustWatch →

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More ways west: Journey to the West (CCTV, 1986) · Havoc in Heaven (1961/1964) · Monkey (1978–1980)