The Sorcerer and the White Snake (2011)

What a waste of my time!!!

That was an excellent one.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Although Jet Li is essentially the main actor, Raymond Lam steals the show (in my opinion) as herb picker Xu Xian. The beautiful Shengyi Huang is well cast as White Snake and the chemistry between Raymond and Shengyi is wonderful. This is a love story set against a fantasy action adventure backdrop, and the genres blend beautifully. The action is just as amazing as the love story. I did find some scenes to be a bit slapstick silly, but in general this CGI-heavy film was quite fascinating. The flood scene in the final act was truly awesome. I did find the ending a bit overuse of CGI to a point where I almost lost what was actually happening, but the love story portrayed by Raymond and Shengyi swiftly pulled me back to their reality and it was simply spectacular. This is a very imaginative film.

a fairy story,with seductive choreography of fights, with a delicate love story, using same theme of battle against evil and the vulnerability of illusion. few drops of humor, CGI as useful tool for create a great show, few admirable images and a script who seems serve the scenes of fight. because the story is almost a pretext. the coherence is just insignificant detail. the acting - a sketch. all is reduced at a silk scarf who mixed legend and martial arts , meeting of a poor honest man with a demon, the wise master 's sacrifice and the magic as key to maintain the order of world. and each does The Sorcerer and the White Snake a decent film for young public.

So many people reviewed this as bad and I will be damned if I understand why. The story is that of an old Chinese legend (well, a more modern interpretation), the actresses are very beautiful and the acting, for what it's worth, is not bad either. To bash a movie because the CGI is a little choppy and Jet Li fights magically instead of kicking behinds seems the height of triviality.The Legend of the White Snake starts a long time ago, way before there was a written version. The original is quite different from the modern version as well, being a horror story about a demon tricking a human to fall in love with her and her jealous demon buddies are doing everything in their power to break them up. At least this is what I got from Wikipedia. The film, though, presents it as a total love story where the White Snake and her sister are benevolent demons who visit the human world and eventually fall for two guys. The natural order, represented by the Buddhist monk Fahai, a non compromising demon hunter, doesn't allow this type of union and eventually it all escalates into a bad CGI extravaganza.I thought the morality of the story was a little bit confusing, but complex, worthy of a script. Nothing is completely black and white and in the end the message is tolerance, even if not everything turns out OK. This complexity has kept my eyes glued to the screen until the end. Yes, the CGI could have been better, but who really cares about that?Bottom line: I liked it. Popularizes a Chinese legend that I knew nothing about, shows people that a film can have a complex story that is not just black and white, stars really cute Chinese ladies and in end was quite entertaining for me. No masterpiece, but really better than average.

Okay, so the main reason I decided to see this movie is because it has Jet Li in it and it's suppose to be a action fantasy. But it turns out to be more of a love story between a demon snake woman that can transform herself into human form falling for a male human herbalist. The thing is if it got the romance part at least right I might be more lenient on this movie. But it was so darn cheesy with nothing original to it. And there isn't much development of romance between the two lovers either. Old fashion romance is alright if there is some good development but there isn't any here. This is romance as corny as it can get. They just get together and conflict hits that spreads them apart and more CGI action. Because monks don't allow relationships between a human and a demon. The male lover is played by Raymond Lam and he sort of looks like a younger version of Jackie Chan with the voice and mannerism kinda. Jet Li is the sorcerer but he isn't even the main character in this movie. If your a audience member that wants to see some kung-fu action might be disappointed. Cause all Jet Li does is use hand motion to cast CGI spells while fighting demons. And the CGI in this isn't horrendous but it's far from being legit. And he catches only female demons into a rock tablet while killing off the male demons. So in another words he is kinda like a Pokemon master. You gotta catch them all. I just couldn't care much about the two main lover in this cause of the way it's developed. The sister of the female demon snake falls for Jet Li's sidekick after something happens to him and I had more sympathy for that guy. Overall this is a movie with a dull story with romance that is far from being original with CGI spell fighting that isn't all that entertaining to watch. I give this movie a 3.8 cause I had fun roasting this movie with my cousin.3.8/10