If you make a cartoon two-and-a-half hours long, you better have more than toilet humor in it. On that score, the jury is still out on Ne Zha 2: The ends justify the Neez. You might remember from the first film that Ne Zha is a demon child born from ancient supernatural rage tweets or some shit.
Good for him.
In film #1, the demon spawn got up in everybody’s grill before finally deciding to be more good than bad. That was a mistake as it cost him a life. Luckily, this franchise is not unlike a video game and all they had to do was hit reset, and, hey, new body. Actually, Ne Zha ain’t in this alone; he and his more polished supernatural buddy Ao Bing were both destroyed at the end of the battle to end the first film. Well, “destroyed” just doesn’t mean what it used to, I guess, cuz all these guys needed for a base body was something really malleable, like clay or silly putty or Republican values.
Bottom line is Ne Zha and Ao Bing have been reformed with physical attributes (woohoo!), BUT, -because of reasons- have to share the same body for a week, until each spiritual demon gets his own driver’s manual.
The fallout of this is that the film allows itself to make several bathroom jokes (a few in particular are about drinking urine) while Ne Zha and Ao Bing play “Who
wore it best?” with Ne Zha’s body. The film grows tiresome waiting for Ne Zha to go to sleep while getting his ass kicked, as Ao Bing is the much greater warrior of the two. We can tell when Ne Zha occupies the body because of the malevolent grin and the “panda eyes.”
Not unlike the duality in the one physical body, the film itself is split into frivolous and non-frivolous halves. The former has a tone of light and insignificant; the later turns the comic to over-dramatic where all the good of the world is contained in one big pot by the evil of the world … or is it the other way around? Honestly, I couldn’t tell. What I do know is there’s an epic battle that made me say, “Why can’t all y’all immortals, dragons, demons, humans, and the like just get along? Are any of you all that different from any of the rest of you?” I like portions of Ne Zha 2, but I got the feeling that I needed to be Chinese to truly appreciate the film.
There once was a toddler demon, Ne Zha
“Destroyed” at the end of an epic wah
Doncha worry, Zha fans
He’s got comeback plans
So long as the brat can share his ka
Not Rated, 143 Minutes
Director: Yu Yang
Writer: Yu Yang
Genre: Cartoons that are too long
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People who wish Chinese mythology was as well known in the West as Greek mythology
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: If you don’t like cartoons, you certainly aren’t going to like 2.5 hours of one
