'The Monkey King' review: A royal charmer

The Monkey King (Jimmy O. Yang), with eyes that can produce laser beams and the promise of a special fate from Buddha, grows up as an outsider. As a young adult, he strives for immortality by conquering 100 demons, with the help of a local village girl named Lin (Jolie Haong-Rappaport). A magical stick accompanies them on the journey, while the Dragon King (Bowen Yang), who rules the undersea world, stands in their way.

The picture is directed by animation veteran Anthony Stacchi ("The Boxtrolls"), while the voice talent also includes Stephanie Hsu, an Oscar nominee for "Everything Everywhere All at Once."

From the first frame to the last, it's consistently enrapturing, a consequential visual achievement that seems to have arrived from a place that's somehow beyond space and time.

That stands as a welcome surprise amid the glut of mediocre family movie content clogging up streaming services these days. When it comes to the need to provide queue fodder, the art can seem beside the point.

"The Monkey King" is not entirely immune to this phenomenon: the epic scope of the world constructed by Stacchi and his team conflicts with a general busyness in the development of the characters and the plot.

The characterizations are familiar: the depiction of the Monkey King as a run-of-the-mill, cocky Americanized youngster; the scenery-chewing villain with his meek sidekicks; and the earnest and well-meaning Lin all seem more at home in a work of cheap children's entertainment or perhaps a second-rate Disney production than a movie of such visual splendor.

The plot developments also have a tendency to undercut the broader picture: the quest to achieve immortality includes a multitude of fight scenes and other sequences that seem designed to make this material more accessible to general audiences.

There are a few forgettable musical numbers, too.

To some extent, of course, all of this constitutes a sound business practice. The picture's executive producer Stephen Chow ("Kung Fu Hustle") has a decades-long history as a director and an actor of making movies in Hong Kong that translate globally, because they're rooted in fundamentals that work well in any context.

A little bit of ordinariness is a small price to pay for a movie with the ambition of "The Monkey King," for taking in the scale of its vision in which palaces on clouds, sea-glass draped underwater lairs, the fires of hell and beyond amass into a singular experience.