Steineded
How sad is this?
RipDelight
This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.
Tayyab Torres
Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.
tetsuo916
Loosely based on one of China's greatest stories (A Journey to the West, also known as the "Monkey King"), the Lost Empire was a horrible rendition which insulted a rich culture.Moving past the bad acting, cheesy action sequences, and the slow, lengthy story; the Lost Empire continually butchered China's legends and heroes.
Many of China's heroes and gods were wrongly portrayed as either villains or imbeciles... most insulting was the portrayl of Confucius as a devious worm who had nothing but disdain to the heroes...
Sentinel-15
This is like a post-modern take on the legend of the Monkey King, where a modern human gets involved with saving the book that contains the original story. First of all, it is FUN!There are lots of interesting characters, lots of action, heroic characters fighting the Good Fight... what more do you want?Just keep in mind that this is NOT the original legend(s) - whatever those were about - and it doesn't even try to be, so don't criticize it for that.This is good old-fashioned entertainment, with lots of imagination and heroics. Enjoy!
michalis_j
This movie is an insult to the beautiful historical classic work from Wu Cheng'en. It brutally involves theme's that do not fit at all with the story line. Such as a Caucasian man falling in love the Goddess of Mercy and she falling in love with him. Even though, in order to make one movie out a of a 3 volume work, selecting only parts from the book is necessary. This movie has misunderstood the meaning of the book and used elements to make it a sad abstract of the novel. He has gone past the key element of the book: the enlightenment, the search for the Way from five totally different characters, each representing an element of human nature. The Tang priest, Sun Wukong the monkey, lazy and clumsy Pig, hideous Friar Sand and the Dragon sun, changed into a white horse. It has wiped out every Buddhist element from the story, while that's the backbone of this book. How he ridiculed key figures from Chinese history and culture (Quan Yin, Confucius) and not even in a adult and serious way.This movie does by no means represent the wonderful Chinese Classic `Journey to the West', or literally `Notes of a Journey to the West' and you may have already figured out that I was sadly disappointed with it.
Mark-129
Well, this mini-series was the straw that broke the back for producer Robert Halmi with NBC. The faults of his previous rating disaster, "The 10th Kingdom" have not been heeded in this production. The screenplay is overloaded with over the top characters and situations that never let up. But, to me, the failure of "The Lost Empire" falls in three categories. The total miscasting of Thomas Gibson, who gives a tired and stiff performance. Gibson seems to barely be able to walk, much less perform martial arts, and his delivery is unbelievably stilted. The music score is among the worst I've heard in a production like this. There is little thematic melody and even less of the score reflects the rich culture depicted in the story. Third, the director chose to shoot most of the frequent martial arts action from the waist up, so much of the visual impact of those scenes is lost. Indeed, only Bai Ling retains her dignity in the production. The only other redeeming feature is, that the film did cause me to look into the classic book, "Journey to the West."
