When it comes to cartoon movies, Paramount Animation doesn’t have a great track record. Announced as a new animation division for the studio in 2012, Paramount Animation began creating new films in-house. These have included The Little Prince, Wonder Park, Anomalisa, Monster Trucks, Under the Boardwalk and Sherlock Gnomes. Unlike Disney, Pixar or DreamWorks, Paramount Animation has an identity crisis. The studio’s approach to movies is all over the board and the results have been mixed.
Be that as it may, I was looking forward to seeing The Tiger’s Apprentice even though it had been delayed a few times and bypassed theaters. It debuts on Paramount+. It has a great premise and has a great cast of voice talents. I was also hoping to learn a little bit more about Chinese culture. Unfortunately, the storytelling didn’t present anything new. Pretty much everything shown in the new movie I’ve seen a thousand times before. A child with no parents? Check. A notorious villain? Check. Obnoxious side characters? Check. Slapstick comedy and forced laughter? Check. An engaging story? No.
The movie begins with a grandmother driving down a long bridge somewhere in Hong Kong. Her infant grandson is the backseat unaware of the black and greenish creatures that follow them. But the grandma is aware and maneuvers the vehicle with skill to avoid them before a magical group of animals come to her aid.
So, right off the bat, this movie looks promising. However, I notice something odd. During this battle, there is not another single car on that stretch of the road. It’s a small detail, but one that other filmmakers would not have overlooked.
Based on a trilogy of books of the same name by Laurence Yep, The Tiger’s Apprentice fast forwards 15 years. That infant, Tom, is now in high school and living in San Francisco with his grandma or Amah as he calls her. There is no mention of his parents or why the two are now living in the states. Tom (Brandon Soo Hoo) is often mocked at school because the house that he lives in is adorned with Chinese good luck charms. On one particular day, after he had enough, Tom inadvertently and magically throws one bully to the ceiling of a school hallway. The day isn’t all bad though. He meets “the new girl” Rav (Leah Lewis) who is into skateboarding and rock music.
When Tom gets home, he is greeted by a stranger. Mr. Hu (Henry Golding) begins smelling the boy and states that he “reeks of it.” He asks Nü Kua (Lucy Liu), Tom’s Amah, if she has “told him yet”. It is then revealed that Hu and Nü Kua have known each other for a long, long time. Nü Kua and her friend are actually part of the Guardians and Tom is destined to become part of them as well. This group people have been established to protect a phoenix egg, in the form of a purple stone which Amah wears around her neck.
Suddenly, the house is attacked by the same monsters who attacked Tom and Nü Kua years earlier. Their shapeshifting leader called, Loo (Michelle Yeoh) appears wanting that egg with the hopes of ruling the world or destroying humanity or something terrible like that. Hu turns into a tiger to fight off the attackers, but Nü Kua tells him to take Tom to safety while she does battle there.
Having turned back into a human, Hu takes Tom to his antique shop in Chinatown and sets up a room for his new apprentice. Tom soon learns that the warriors include a group of people who can turn into various animals with magical powers at will. There are 12 of them representing the animals from the Chinese zodiac. They include: Mistral (Sandra Oh) who is a dragon, Sidney (Bowen Yang) a rat and Noami (Sherry Cola) a monkey. The remaining animals only appear for short snippets in the film. It’s a little convoluted, but Pig (Deborah S. Craig), Dog (Patrick Gallagher), Snake (Poppy Liu), Horse (Diana Lee Insanto), Goat (Lucy Liu), Bull (Henry Golding), Rabbit (Greta Lee) and Rooster (Jo Koy) spend most of their time trapped inside Loo’s magic umbrella which she keeps with her at all times.
So, the remainder of the film consists of Tom training to become like the others in the back of a Chinese restaurant run by the wisecracking (and presumed comic relief) Mrs. Lee (Kheng Hua Tan) before going to an epic Avengers-esque battle against Loo to rescue the other guardians, Rav and practically everyone else living in San Francisco.
Storywise, it feels as if scriptwriters David Magee and Christopher L. Yost have left out some elements from Yep’s book. Apparently, Loo had been banished, but it is unclear how she escaped back to the human world. It’s also not clear how Rav gets caught up in this mess or why we never see the human forms of the other guardians.
While it attempts to do so, The Tiger’s Apprentice fails to interject any real suspense, excitement, surprise, humor or emotion to the story. It plays off like on old Saturday morning cartoon show without the laugh track. We never really mourn with Tom’s loss. Loo is frightening to look at and you know she’s evil because she looks evil, but there is zero build up before she appears. How were the other guardian recruited and why aren’t they more upset at the loss of their teammates?
For me though, the biggest distraction of this movie is that it looks unfinished. It reminds me of the early days of Pixar’s CGI animation. The characters move awkwardly, their hair never moves and their mouths aren’t always in sinc with their voices.
Directed by Raman Hui, Yong Duk Jhun and Paul Watling, The Tiger’s Apprentice isn’t a terrible film, but it’s not great either. There are too many characters to keep track of and most of them don’t stand out. If done well, it could probably make for decent TV series. Since it is based on a trio of books, let’s hope that if there are two more chapters coming, that they will be more fleshed out.
Main Image: Paramount Animation
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