My Review of "Animal World"

Animal World is a really odd movie that me and my brother decided to watch out of a misunderstanding. The description of the movie sounded like a comedy so we were expecting a full out comedy. Alas it turned out to be something totally different from what we had expected. We honestly thought it was going to be a Stephen Chow type of comedy akin to the God of Gamblers series. When I explain it you'll realize why.

This movie starts out with a cartoon segment that looks cool and stylized. Already starting out to be a serious movie and we didn't know where this was going but I'd watch the cartoon because it was so cool looking. Then it turns out this is kind of the alter ego of the main character Zheng. He's watched these cartoons in the past and now he believes himself to this cartoon and kind of has delusions of himself becoming this character.

Zheng's mother is sick in the hospital because she's got some sort of illness where she's under some sort of coma. At this point I'm totally confused as to what the heck was going on. There's so much going on and the CGI from Zheng's delusions is tripping me out. We also find out that he's got this girl that he's got a crush on. It's some sort of typical Asian movie relationship where the guy can't ask her until he's established himself as being able to provide for her.

Unfortunately for Zheng he also has this slimy best friend. He naively (idiotically) signs away his mother's home to him hoping he'd be able to gamble the mortgage money to make more money for his mother's medical expenses. Of course this doesn't happen and we discover (we could see this a mile away) that he got himself in trouble with some sort of evil organized crime syndicate. The movie then goes on a totally different tangent that goes left field and makes the first part of the movie totally moot.

Zheng is then taken to meet up with the head of the crime syndicate and they give him a choice to work for them them forever or go to some special boat. He decides to go to the boat but it's super secretive so they continue to mask him from knowing where he's going and everything.

I guess the movie then really starts on this mysterious glamorous gigantic boat. It resembles a high end casino of some sort but they play this game of Rock Paper Scissors. This was the description of the movie that got us to think that it was a comedy. They mentioned that Zheng was in heavy debt and uses his superior knowledge of mathematics to win Rock Paper Scissors to get out of his situation. Were they serious with this? Yes they were, but you have to admit it sounds like a premise to a comedy.

Who the heck plays Rock Paper Scissors at a casino. It sort of reminded me of the National Lampoon Vegas Vacation where they go to this crappy casino that played games like guess the number in my head or war (Incidentally war is actually a game now at casinos and whenever I see it I laugh).

The creators of this movie actually make this into a serious premise and it's so odd when you see it actually play out. He uses these Sherlock Holmes deductions whenever he's trying to figure out what his opponent is going to throw out and it can get a little convoluted.

This movie is an utter mess! It's all over the place and things are constantly moving. CGI is placed everywhere for no reason other than to show you the stylistic skills of their artists. It is utterly dumb and has no place in this movie. It's like whatever they thought was cool they just slapped it on regardless of how little sense it made to put it in the movie.

Another huge surprise was who plays the main villain in this movie. I won't spoil this for you because it's such a huge reveal that you'll be like what the hell?

There's a ton of scenes that don't make sense in this movie. They pretty much threw continuity out the window. You can see someone in a car and then the next moment they're not in there. They blame it on his delusions but it's a sad and sorry excuse for laziness.

That's not to say that there isn't some payoff by the end of the movie. There is some nice moments sprinkled throughout the movie but that's if you have the patience to watch through the whole movie. I have to say that I nodded off to sleep a few times during this movie.

Overall, this movie is for those that like special effects. It also tries to be smarter than it really is. If you can follow through the whole movie you may enjoy some of the stylish scenes but I don't think the majority of people would be able to handle this movie at least in North America. I have to give this movie a 4 out of 10. What a bad misunderstanding this was.