You know when you watch a movie and although just about everything about it is awful. there's this one tiny little part of it that's charming so that you just can't give it a truly awful score? That's how I feel about this film. It's bad and a truly awful mess of CGI and inconsistency. But I just remember this film as a kid and wishing I could have the magical gourd thing to have anything I ever wanted. So, I realized this was on Disney+ and I thought hey, why not? Yeah, first off the voice casting for everything that isn't the gourd is absolutely god awful. That being said they're almost all kids so I can't really bash them on that. Now I want to talk about inconsistency. Obviously, since this is a Western and Chinese collaboration everything isn't going to mesh well with both audiences. But throughout the film, they use Western language for non-Western things. For example, they ask if Raymond wants to play Chess but then it's some version of checkers. Why not just call it checkers? There is also a scene where the teacher is asking DIVISION questions BUT THE NUMBERS ARE NOT WHAT THEY ARE ON THE BOARD???!! It's just silly and feels half-assed. But there are definitely a lot of scenes I remember as a kid that I still found nostalgic today. Also, the gourd is supposed to be just messing up cause he's understanding what Raymond is saying to mean a wish. But like... the gourd uses puns the whole movie? So a lot of it just doesn't make sense. I still almost like this movie though.
Review of The Secret of the Magic Gourd
