[Movie Review] The Lion Men 师神决战

Every year during the Chinese New Year festive period, top local director, Jack Neo will release one of his strong, local flavour movie to capitalise on the surge in movie-going crowd.

This year, this movie is The Lion Men 师神决战, a lion dance themed action comedy starring Chen Tianwen, Eva Cheng, Tosh Zhang, Wang Wei Liang, Noah Yap, Maxi Lim, Charlie Goh, Bao Er Cong, Celyn Liew Zhi Lin and Ngeow Zi Jie.

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Synopsis:

Shi Shen (Tosh Zhang) is the top performer in the Tiger Crane Lion Dance Association, but feels restricted by Master Heʼs (Chen Tianwen) traditional mindset. He decides to take a group of disciples and form his own lion dance troupe, which fuses hip hop dancing with lion dance movements.

A major Lion Dance Competition is coming up and Mikey (Wang Weiliang) is groomed to be Shi Shen’s successor. However, he has a huge fear of heights! The situation worsens when both Mikey and Shi Shen fall for the Tiger Crane master’s daughter (Eva Cheng)…

Overall, the movie was enjoyable, light entertainment.

The concept is fresh and I like the mix of modern vs traditional take on lion dance.

Veteran TV actor, Chen Tianwen was quite fun to watch on his big screen debut.

Some warnings – as like all other Jack Neo movies, there are extended “TV commercial” scenes inserted jarringly into the movie without any relations (eg. Dester Beer, Starhub).  In addition, this movie is just part one or of two part movie.

To be honest, I do not see any reason to break this movie into two parts except to milk it for maximum box office taking. There were a number of long CGI scenes which I find redundant and draggy, including one featuring a Singapore version of Spiderman out of the blue.

The Lion Men is now showing in Singapore cinemas. Go catch it if you are looking for some light entertainment during this festive period. 🙂