Ne Zha

As a movie, "Ne Zha" is most fun when it gets high on spectacle, literally chewing up the splendid scenery...

I enjoyed the jolt of strangeness delivered by this world of demons stalking the Earth. But the action is hit-and-miss.

Residing just beneath all the visual razzle dazzle is a stirring message of empowerment.

Conventionally animated but paced with kinetic glee, Ne Zha crams in a plethora of contemporary and pop culture references, and in those moments it's at its least fun and most obvious.

A computer-animated feature of bright hues, hectic action and only occasional charm...

Ne Zha ... is adapted in such a way that it takes advantage of animation to create action sequences that not only serve to communicate character conflict and growth, but look incredible at the same time.

Jiaozi does a great job in the technical department.

In some very important ways, it's competing right up to the level of Pixar or Disney themselves.

It is not a major achievement in the genre - other than in the commercial sense - but it is a bold and promising step along the road.

Ne Zha has some shaky storytelling to begin with, but by the second half, it escalates into a full-fledged emotional animated blockbuster.