Rating: C+
Dir: Dicai Zhang
Star: Wang Hong Qian, Celia Wang, Du Wu Lin, Dai Jin Ping
a.k.a. Monty Python
Yes, you read that alternate title correctly. I’ve been aware of this one’s existence for a while, and it finally showed up on Tubi. As you can imagine, I was basically humming The Liberty Bell March through the entirety of proceedings. Shame the writers of the script – or, at least, the atrocious dub – didn’t lean into this, and pepper the dialogue with quotes: “It’s pining for the fjords!” The closest we actually get is a “I’m not dead yet” line. But I’m kinda glad I’m seeing this now, rather than at the time of release. For a Chinese giant snake movie, taking place on the set of a Chinese giant snake movie, has rather more droll relevance now I’ve seen twenty of them.
At 67 minutes, there’s not much room to dilly-dally, and this fair gallops along. On set, in order to increase realism, the prop-master finds and uses some real snake eggs, a decision which naturally enrages the parents. That’s the entire plot. Thereafter, it’s basically running and chasing, mostly around a set of dilapidated buildings. To be honest, the snakes here aren’t monster‐sized, compared to others we’ve seen. But “Reasonably Large Python” isn’t going to sell many tickets. As the rather endearing end credit, behind the scenes footage shows, there was a genuine puppet snake being thrown around for certain shots, though it does also make use of some not very impressive CGI. This was still early in the genre.
There’s some light satire aimed at the movie industry, such as with producer Ai Mei (C. Wang) insisting that filming continues, even as the crew is rapidly reduced to skeleton levels – both in numbers and physical state. Director Li Mu (Wang H-Q) turns out to be the hero of proceedings, along with fearless cameraman Bang Bang (Du, top). The audio department and actors, however, do not come out well, shall we say. On the actual movie, rather than the movie-within-the-movie, whoever edited this deserves plaudits. It’s lightning fast, which helps conceal some of the CGI flaws, yet always stays on the side of coherence. The actors fling themselves around energetically, again brought home by the behind the scenes stuff; looks like Celia hurt her foot during filming, and bravely soldiered on.
This is fun, though doesn’t have many particular memorable, original sequences or moments. The only bit I’ll likely remember is when the snake is dangling out of a window, and Lee basically uses it like a fireman’s pole. It will work for a few minutes, then either some clunky effects or the bargain basement dubbing will show up, and effectively fart in the film’s elevator. Zhang would go on to direct Python Island, which is less impressive, not having the plucky “can-do” attitude here. That helps paper over some of the cracks resulting from obviously limited resources, and endeared the production to me, more than it probably should.
This review is part of our feature, When Chinese Animals Attack.