The Tiger's Apprentice

Year 17, Day 111 - 4/21/25 - Movie #5,003

BEFORE: Jo Koy carries over from "Easter Sunday", and a had a few different choices here, I could have linked via Jo Koy and Tiffany Haddish to Disney's recent remake of "The Haunted Mansion", but that feels like more of an October film - I know it's probably not very scary but I've got it on the horror sub-list. Or I could have used Jay Chandrakeshar to link to that documentary about Blake Edwards, and kick off the Doc Block a little early - BUT then I didn't know if I'd be able to get something appropriate for Mother's Day, sure a doc about some famous actress who is also a mother (Martha Stewart, Faye Dunaway) would do, but it looks like more likely I'd hit something about Bruce Springsteen on May 11, and that won't do either, feels like more of a July 4 thing ("Born in the USA" and all that).  

I tried linking out of "Easter Sunday" via fiction films, like "Woman of the Hour", which led to "To Catch a Killer" and "Trial by Fire", more movies about serial killers and trials, which I've kind of been doing already this spring, and sure, that got me to some Mother's Day-worthy material, only I got there too soon, like in 11 steps instead of 21.  Sure, I could take 10 days off somewhere in April and early May and things would line up fine, but I've already got too much down time due to being currently under-employed - so I'm looking to fill my days up, not just sit around the house not doing anything, so I kept looking for a new plan.  

I checked Jo Koy's IMDB listing and found a couple animated films that weren't on my list, they seem OK and they get me headed off in the wrong direction, but this would also allow me to pick up a few films that were Oscar contenders last year and the year before, so that seemed like a good plan - and then after 10 films I can link up with the previous plan and start heading toward those Mother's Day films, and I should get there just in time.  Well, I'm glad we got that settled. 

THE PLOT: After the death of his grandmother, Tom Lee, a Chinese-American boy, has to be apprenticed to the talking tiger Mr. Hu and learn ancient magic to become the new guardian of an ancient phoenix. 

AFTER: Well, it sure seemed like somebody meant well here, there were plans to adapt the 2003 novel of the same name since 2008, when Cartoon Network announced they were working on it, with plans to air it in 2010. But that version never came to be - then in 2019 Paramount announced a film version of the same story, but then later announced delays in 2020, due to the pandemic. Sure, I understand that people were in lockdown and many things were not working, but I was working for an animator who couldn't wait to re-open his studio during lockdown, because it actually worked in his favor.  He couldn't travel, there were no film festivals or theater screenings, and he figured he could just hunker down and draw all day for a few months, and get his feature film done more quickly.  He was right, but then he was wrong because he got distracted making a short film about the pandemic, which delayed the feature production for another six months. Now that the feature is done, which took another four years (seven overall, let's say) he's currently blaming COVID for the film taking so long, and, well, I know that's not really true. 

In the case of "The Tiger's Apprentice", it's a little unclear how COVID shut down production, I mean, why didn't they get people to animate remotely, audition actors and have story meetings via Zoom and all that?  There are reports on line from people who worked on the film that say that rewrites took place until 2023, and production people working around the clock with no vacations while executives flew across Europe on expense accounts.  Also there were people from the story department laid off in Christmas 2019, and it seems a bit weird to let your employees go when you also are facing a deadline to get the film made. So COVID just seems to be a convenient excuse, and as a result, they ended up with a product that really didn't deserve a theatrical release, and instead got released on Paramount's streaming service very quietly in 2024. Well, I guess you get what you pay for. 

The story is OK, it involves powerful characters based on the Chinese zodiac, who have to fight evil in the human world in order to protect some Empress in the astral plane, or maybe some mythical phoenix who is inside a gem or maybe also on the astral plane, but honestly much of the non-Earth based stuff is very unclear.  Tom is a normal kid who gets bullied at school, and usually doesn't fight back because his grandmother told him to use his head and his heart instead of his fists. It's good advice, however after his grandmother is killed by an evil sorceress named Loo, and then he falls in with the Zodiac Warriors who teach him to fight.  Umm, wait, what happened to that advice about using brains and heart instead of fists?  I guess that went right out the window, was Grandma full of crap or something? 

Tom needs to be trained to be the Guardian of the Phoenix Gem or the Zodiac temple or something (also a little unclear) and when he returns home and faces Loo (disguised as Grandma) he loses the Phoenix stone in about five seconds.  Are we sure this kid has what it takes?  The whole world is about to be covered in darkness and evil spirits, and this kid can't focus on the mission long enough to hold on to the gem that's strapped around his neck.  

Loo manages to capture six of the 12 Zodiac warriors on her magic umbrella, which probably helped to keep the animation budget down, but now the six that remain (Tiger, Rat, Dragon, Monkey, Rabbit and Rooster) have to work together with Tom to defeat the evil power and get the Phoenix stone back, before Loo can use it to suck away all the mortal souls on the planet. It's going to be a big battle and take some sacrifice, maybe a trip through the Ocean of Tears, to pull this off.  Umm, yeah, good luck with that, just wake me up when it's over. 

You can tell this was kind of made on the cheap because in addition to half of the Zodiac characters disappearing for a good portion of the film, they only cast actors to play 10 out of the 12, the ox and the goat (which can blow things up for some weird reason) never say any dialog, and that kind of reminds me of the end of "Kung Fu Panda 4" when the Furious Five finally showed up, after being missing for nearly the whole movie, and they never said anything because Dreamworks didn't want to pay Seth Rogen and Angelina Jolie and Jackie Chan to just say a few words each. It's clear that there's money to be made in the world of animated films with animal characters doing martial arts, but the story needs to be good enough and entertaining enough for kids to want to go see it.  So maybe laying off the story-writing department before the film was done was a terrible move in the end. 

Directed by Raman Hui (director of "Shrek the Third")

Also starring the voices of Henry Golding (last seen in "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare"), Brandon Soo Hoo (last seen in "Ender's Game"), Lucy Liu (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Sandra Oh (last seen in "Quiz Lady"), Michelle Yeoh (last seen in "Mechanic: Resurrection"), Bowen Yang (last heard in "The Garfield Movie"), Leah Lewis (last heard in "Elemental"), Kheng Hua Tan (last seen in "Crazy Rich Asians"), Sherry Cola (last seen in "Endings, Beginnings"), Deborah S. Craig (last seen in "Me Time"), Greta Lee (last heard in "Strays"), Diana Lee Inosanto, Patrick Gallagher (last seen in "The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two"), Poppy Liu, Lydie Loots, Raman Hui (last heard in "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas"), Ryan Christopher Lee, Josh Zuckerman (last seen in "Oppenheimer")

RATING: 4 out of 10 protective charms (they don't work if you take them down, it turns out)