Review: 'Big Fish & Begonia'

While China is slowly becoming the next big market in the film industry regarding box office sales, they are still developing when it comes to making films, particularly in the animation genre.

Well now, here is my first experience of watching a Chinese animation. Technically, Kung Fu Panda 3 is a Chinese co-production with America. But this particular new release is 100 percent pure Chinese.

I was going into this pretty cold. All I knew was that it did pretty well in China last year and it has been doing the rounds at various film festivals this year. Now that I've seen it, may I be the first say that China could now be the next player in the animation industry.

My first thoughts whilst watching it was that the animation looked very similar to Studio Ghibli. Even the story was starting to fit into what you might expect to come from the highly successful Japanese animation studio. It particularly resembled Spirited Away, one of the very few films that I gave a 10/10 rating.

Thankfully, it did not come off as a re-hash as the pacing of the story felt far off from Studio Ghibli's much gentler speed.

The story was doing enough to make it feel like its own thing. The emotions of the story were executed well and by the end of it, I was pretty satisfied with what they did.

Easily its biggest positive is the animation, both on a design and imagination perspective. It's strong in its detail and has a wonderful use of colour that is pleasing to the eye. That aspect was also helped by its level of world-building. It's vast in its imagination and I felt the over-exposition felt necessary enough to at least introduce us to this world.

Another positive was the characters. They were easy to root for and their design of them looked great both in its detail and its design.

I did have some minor problems with it. The pacing was a bit jumpy at times that, for me, ruined the flow of the story. I had also small gripes with the main story. There were two romances going on that had me feeling conflicted in which one I'm supporting to care for as the main one.

Also, the ending seemed to take forever to get sorted. They lingered on for far too long on certain moments that could have been executed much swifter and that would have kept emotion of the final act moving along at the right pace.

I could be cruel and say this is trying to be too much like a Hayao Miyazaki, but how can that be a bad thing? Also, it has plenty of traditional Chinese imagery that it does enough to make it it's own product. As well as comparisons to Spirited Away, I also saw a bit of The Little Mermaid and The Last Airbender in this as well.

In the end, I really liked this. I felt it to be moving, inspiring, and wonderful in its imagery.

The level of imagination and variety of character designs are as strong as Studio Ghibli's best fantasy features. However, the characters, strength of the story, and general pacing were not as high quality. However, the whole experience was highly enjoyable and I was impressed with what came out of this.

If you like Studio Ghibli and similar films, then definitely check this one out. It might need some improvement on the pacing and story-telling, but seeing this shows that China could give us some of the best animations for the next decade.

Rating: 8/10