🙃 Comedy— 💎 Gem #123 (2021) 🏅 Top 100

"So it's like what I said before, on the surface, it looks like the television is broken. But actually, there's nothing wrong with the television. There is something wrong with the universe."

If I had to pick one film this year that came out of nowhere, surprised me completely, and is as close to perfect as matters, I’d pick Journey to the West, a witty and poignant comedy about a man who has devoted his life to finding extraterrestrial life.

I have watched this film at least three times this year, and it would be vying for top place in my 2023 ranked list, except it was nominally released in 2021 and has just recently become available outside of China. The only other same-year rewatch has been When Evil Lurks.

I want to be clear that this is not horror or a thriller at all, but it has the same creativeness and genre-bending ingenuity, and I am pretty sure that it will appeal to this audience.

Thirty years after starting his search for signs of alien life, Tang Zhijun runs a nearly-bankrupt magazine about exploring the universe. He firmly believes that if humankind can discover extraterrestrials, this is the sole way to get wisdom to help humanity not to destroy our world. He also firmly believes that extraterrestrial activity documented by possibly NASA has destroyed his television, which he uses to search for alien life.

For some reason—I think because his television is broken by aliens— using the urgently-needed money made by selling a prized artefact, he funds a voyage to the west to follow a lead of a possible alien event. And westward they go, still basically fund-free, collecting a ragtag band of characters as they go.

The comedy is clever and well timed. Within the first ten minutes something occurred that made me laugh more than I have since probably before COVID, sadly. Look out for a series of batshit poems that escalate in insanity as the film goes on. At the same time, all of the characters will come to matter to you, and there are at least seven strong and distinct characters working as an ensemble as the film progresses.

The music fits the film and changes character to mark progress west, and along with it, the tone changes. There is still comedy up through the end, but it manages to pivot to a really beautiful presentation and summation of the empathetic message that the lead has been trying to formulate clearly his entire life. There is a wonderful speech, and the ridiculousness in his life, which was always already touching, becomes entirely empathy and poetry and beauty.

There is, before this, a carrot-wielding Don Quixote moment that is pure cinema. You will know it when you see it. And if you don’t yet know how poetry, stew-making, extra-terrestrial messaging, and headwear interconnect, or the dangers of traveling with a flaming panda, you owe it to yourself to find this film and watch it. And just in case you don’t have enough motivational statements in your life, it accidentally coins “Drink less. Stay curious.” Entirely fair.

Very few people have seen Journey to the West, even compared to most of the films I put on the gems list, and I don’t know why. I think it’s just a distribution issue. This is way too good of a film to be this under-watched. The quality to viewer ratio here is ridiculously disproportionate. If you can find this, you must watch it.

Some Lists:

🏅 Top 100
🙃 Comedy Ranked
📆 2021
💎 Slightly Hidden Horror Gems and 🌱 Candidates
📽️ Viewing Next | 🗂️ Index of Lists (UP TO DATE!)

Looking for something different? Recent or relevant reviews:

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person | Red Rooms | Bones and All> | Midsommar Director's Cut [With Novice] Part 1 [Part 2] [Part 3] | Eyes WIde Shut | Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In) | Train to Busan | 20 Days in Mariupol | Beyond Utopia | Color out of Space | Midsommar Director's Cut [With Novice] Part 1 | Part 2 | Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key |The Nightmare Before Christmas | Saltburn | Black Swan | Livide | Climax | Lux Æterna