(Reviews of Children of the Cult; Maya and the Wave; Things Will Be Different; and Dragonkeeper)
CHILDREN OF THE CULT.
Although Maclain and Chapman Way's Wild Wild Country (2018) was widely acclaimed, some critics noted that certain crucial aspects were omitted from this six-part Netflix chronicle of the Rajneeshpuram community that was established in 1981 near the town of Antelope in Wasco County, Oregon by Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho) and his personal assistant, Ma Anand Sheela. Documentarists Maroesja Perizonius and Alice McShane seek to put the record straight in the courageous, confrontational, and continuously shocking, Children of the Cult.
The Rajneesh movement had communes around the world. Born in Weston-super-Mare, Sargam was taken to Bhagwan's ashram in Pune when she was six. She was overwhelmed by the bustle, but 23 year-old Californian, Erin (who had gone voluntarily after being raised in affluence), was fascinated by the energy and contentment of people who seemed to have found the secret of good living. Her initial suspicion at the group mindset fell away, as she became devoted to the guru and his teachings.
A German film-maker gained access to a padded underground chamber where group therapy sessions took place. As we see footage, Erin recalls the violent behaviour, as people supposedly escaped entrenched attitudes in order to surrender to the new order. Even though she witnessed rape in these sessions, she came to accept them as a means to an end. Sargam similarly remembers the importance placed on sexual freedom and kissing adults while sitting on their laps after repeatedly watching public copulation.
Maroesja Perizonius was taken to a commune in the Netherlands by her mother. Leela was 11 when she entered a commune in Switzerland, where she recalls being encouraged to flaunt her body and see behaving sexually as normal. Sharing her recollections with Maroesja, Leela admits she thought it was all normal at the time. Fifteen year-old Rosalind was more resistant to the man who kept pestering her after she moved to the Medina commune at Herringswell Manor in Suffolk in 1981. On the advice of an older woman, she gave in to him because he would probably lose interest and she chokes back tears remembering how the entire commune was gossiping, but no one (including her parents) helped her.
Medina was turned into a boarding school, so that parents could continue their spiritual journeys without distraction. Sargem declares the headteacher to have been a paedophile and Leela remembers thinking that Sharna was a fun guy, strumming his guitar and leading singsongs. But she felt awkward watching an eight year-old girl sitting on his lap, while Sargem remembers him photocopying genitals to pass the images around the adult males. Maroesja worked long hours in the school bakery and recalls the permission form her mother had to sign to give her contraceptives at the age of 13.
As Bhagwan had declared children to be an impediment to enlightenment, Deeksha was ordered to supervise a programme of sterilisation at Rajneeshpuram. Erin regrets being talked into showing her devotion in this manner when she was too young to take such a decision. She and Deeksha recall the private sessions she had with Bhagwan and how they had been conditioned to accept his advances. Now, however, both women are traumatised by their experiences.
Dickon joins Maroesja on a return visit to Rajneeshpuram, which had a children's dormitory called Howdy Doody. We see local TV news coverage of red-clad cult members in nearby Antelope and Bhagwan driving past in one of his 30 Rolls-Royces. They meet John Silvertooth, who was the mayor who tried to challenge the commune when it sought to take over the area in order to operate in complete autonomy.
Sarito, who came to the commune on her own ahead of her mother, recalls being targeted by a man who was kind to her before taking her virginity when she was 12 years old. Dickon was 14 when an older woman seduced him and he was crushed to discover that she slept with his best friend the next day and had no emotional attachment to him at all. When the pair join Maroesja at the Oregon archive to read a 1985 newspaper story identifying the child neglect and abuse occurring at Rajneeshpuram, Dickon breaks down at the realisation that accusations were made but not acted upon to spare others the mistreatment he had endured.
In the wake of Wild Wild Country's release, Sargem used Facebook to address the series's failure to address the abuse of children. She named the men who had assaulted her and one wrote back to apologise and justify his actions. He was called Nityanando and his photograph appears before Maroesja has a phone conversation with him about Sargem's rape in his trailer. While he admits what happened, Nityanando (who is still part of the movement in Corfu) insists that the context has to be taken into consideration.
Toby spent four years in Oregon and he agrees to speak on camera about the normalised predatoriness that he witnessed. He admits to a four-day fling with a 16 year-old half his age and causes Maroesja to halt the interview when he claims that young girls `acted out' because that was what they had been taught to do, but she suggests this might have been a defence mechanism rather than anything consensual.
Binu recalls that being sexual was seen as a typical aspect of commune life. She reckons to have slept with around 150 men in four teenage years and can't recall anyone advising her to find another focus, even when she started having frequent yeast infections. Sarito remembers there being a gynaecologist at the commune, but avers that their function was to fit diaphragms rather than monitor sexual health. Diaries kept by the likes of Binu listing the names of her partners were confiscated on the orders of Sheela, while a meeting was held to advise adult males to be discreet about their activities rather than cease them.
Oregon journalist Win McCormack is still amazed that no official investigation was carried out into under-age sex at Rajneeshpuram. But, as Maroesja confirms, nothing was done about reports at Medina, either. However, following Bhagwan's deportation in 1985, the commune collapsed and Sargem reveals she had so little idea how to exist in the real world that she undertook sex work to survive because it was all she knew. Leela explains how difficult it was to form relationships and Sarito and Binu lament missing out on love and children because of what they had been through.
Having changed his name to Osho, Bhagwan died in 1990. But the movement lives on as Osho International and Maroesja notes that one of its leading figures is a known abuser. Sarito and Binu share their recollections of
Milarepa, who is filmed opening a new centre in Dallas. A member of the production team poses as a student film-maker and is given his phone number. When he invites her to another meditation session, Maroesja goes along to seek answers. She doorsteps Milarepa and asks him about Sarito, but he refuses to answer and orders them off his property, while threatening to call the police.
She gets to meet Sheela in Switzerland, but she denies any knowledge of sex with minors. When pushed, she claims the girls were taught about freedom and were obviously exercising their own choices. But this was not her experience and, when asked about Buni's list, she repeats her denial and leaves. Mitchell, one of Maroesja's abusers, similarly baulks at discussing matters on camera, even though he apologises to her via e-mail for what he did to her. Much as it pains her, however, she knows she must go on and this outstanding piece of investigative film-making is the result.
It's apt in a way that this has been sponsored by ITV, as the channel screened many of John Pilger's final documentaries and Maroesja Perizonius - who has already produced the short, Communekind (2004) about her ordeal - employs some of his trusted gambits in trying to film the accused and make them account for their actions. The responses she elicits are hardly surprising, but the fact she tracks these people down and puts them on the spot is both admirable and valorous.
One suspects few will see this restrained, but potent picture in cinemas. But the TV audience should be sizeable enough to ensure that there is no longer a hiding place for the hideous secrets that the Rajneeshees have been keeping since the 1980s. Perhaps more victims will feel emboldened to come forward and name other perpetrators. Dare one hope that the authorities might even be prompted into inquiring into what happened at Medina? It seems unlikely, however, especially as Herringswell Manor near Bury St Edmunds is currently on the market and there is no mention of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in any of the online blurbs.
MAYA AND THE WAVE.
Profiling big wave surfer, Maya Gabeira, Stephanie Johnes's Maya and the Wave makes an instructive companion to Christopher Nelius's Girls Can't Surf (2020). However, as Johnes had previously directed the competitive skipping documentary, Doubletime (2007), and photographed Maiken Baird and Michelle Major's Williams sisters study, Venus and Serena (2012), it comes as a disappointment that the narrow focus seems to leave so much of the story untold.
Charging into the story, Johnes shows how Rio-born Maya Gabeira went from `zero to 100' seemingly in the blink of an eye. Aussie Ross Clarke-Jones had been worried for her when Carlos Burle had started mentoring his compatriot. She admits to being scared each time she tackles a big wave, but that's part of the appeal of a sport that turned her into a celebrity with titles and endorsements to spare. There's little sense of timescale in this blizzard of information and opinion, but we pause in 2010, when Gabeira wipes out at Teahupo'o in Hawaii and was informed by one of the founding fathers of the sport that she had made it look bad.
Confiding that, despite her privileged background, she had felt like an outsider as a child, Gabeira admits that she had taken a chance in trying to break into a male-dominated sport. But she was inspired by Garrett McNamara riding his way into the Guinness Book of World Records at Nazaré on the Portuguese Atlantic coast and she felt she could match him and go beyond. However, her first encounter in 2013 almost ended in tragedy and Burle and McNamara recall the rescue from the water after she crashed and the desperate bid to revive her on the beach. Once he had seen her into the ambulance, however, Burle returned to the waves because he felt that was the best way to occupy his time, as worrying or being sorry wouldn't help Gabeira one jot.
Fortunately, she was in such peak physical condition that she was able to survive the ordeal. But, as McNamara opines, many surfers would have perished. Mother Yamê Reis complains about the shortage of jet skis when her daughter gets home and is welcomed by father, Fernando, and sister, Tami. They support her when American surfer Laird Hamilton opines on the TV news that she lacks the skills to attempt such waves. Indeed, Fernando appeared on chat shows to show his pride in his daughter, which counted for much as he was the revered co-founder of the Green Party in Brazil, who had been jailed for his involvement in the 1969 kidnapping of US Ambassador Charles Burke Elbrick in an effort to secure the release of political prisoners held by the junta - an incident that had inspired Bruno Barreto's Oscar-nominated drama, Four Days in September (1997).
Recovering from a succession of unsuccessful surgeries, Gabeira was determined to resume a lifestyle she loved and to pit herself against the waves and her detractors. Red Bull sponsored the 2016 documentary, Return to Nazaré, with Burle back on her crew. Seeing how much pain she was in, he told her she wasn't ready to attempt the big stuff and suggested she took care of her body and gave retirement some serious consideration. Surfer friend Pedro Scooby felt the same way, but Gabeira decided to have a fusion operation in her back as a last resort and slowly worked her way back to fitness.
She went to Hawaii later in 2016 and forged a new partnership on and off the water with German Sebastian Steudtner, who helped her through a tough period of psychological doubt that her mother had been expecting as part of the trauma. She insisted on surfing again, in spite of a fear of drowning, and proved to herself that she could survive a wipeout and resume her career. However, those awfully nice people at Red Bull decided to part ways at that juncture and Gabeira was mad to say the least.
The callous business decision renewed her fighting spirit, however, and she based herself in Nazaré to be ready for the big one when it came. It did, in January 2018, and she broke the record for a female surfer with a 68ft wave. Yet, when Johnes came to interview her a couple of days later, she felt down, as though the triumph had drained her. Further kicks came from the surfing fraternity, which downplayed the wave at a World Surf League awards ceremony in Los Angeles in 2018 and dumped Gabeira in third in the Big Wave category.
She put the snub down to sexist fear of being bested by a woman. But Guinness's refusal to answer an inquiry about why there was no category for women's surfing records was just plain rude. So, Gabeira put out an online appeal for support for a petition and thousands sent her messages of support in a heartening display of girl power that earned her a certificate. Two years later, competing against 18 men, she broke her world record and a closing caption reveals that Gabeira has more big wave titles than anyone in history - male or female.
She's a remarkable athlete, who broke her own record with a 73.5ft breaker in 2020. Yet, while Johnes succeeds in demonstrating Gabeira's courage, commitment, and charisma, it always feels as though something is missing from this portrait. Much of the problem lies in the lack of context, as the film makes it seem as though Gabeira is the only female big wave surfer out there. In fact, Andrea Moller, Sarah Gerhardt, Bianca Valenti, and Keala Kennelly all blazed trails of their own and have since been followed by the likes of Paige Alms and Laura Enever, who now holds the world record for a woman surfer (with the man's crown currently being held by Sebastian Steudtner).
As the documentary was copyrighted in 2022, it can't take subsequent events into account, such as Gabeira's victory in the 2024 Big Wave Challenge at Nazaré. But the exclusive focus on the Brazilian distorts the wider picture and gives the impression of the Johnes has ducked the issue of how she is perceived by other women competitors and how she views them. Her subtext is clearly the rampant misogyny in the surfing world, with so many of Gabeira's endorsement images and magazine covers depicting her in a bikini - which she never wears while surfing. But Johnes hardly improves the situation by presenting Gabeira in a pioneering isolation that is wholly misleading.
Filmed by Johnes and a trio of camera collaborators, the surfing footage is of a high quality and contrasts tellingly with the more intimate moments of Gabeira with her family and the distressing scenes of her battling through her medical crises. Editors Jordana Berg and Shannon Kennedy do a solid job, while Jon Cooper (aka Turtle) contributes a quirkily effective song score. But the opening segment leaps between achievements and setbacks without providing a chronological structure. Thus, while it's readily evident that Gabeira is a surfing phenomenon and an inspirational role model, this snapshot doesn't quite do her or her sport justice.
THINGS WILL BE DIFFERENT.
Michael Felker has been making shorts since 2009, raking up nine titles in the process. Over that period he has also been working as an editor, most notably on Spring (2014), The Endless (2017), Synchronic (2019), and Something in the Dirt (2022), which were all directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. They now repay the favour by executive producing Felker's feature bow, Things Will Be Different, a time travel thriller that owes evident debts to Shane Carruth's Primer (2004) and Rian Johnson's Looper (2012), as well as to Joel and Ethan Coen's Blood Simple (1984).
Following a crime, siblings Joseph (Adam David Thompson) and Sidney (Riley Dandy) meet at a diner, where `I Want to Go Back to Michigan' by The Andrews Sisters is playing on the jukebox and he has been handed a notebook by a customer (Chloe Skoczen) giving instructions on how to access the hideout where they will spend the next fortnight. Sid has a six year-old daughter that Joe has never met and they plan to use the time to catch up after an estrangement. Changing clothes in the woods after coming across a deserted campsite, the pair emerge from a cornfield to find three interlopers shooting birds outside the remote farmhouse where they are going to stay.
Scaring them off with gunshots, Joe and Sid search the empty house and follow the notebook to use the hands of the various grandfather clocks to open a door to a room containing an old-fashioned phone. Dialling in the code, Sidn gives the password and they find themselves 14 days in the future, so that they can lay low and make their escape with a bag stuffed with millions of dollars when the countback ends.
With the house now fully furnished and well-stocked with groceries, the siblings enjoy a pleasant 13 days, which pass in a rosy montage accompanied by an easy listening ditty. On the last night, they have a heart-to-heart, in which he tries to apologise for her being arrested years before, but she doesn't blame him and believes the episode shaped her life for the better (even though her pawn shop is in debt - hence the robbery).
She's less well disposed the next day, however, when they discover they can't get back to the past and are instructed to go to the nearby mill. They find a skeletal corpse in the darkness and Sid runs away. But Joe calms her down and they return to find a safe containing a dictaphone that enables them to communicate with the forces who control the portal. The voice reveals that someone is snooping on their activities and that the siblings will have to kill them in order to secure their release. Joe agrees to the terms, but Sid is anxious about her child because they have no idea how long they'll be in limbo.
A more capriciously enigmatic pan shot montage follows to take us through the seasons to Day 352. Another centres on fridge contents, sandwich ingredients, and ways of passing the time between shifts watching the horizon for signs of life. Piecing together evidence found at the mill and the house, Sid surmises that the property was vacated around 1955 and has been taken over by the time controllers, who have been using it for their service. But she wants to know what they get out of it and wonders if Joe isn't in cahoots with them to drive her mad and swindle her out of her share of the money.
Joe resents the suggestion and declares that he thinks they've been trapped like flies under a glass to amuse the cruel person watching them die slowly. He even wonders whether they've been trapped in a torture porn movie.
She accuses him of being drunk, but comforts him when he starts sobbing. They rub along for a few more days, as winter sets in. But Sid notices someone moving in a nearby house and they are shot at by a black-clad figure in the frosty distance. A disco song that Sid half-remembers her mother playing starts up on a boom box and she gets hit in the shoulder when trying to pick off the assailant.
Joe rushes to the wonky chimney-like edifice in the grounds, where he had stashed a revolver, but fails to make it back to the house and is held in the chapel abutting the mill by a hooded figure. They get Joe to speak on the tape and lie that bad weather is preventing him from bringing in the intruder's body. Meanwhile, Sid is also using the dictaphone to talk to the controllers, who reassures her that her brother is alive. However, they reveal that they can only help them if they aid them in eliminating the infiltrator.
The hooded figure scribbles that they simply wants revenge on whoever killed their family. But they are interrupted by Sid creeping around outside and she misses when the stranger scarpers across the field towards the house. Bursting in through different doors, the pair fight, with Sid trying to remove the scarf covering her assailant's face. She's shocked to discover that the interloper is her grown-up daughter, Steph (Chloe Skoczen).
Despite hurting his leg, Joe limps across from the mill and enters all guns blazing. Sid gets hit, while Steph flees upstairs and uses key to get into the barred door. Joe desperately tries to keep his sister alive, but fails. Speaking into the dictaphone for instructions, he's told to wait in the woodshed. Here he finds two silhouetted figures (Justin Benson and Sarah Bolger) at a console in the distance. They announce that he has failed to provide them with the information they need on the encroacher and that they have no option but to wipe him.
Pleading for another chance to go back and fix some mistakes so Sid doesn't have to end in a shallow grave in the grounds, Joe finds himself back at the start of the story. A plane flies over him and he kills the campers he comes across in the woods before rendezvousing with Sid in the diner, where `Too Late to Turn Back Now' by The Cornelius Brothers is playing in the background. She doesn't recognise him, but he has the Venn-like wrist tattoo they share and begs her to shoot him and take the money to improve her life with Steph. Sid pulls the trigger, but flees without the bags and the sound of sirens can be heard, as the camera pans to a painting of the farmhouse on the wall with two people approaching it.
One can almost imagine the glee that Felker must have felt at concocting his scenario. By opting to provide no backstory and avoid explaining the mechanics of the `time machine', he left himself scot-free to make up the story as he went along. He even scores a bonus point from such enigmaticism, as he affords the audience the pleasure of speculating about the nature of Joe and Sid's childhoods, how they became estranged, and who fathered her child.
This kind of selectivity comes with its own problems, however, as everything ends up depending upon the action itself and the calibre of the performances. Although Adam David Thompson tends to mumble and Riley Dandy can occasionally over-emote, the leads do a decent job of sustaining interest in a plight with indeterminate jeopardy that never gets to seem particularly suspenseful because so much has been left off screen. By the time Felker introduces other characters, the plot has stalled and the rush of incidents involving the intruder and the comptrollers mere muddles matters without offering much by way of insight or clarification.
Yet, Falker dots Zach Thomas's sets with telltale details that are picked up with a deceptive nonchalance by Carissa Dorson's camera. The Venn-like tattoos suggest Joe and Sid are interlocked in a continuum from which they cannot escape and this situation is reinforced with the 360° camera sweep that recalls the clock faces and the revolving hands in order to stress the inevitability of the human condition, with its repeated cycles of betrayal, resentment, regret, and doomed attempts at amends and reconciliation.
Editing with Rebeca Marques, Felker makes assured use of montages to convey the passing of time, as well as the growing bond between the siblings. But the scripting isn't always so nimble. Sid's discovery of the various artefacts and cutting that enable her to piece together the significance of the décor feels contrived and dead-endish, while the leap from Day 13 to Day 352 seems slick, but it also absolves Felker of the task of filling in the gaps and exploring the incremental impact that the changed circumstances might have had on the stranded siblings.
It could be argued that this high-concept, lo-fi saga is an allegory for human trafficking, as Joe and Sid are trying to get to a destination and are forced to trust handlers who keep them in the dark about the dangers that they will face. But one suspects Felker was simply riffing on genre tropes that have become increasingly common in recent times. Nevertheless, even though his writing might be more cerebral and is sometimes arch (particularly in its efforts to conceal and confuse), he succeeds in proving himself to be an accomplished image maker, who will be worth checking out down the line.
DRAGONKEEPER.
There haven't been many Sino-Spanish co-productions. But any cultural nuances arising from such a collaboration on Li Jianping and Salvador Simó's CGI adventure, Dragonkeeper, are borne away by a British voiceover cast who have clearly been instructed to vamp up the vernacular in order to make this ancient fantasy accessible to modern tweenagers who might be familiar with the six-tome series by Australian novelist Carole Wilkinson.
The opening narration reveals that dragons once allied with humans to defeat the necromancers in a titanic battle. However, humankind betrayed the dragons and their numbers dwindled during the Han dynasty, as hunters sought them to those who believed that potions made from dragon parts could cure illness and extend life.
One who believes so is Diao (Anthony Howell), who vows never suffer in the same way as his late mother after he fails to find a dragon in time to save her. This doesn't bother dragon hunter, Master Lan (Tony Jawayadena), who keeps two dragons, Long Danzi (Bill Nighy) and Wu Yu (Beth Chalmers), in a deep dungeon in his citadel. The `honoured guests' are fed with baskets of vegetables that are hauled up a hill by the aged Lao Ma (Sarah Lam), who has been raising Ping (Mayalinee Griffiths), a foundling from one of Lan's excursions, who is wholly aware of her lowly status.
As Ping's pet rat, Hua Hua (Jonathan David Mellors), falls through the grating of the dragon enclosure, she lowers herself on a rope and gets to meet Wu Yu and Long Danzi, who are able to communicate with her and inform her that their unhatched son, Kai, must be protected at all costs, as some humans call his egg `the Pearl of Immortality' and will do anything to harness the qi life force it contains.
When Wu Yu dies, Diao comes to harvest her corpse, as he has great plans to change his destiny. But Captain Kwan (Andrew Leung) arrives at head of the Emperor's guard and announces that he will place Long Danzi in a cage and take him to court to heal the ailing ruler. Having already discovered the power that comes from being a left-handed dragonkeeper, Ping tries to help the dragon, as he is chained by soldiers. He entrusts her with Kai's egg for safekeeping, but it ends up in Kwan's clutches after Diao drops Ping from a high ledge and Long Danzi has to escape and swoop down to save her.
On the long trek to the court, Ping bombards Long Danzi with questions about her powers, the nature of freedom, and the importance of qi. In order to test her mettle, Long Danzi insists that they cross a rickety suspension bridge and is convinced that Ping is special when she survives the ordeal and keeps Hua Hua safe. Eventually they reach the palace, but Long Danzi uses a secret underground entrance and tells Ping about the war with the necromancers and the bond that once existed between humans and dragons.
Kai's egg, meanwhile, has been delivered to the Emperor (Paul McEwen), who consults the Prince (Felix Rosen) when Diao asks if he can peruse the sacred scrolls to find an immortality spell. Angry at being thwarted, Diao returns to his lair, where he is greeted by Wang Cao (Bill Bailey), a former dragonkeeper who is building an apparatus that can harness the power of the Pearl of Immortality to vanquish the disease that claimed his mother and now marks his own skin. He dispatches Wang to eliminate Ping, but he takes pity on her and shows her how to use her qi to control some fireflies, as they make their way through the labyrinth of corridors in the lost city beneath the palace.
Giving Wang the slip, Ping finds herself in the throne room, where she calmly walks up to the Emperor and demands he hands over the dragon egg. Her boldness coincides with Long Danzi launching an attack on the imperial guard and he squares off against the chain-wielding Kwan. In seeking to make her getaway, Ping fills a jar with fireflies to resemble the glowing Pearl of Immortality and even punches the Prince on the nose when he stands in her way.
Unfortunately, Ping continues to trust Wang, who offers to take her by boat to Diao. However, they are intercepted by Kwan, who has followed the footprints that the Prince had tricked Ping into leaving behind. The captain realises that Diao is up to no good and plans to stop him before he can use his contraption to suck the qi energy out of the egg and use it to transform himself. However, he has his own power dissipated by Diao and ages in a trance, as he is overcome and loses control of the Pearl of Immortality.
Ping sends Hua Hua scurrying off to find Long Danzi and the rodent has to mime because the dragon can't understand him. Realising that Ping is in danger, Long Danzi smashes through the wall separating the underground chamber from the palace. However, Diao has already entered the regeneration pod and is only prevented from changing into a powerful beast by the penitent Wang using the last of his qi to levitate the egg out of the machinery and hand it to Ping. As Kwan confronts a zombie army under Diao's command, Long Danzi flies into combat with his increasingly monstrous foe. Seeing the ageing dragon struggle, Ping summons her qi and directs it at Diao, who grows so large that he can't fit inside the cramped confines of his lair and the zombies crumble, as he is crushed by the collapsing masonry.
Desperate to reach the dragon realm so that the egg can be placed in the birthing pool, Long Danzi exhausts himself, as he has sustained serious wounds from his duel. Kai turns out to be a cuddly baby dragon, who wants to yomp with Ping. But she wants him to meet his father and they rush out on to the beach with Hua Hua (who has survived his own share of scrapes). Long Danzi insists that his time has come, but Ping cries that she is tired of being told she is free to do what she wants and uses her qi to send the dragon into the sky.
Does he perform an Aslan-like resurrection? One suspects so, as the book has him being spirited to the healing shores of the Isle of the Blest. Whether this serviceable, if uninspiring fantasy merits a follow-up is another matter. The tale is involving enough and Ping makes a spirited heroine. But there are slow passages and too little sense of jeopardy or peril, as even Diao's venomous spiders prove not to be as deadly as they seem. Moreover, the climactic tussle resembles something from a video game after the visuals up to that point had carried a storybook restraint.
More enervating, however, are some of the voiceovers. Young Mayalinee Griffiths does well enough as Ping, although she's sometimes allowed to sound like a peevish 21st-century tween rather than an ancient Chinese slave girl. Anthony Howell is suitably hissable as Diao (although some of his facial expressions are as clumsily animated as much of the human locomotion), while Bill Bailey deftly conveys Wang Cao's sense of conflicted regret. Tony Jawayadena's Cockney thug and the Scot among the palace guards don't sound quite right, but the biggest disappointment is Bill Nighy's miscasting as the dragon. Even though Long Danzi is on the wiry side, he's still an imposing creature. Thus, while he doesn't necessarily require a Blessedian boom, he does need to sound more formidable, even if he's more aware than Ping that, unless there are some girl dragons hiding away somewhere, Kai is destined to be the last of his kind.
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