A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box

A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box (1995) is a Hong Kong fantasy comedy you can watch online on iFILM — directed by Jeffrey Lau and starring Stephen Chow in a loose, wildly irreverent retelling of the classic novel Journey to the West.

A bandit called the Joker has no idea he is the Monkey King, reincarnated after being expelled from the heavens. Two jealous women compete for his attention, a demon named Thirteenth Sister hunts the nearby monk, and somewhere in the mix is a magic box that can throw its owner five hundred years back in time. Stephen Chow plays the chaos completely straight, which is what makes the slapstick land so hard. The film is part one of a two-part story — the conclusion arrives in A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella — and the cliffhanger is real. Both films became cult touchstones across East Asia through the late nineties and beyond. Stream A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box (1995) online on iFILM.