Based on Laurence Yep’s 2003 novel of the same name and directed by Raman Hui, The Tiger’s Apprentice follows a young Chinese American high schooler named Tom Lee (Brandon Soo Hoo) who discovers that not only is his grandmother secretly a powerful spellcaster, but he also comes from a long line of magical protectors called The Guardians. He is then trained by a mystical, shape-shifting tiger named Hu (Henry Golding) to prepare to fight against an evil witch named Loo (Michelle Yeoh), who seeks to destroy the world. Along with his training, Tom attempts to reunite Hu with the other Zodiac animal warriors to give him a fighting chance to stop Loo’s evil plans.
In concept, The Tiger’s Apprentice has an interesting premise that would make for a fun, children’s fantasy adventure similar to something like Harry Potter but with an all-Asian cast. However, despite its intriguing premise, The Tiger’s Apprentice doesn’t seem to have any original ideas or strive to be ambitious or unique.
On a visual level, the film is unappealing to look at. The characters themselves are poorly designed and look incredibly blocky. Many of the fight scenes are lifelines and bland to watch as they have practically no sense of style or visual flair that many contemporary animated action movies have. In general, the film’s animation feels rushed and cheap.
For a movie that attempts to be this epic, high-concept fantasy adventure with lots of magic and mystical portals, it didn’t use the medium to its fullest. The Tiger’s Apprentice attempts to be an American-style Studio Ghibli adventure like Princess Mononoke or Castle in the Sky, but it ends up just looking and feeling like a cheaper Raya and the Last Dragon.
Additionally, despite the film boasting a strong cast that includes Henry Golding, Lucy Liu, and Michelle Yeoh, a lot of the voice acting feels phoned in, almost as if none of the actors wanted to be in this movie but felt obligated to since they thought their children might enjoy the film. Yeoh’s voice performance in The Tiger’s Apprentice had about the same energy and passion as her role in Minions: The Rise of Gru. While somewhat charming at first, Bowen Yang’s role as Rat quickly became irritating as he kept delivering unfunny jokes/quip after unfunny jokes/quip. Henry Golding occasionally slipped back to his natural British accent despite his character having an American accent.
However, easily the worst performance came from the lead character of Tom. Whenever Tom isn’t either being sarcastic or getting confused over everything (which takes up about 40% of his dialogue), Brandon Soo Hoo’s line delivery is so wooden and stiff that it’s hard to take anything the character says seriously. Soo Hoo’s weak performance especially hurts during the more dramatic and emotional moments because despite the character being written as this lonely, insecure kid who isn’t sure if he can fulfill his destiny of defeating the big generic villain, his performance doesn’t come off that way.
It feels as if Soo Hoo is simply saying words directly off the script, so naturally, there is very little emotional resonance or engagement in these more serious moments.
However, easily the worst aspect of The Tiger’s Apprentice is its narrative and writing. At its core, this is an incredibly uninspired, predictable, corporate animated project that is a derivative of many other fantasy adventures like this that came before. The attempts at “humour,” aside from failing pretty much every single time, feel very MCU-y and try to mimic the sarcastic quips that many of the characters in the Marvel movies say.
The Zodiac warriors, despite being based on Chinese philosophy and culture, are reduced to caricatures, with each only having one defining character trait, making them feel more like a weak attempt at recreating the Furious Five from Kung Fu Panda instead of being their own fleshed out characters. Additionally, the inclusion of licensed music throughout the film did not fit the tone.
Even The Tiger’s Apprentice’s basic premise of a main character being whisked away from his hometown as a baby to escape from an evil villain and live most of his life unaware of his magical background has been done to death. Audiences have seen this type of story hundreds of times before, and the film does nothing to distinguish itself or add anything to this basic premise.
The only aspect of this film that feels even remotely distinct is its reliance on Chinese mythology and having an all-Asian cast, which at the time of the book’s release might have been a trailblazing phenomenon, but today is not in the literary world, and the novelty of the adaptation can only carry it so far.
The characters are so poorly written and developed that they feel like two-dimensional caricatures. Rather than taking the time to flesh out each main character, the film instead chooses to speed run through its plot to get from one action set piece to the next, which, as mentioned before, lacks any sense of fun or style, so it’s not even worth it in the end. Considering that the film is under 90 minutes (with 10 minutes of credits) and has such absurdly quick pacing, it felt like a lot of extra story and footage was cut from the movie to make the film as short as possible and rush it out.
Either way, while the movie had the foundation for a decent fantasy adventure kids’ movie, it completely dropped the ball. As bad as The Tiger’s Apprentice is, the movie’s biggest fault is being completely disposable.