2/5 stars
Long delayed because of the Covid-19 pandemic, The Tiger’s Apprentice is a lively but limited animated fantasy that is finally being streamed by Paramount+.
Adapted from the 2003 novel of the same name by Laurence Yep, this brightly coloured adventure begins in Hong Kong, with a woman and a child attacked by luminous-green, dragon-like monsters as they drive across a bridge.
Cut to San Francisco 15 years later and the child is now a yellow-hoodie-wearing teen named Tom Lee (Brandon Soo Hoo). Like any other adolescent, he wants to fit in.
“I just want to be normal,” he says, although he’s already aware he has special untapped powers when he throws an unruly fellow pupil into the ceiling of the school corridor.
As he soon discovers, his grandmother Mrs Lee (Kheng Hua Tan), who spends most of her time speaking in riddles, is a guardian of an ancient phoenix egg, and it was she that was driving him in the car all those years earlier.
But when she dies, Tom must take on the mantle of protector. He meets again with the tiger, Mr Hu (Henry Golding), who teaches him the ways of ancient magic as they strive to ensure the powerful phoenix egg doesn’t fall into the hands of Loo.
While it’s a promising set-up for a story, The Tiger’s Apprentice quickly descends into a messy, unfocused adventure that relies on chaotic fight scenes as Mr Hu’s Zodiac crew power up in the battle against Loo and her cronies.
Yet this is largely an uninspiring adaptation that brazenly cherry-picks from Chinese mythology. Flavoured with a hip-hop soundtrack that feels entirely incongruous, it’s all in service of a flaccid story that rarely engages the brain.
