The Red Fox and the Scholar (2020)

Escapism

Such an enjoyable story, shere fantasy and escapism; something we all need in these challenging times.
I love the true friendship that develops between the lead characters and how Zi Jin (Chen Li Nong) is so naive and innocent, which disarms Shi San (Lee Xian) on a few occasions.
The CGI is pretty good and there are ghosts and all manner of strange creatures
The filming and sets are so good too.
I enjoyed the majority of the soundtrack, especially the closing song (sung by cast member CLN), but there was some instrumental music in a couple of scenes that I didn't think matched.
I felt a little more could have been made of the closing scenes, but overall I thought this nicely acted and well done.
Hard to believe it's Chen Li Nong's first film and one I'd happily watch again.

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Destined adventure with friendship, brotherhood, sacrifice

Foxes use elixirs found on humans for immortality. A white elixir exists one in a thousand years and chosen fox students will go through an exam to find it.
Hundreds of centuries ago, a cute and playful fox spirit was saved by a boy collecting herbs in a mountain and they were fated to meet again. The boy who died centuries ago is reborn as a scholar from Tushan who has his own mission and on his way to participate in an examination. The fox spirit went to the human world to look for the claman who has the elixir thought to be the rarest. He was assigned a protector because their chief knew he will cause a lot of trouble.
The unexpected friendship and brotherhood between them was put to test and they were running towards a doomed ending.
Who will sacrifice for who? Whose soul will be snatched? What will be more important?
Surprised by the ending to know a danger was well disguised, this black nine-tailed fox was greedy for immortality. He became the soul snatcher you didn't expect that deserved to be punished by lightning.
The story is short but I enjoyed the brotherhood, the funny and silly moments, the innocent scholar running for his life but came back trying to save his mischievous fox spirit friend not knowing it was part of his tricks, the short fight scenes, their costumes, and short romance,
I was distracted with the different healing method using blood of the different kinds of monsters stored in the paintings because it didn't look good for those monsters but this is fantasy and fiction,
The scholar and the fox spirit balance each other and I love their story. Li Xian is very cute and funny as the mischievous fox spirit and he bonds well with Chen Li Nong the naive but kind hearted scholar. They both have beautiful souls.
The fox spirit's nine-tailed fox transformation reminded me of Kurama but with some six packs, the cgi for both foxes and their fight scene is amazing,
Watch it and have fun,

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