Young Detective Dee: Rise of the sea dragon - Di Renjie: Shen du long wang

China, 2013, di Hark Tsui, with Mark Chao.
Such a crazy film, that when I watched such absurd scenes, it wasn't ridiculous, it was funny :-)
It's a strange story. Bottom line is: a vengeful man wants to annihilate the whole court, and take the power. To do so he uses parasites that he puts in people's tea and in time they will transform into green creatures with scales. His first victim was a young man who made the royal tea. It's a family secret he wouldn't sell, so they poisoned him.
After he was infected they (the evil one and his followers) kept him prisoner to have him make his famous tea, which they later filled with parasites.
Young Dee is the new member of the Da Lisi guards, and is also the Chinese version of Sherlock Holmes, apparently :lol:
He forgets nothing and is extremely intelligent and brilliant.
The evil plan starts going badly when the young tea maker escapes, also freeing a sea monster that will destroy the royal fleet. He goes looking for a young woman, a courtesan, that he loved , requited.  He manages to make her understand who he really is, so she protects him from Dee, and later protects Dee from him because she wants him to calm down and don't hurt innocents people. It was a very nice scene when she threw herself at him, she hugged him saying in a hurry that she'll stay with him forever, no matter of his appearance, but he shouldn't hurt anyone. Very nice.
Analyzing him they realize everything, and they cure him, so at the end the beautiful girl that he'll manage to save, after she had put herself in danger to save him, will happily go away with her almost-totally-cured young tea maker and poet. For once the hero doesn't get the girl: good :-)
In an american film her lover would have died to let the hero console her, or joined the battle to save the girl himself.
I liked her and her lover, their story and their scenes together.
I also liked the Da Lisi Head, although I didn't get his name... sorry.
And I liked the sea monster and the battle. The emperor had a little role, and the empress reminded me of the Queen of Hearts because of her fondness for cutting people's head off :lol:
It was a nice film, not just fighting, floating around in the air, not simply using the sword to fend off flying insects, but also a horse running under water :lol: and the monster was not a disappointment, I liked it :-)