小门神 - 2016

AKA The Guardian Brothers, or Little Door Gods.

Not bad, it’s interesting, not boring, it’s nice and the little girl is nice, but it’s a movie more for kids than adults I’d say. Nothing I’d watch more than once.

Details:

There were once two spirits who protected anyone who would put their images on their doors (or something like that) but the world changed and people forgot about the spirits, and now the spirit world is in chaos. Only Rain’s grandma still believes in them, and keeps the images on the doors of her old diner place. But Grandma died, and Rain and her mother Luli kept the place going. 

The new mayor in the spirit world wants a radical change, wants to totally cut any dealings with the humans, and he bans old Beckett because he helped an old human lady who had fallen down.

He remembers when many many years ago there was an evil enemy called Nian, and spirits and humans had to fight together to seal it away. Now one of the brothers thinks that if they freed the Nian, humans and spirits would work together again.

Nobody wants to eat in that old place and even the kids are mean to Rain, and she is very unhappy now. 

The slim brother is tired of these new rules and upset when he’s ordered to destroy the images that are portals to the humans world, so he crosses over. YuLei saves Rain against angry dogs, then he leaves. YuLei breaks the first seal to free the Nian, and the dragon takes his powers and his youth. That was easy, Colossus was a friend and didn’t fight him, but the second is guarded by Bloom and she stops him, but then she sits to talk to him and he sneakily breaks it, and she’s sucked away, and YuLei ages a bit more. There’s still a third seal. Despite all the troubles he’s causing to humans too (no water, no rivers) he goes on. His brother ShenTu tries to stop him. 

When they got no more water, Luli got some from their neighbour, who put something in it and they got in trouble. Then they accidentally put petals in it and their soups were now magical, but now there are no more petals. Rain and Luli decided to try on new ingredients and got more popular, and Rain finally found some friends to play with.

Still, YuLei is going on, and losing a bit of his spirit each time, and he almost breaks the third seal but ShenTu stops him in time (well, he had sort of stopped himself already, he had destroyed the statues/images of himself, but couldn’t bring himself to cut his brother’s) but then ShenTu accidentally finishes what he started, and breaks the third seal. Now both worlds are in trouble but Rain finds out that fireworks keep it at bay. 

In the spirit world, the brothers and the flying kids defeat the evil tree Nian (nooo, I love trees, couldn’t it have been an evil insect? :p)

Now YuLei is young again and the brothers open a restaurant for the spirits in their world, and the humans now believe again in the spirits and feel safe knowing that they are watching over them.

P.s. What happened to Bloom though? Is she alright?