On the heart is Tom Lee (Brandon Soo Hoo), who has been raised since infancy by his grandmother (Kheng Hua Tan) in a rambling San Francisco residence that’s so festooned with tchotchkes and talismans that many within the neighborhood suspect that she is a witch. He looks like an strange 15-year-old highschool pupil however when he someway sends a bully flying into the ceiling throughout a between-classes scrape, he begins to suspect that one thing is off. Sadly, this act attracts the eye of Lavatory (Yeoh), a malevolent determine who desires a magical necklace that Grandma has been guarding and which has powers that might result in unimaginable destruction had been it to fall into the flawed palms.
Now in possession of the necklace, Tom is rescued by Hu (Golding), a tiger who can grow to be human type and who is without doubt one of the twelve representations of the symbols of the Chinese language Zodiac who’ve sworn to guard mankind from the evil that Lavatory represents. Hu reluctantly takes on the position of mentor for Tom and begins to show him the methods of being a guardian himself. He additionally introduces him to the opposite members of the crew, essentially the most outstanding of whom embrace the dragon Mistral (Oh) and the sly rat thief Sidney (Yang). Quite a few battles between the forces of excellent and evil ensue till the destiny of the world finds itself resting in Tom’s palms.
When you get previous that spectacular forged checklist and the preliminary attract of the Asian-specific setting, themes and characters, there actually isn’t a lot to “The Tiger’s Apprentice” that’s new, revolutionary or artistic. I’ve not learn the 2003 YA novel by Laurence Yep (the primary of a trilogy) however a cursory glimpse of the plot recap on Wikipedia suggests {that a} story that when explicitly tried to convey Chinese language mythology into a contemporary context has been smoothed out till it appears like simply one other fantasy epic within the mode of Harry Potter and numerous copycats during which an strange child discovers that they’ve extraordinary powers that require a number of volumes to discover in full. As a substitute of giving the youthful viewers one thing new and probably attention-grabbing, the filmmakers are merely content material with providing extra of the identical outdated factor. The result’s a type of peculiar movies the place you’ll be able to simply anticipate each plot growth lengthy earlier than it’s deployed but battle to recall something that occurred in it afterwards.