The Monkey King (2023) review

A monster has been abducting baby monkeys from a small village, so primate pariah Monkey King (voiced by comedian Jimmy O. Yang) steals a magical staff (which sounds like a didgeridoo) from the Dragon King (Bowen Yang) and proceeds to mow down every demon he can with "assistance" from peasant girl Lin (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport) in order to "become immortal" ... but Dragon King will do everything he can to get his possession back.  It's not listed in the credits but this is based loosely on characters from the 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West and it's "molded" into a Kung Fu Panda-like project with a lot of attitude and large scale anime-like action scenes.  But considering this is exclusively targeted to little kids, the message is a bit peculiar: Monkey King is consistently rewarded for his arrogance and hubris, so the Buddha (BD Wong) has to intervene and actually imprison him in a mountain for five centuries to keep him under control.  Does this mean we should throw belligerent children in some sort of jail?  Honestly, I'm not against it....