"Hello Jeon Woo-chi! The Battle of the Magic Robots"

Jeon Woo-chi (voiced byKim Yool) is the great Taoist wizard of Korean legend. What is a Taoist wizard? Well, they're kind of like superheroes except that they use their powers to commit elaborate pranks. Hey, that's pretty much what Taoism is about- taking life easy and making a point of enjoying it. Jeon Woo-chi isn't a mean guy or anything- it's just so much more fun to win a wizard duel by making jokes then actually taking the fight seriously. As the protagonist in an animated film aimed at the elementary schoolchild set, Jeon Woo-chi does what he does well.

First and foremost "Hello Jeon Woo-chi! The Battle of the Magic Robots" is true to the spirit of its main character by just being, well, rather silly. The character designs are equal parts simplistic and ridiculous. There's the googly cross eyes, the bright simple colors, not to mention the world's greatest martial artist, who is an elementary school student with an afro and Kabuki face make-up. It's like an illustrated kid's book come to life- little surprise since "Hello Jeon Woo-chi!" The Battle of the Magic Robots" is in fact based on a children's book series.

And the conversion to feature film format is well-accomplished. The spare animation movements well capture the basic style, and the music...imagine the soundtrack of a groovy seventies cop show and you've got the score of "Hello Jeon Woo-chi! The Battle of the Magic Robots". It sounds like an utterly ridiculous anachronism and it is, but why should kids care about all the boop-dee-boops when all the real action is in the time elevator?

"Hello Jeon Woo-chi! The Battle of the Magic Robots" never really escapes its genre limitations. There is a fairly well-defined plot involving Jeon Woo-chi's enemies but when it gets right down to it, this is a movie about silly jokes. The antagonists are more jerks than they are actively malicious, and Jeon Woo-chi doesn't even bother rubbing their noses in his inevitable victory because being a bad winner is, like, totally against his Taoist principles.

The basic messages here are about the importance of being a good friend, and how being a good friend means sticking up for each other, especially in a crisis situation. Of course, most of the time being a friend just means having fun and being a good sport. In that context it's very appropriate that the chief motivation of one antagonist is that he took one of Jeon Woo-chi's jokes way, way too seriously.

These fundamentals make "Hello Jeon Woo-chi! The Battle of the Magic Robots" easy to recommend- although I do have to add the qualifier of "for kids, parents of kids, or adults who like children's cartoons". This is a movie where Jeon Woo-chi pulls out new powers out of nowhere just for the sake of making a joke- although don't worry. The final confrontation is pretty good about making the protagonists solve the robot crisis creatively with pre-established abilities. And teamwork. Yes, even Jeon Woo-chi, when the going gets rough, needs a little help from his friends.

Review by William Schwartz

"Hello Jeon Woo-chi! The Battle of the Magic Robots" is directed byKim Dae-changand voiced byKim Yool,Kim Sae-hae,Jeong Seon-hyeandHong Beom-gi.