Tsui Hark's soaking wet adaptation of Lillian Lee's novel (itself based on the oral tradition "Legend of the White Snake") is too esoteric to recommend; too gorgeous (dollar store FX withstanding) to reprove a viewing.

One of the prolific director's biggest box office disappoints "Green Snake" has the scope of past Tsui fantasies "Zu: The Warriors from the Magic Mountain" (1983) and "A Chinese Ghost Story" (1987) but none of the magic that made those films' camp value worthy of comparison to "Star Wars" (1977) and "The Evil Dead" (1981), respectively.

In fact, "Green Snake" is just plain banal at times (the film's rich tapestry not withstanding) though it certainly has a point: if an artist's rendition of evil knocked on your door you'd never let them in but if evil came in the form of natural feminine beauty you might not think twice about it.

Zhao Wen Zhuo is a pious Buddhist reverend (is there another kind?) waging a one monk war to keep good and evil segregated in the mortal world and may have met his match when two centuries' old snakes (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk, Joey Wong Cho-yin) are taking all the necessary steps to achieve full human form by way of Wu Hsing Guo a disconcerted scholar whom the pair seduce with their ham-fisted sexual promiscuity.

As a political allegory "Green Snake" has a set of fangs but as a Tsui Hark fantasy this snake is truly one of nature's most passive creatures.