The Tiger’s Apprentice

➤Rated PG
➤Paramount+

Hidden away in an eccentric home in San Francisco lies a gem of unimaginable power, and it falls to a teenage boy named Tom (Brandon Soo Hoo), with help from a magical tiger, to protect it from a malevolent witch who wants to use it to unmake the world.

The Tiger’s Apprentice adapts Laurence Yep’s middle grade novel of the same name, and it’s the latest example of Hollywood’s new fascination with the Asian American experience. The trend kicked off with 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians, followed by The Farewell (2019), Minari (2020), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), Turning Red (2022), and the Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022). Then last year, we got Elemental, Past Lives, and Joy Ride. And don’t forget the TV shows, like American Born Chinese (Disney+) and The Brothers Sun (Netflix).

Despite voice talent from a murderers’ row of Asian actors (Michelle Yeoh, Lucy Liu, Sandra Oh, and Henry Golding), The Tiger’s Apprentice feels like a cheap attempt by Paramount to jump on the Asian bandwagon.

Apprentice takes elements of traditional Chinese mythology and injects them into contemporary America, much like an Asian version of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. But instead of offering fresh insight into old stories, the movie piles on the clichés.

As in many films about Asian Americans, Tom wrestles with being a member of two cultures that have different expectations, but in Apprentice it seems like a performative inclusion.

The filmmaker also leaves the relationship between Tom and the tiger undeveloped, relying on the audience’s familiarity with the master-student trope instead of telling an interesting story. Even the action sequences feel derivative. All of that makes this animated movie feel lacking.