This movie is the adaption of the same novel as Nobel Aspirations (Legend of Chu Shen) series. While the drama is very long winded and boring, this movie is entertaining and in short durations able to relay the key messages or story line.
It's not totally perfect movie, but it's not a terrible one until can get bad ratings. If the original drama can get a high ratings with that kind of producing and acting, why people give this movie low rating, with much better acting and production??

I haven't read the novel, but to me the way the movie portray the demonic secs is more realistic, unlike the drama series. In the drama series the demonic sec is something like magicians only, while in the movie it more like a combination of traditional chinese ghost and western ghost ( Pig head vs chucky). In the drama,

The acting, unlike the expressionless Zhang Xiao Fan on the drama series, the movie portray Zhang Xiao Fan better, again proof great acting from XZ. How he get Golden broom from this movie, I really can't understand the person give that, maybe he satisfied with expressionless acting. Not sure.

The other best thing from the movie is a lot of funny scenes, like the monkey riding the dog and the cute expressions from the monkey watching scenes LOL