Heroes of the Golden Masks

If you can look past the seriously cut-rate animation and production values, you'll find... a totally unambitious fantasy flick featuring a few recognizable voices.

Let me just say right up front I regret agreeing to review “Heroes of the Golden Masks.” I knew it was a low-budget animated affair, a joint Canadian-Chinese production, but a more expensive movie is not necessarily a better movie. And I was impressed with some of the name voice talent it boasts including the late, great Christopher Plummer, Patton Oswalt and Ron Perlman.

Well, if you take enough swings at wild pitches you’re going to wind up looking silly from time to time.

This new VOD feature is from director director/producer Sean Patrick O'Reilly (“Go Fish”), who does a lot of these cut-rate animation flicks with recognizable stars like Perlman or Mark Hamill doing the voices. People might be shocked to learn how little time/effort might go into this kind of voice acting work — literally a couple of days in the studio for a five- or six-figure paycheck.

I don’t blame them. Actors gotta work, and the smart ones who aren’t A-listers find lucrative ways to fill in the gaps between bigger and better gigs.

I remember my friend and colleague Matthew Socey once interviewed F. Murray Abraham, who’s been known to star in some seriously awful low-budget dreck. He said that great scripts don’t come along as often as you think, and sometimes it is just about staying busy and getting a paycheck.

“Masks” is a fantasy/action movie, the sort of thing that looks like the cut scenes from a video game — and not a recent or high-budget one. Just a few seconds in, my thought was that the herky-jerky action and simplified character design resembled “World of Warcraft” circa about 2011.

Set in the ancient Chinese city of Sanxingdui, it features a quintet of heroes who, as the title implies, wear magical golden masks that give them distinct individual powers. The leader, Jiahao (Byron Mann), can do telekinesis while his daughter, Li (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), can fire energy arrows from her bow.

Oswalt does the voice of Aesop, a cheerful barbarian type who swings a mighty hammer and for some reason appears to be of some sort of fish-man race while everyone else is human. Zhu (Osric Chau) transforms into the 12 animal totems of the Chinese Zodiac — though not, unfortunately, the most powerful dragon form. Zuma (Zeus Mendoza) is a Mayan warrior who flings around colorful balls.

Early on their arch-nemesis, Kunyi (Perlman), kills Jiahao while seeking entry into Sanxingdui to claim the Jade Blade, a powerful sword the king keeps locked in his royal chamber so nobody can use it to protect them from the likes of Kunyi, which is totally logical.

Li is instructed to find a replacement for her father, which brings her through a portal to modern America where she finds Charlie (Kiefer O'Reilly), a scampy teen pickpocket. He’s being pressured by his “uncle” Rizzo (Plummer), a stumpy mob boss, to pay back his debts for taking him in after he was orphaned.

Of course, Charlie sees the whole heroes shtick as an excuse to get Rizzo off his back and maybe find a nice score if he can sell those shiny golden masks for money. He launches into a typical 1-2-3 hero’s journey where he gradually embraces his new role and even sees his team as a family unit he can use to replace his old one.

The plot doesn’t make much sense, just a succession of encounters where the heroes can get into scrapes and show off their powers. I’ve seen better fight staging in a Road Runner cartoon. The dialogue is hammy and consists of lots of declarative quips that can be easily translated into other languages, such as Oswalt shouting “Large and in charge!” during his fights.

There is a briefly interesting sequence where the heroes go into a special vale or something where they can’t use their powers because it’ll summon “hungry ghosts.” They do it anyway and the result is dozens of skinny creatures that look exactly like Gollum from “The Lord of the Rings” showing up to chase them.

I rooted for the Gollum horde.

“Heroes of the Golden Masks” is on video on demand, so it’s easily avoidable — which I highly recommend. I’d considered not even bothering to write this review but I already sunk 81 minutes into watching it and figured I might as well publish this warning. It’s the only thing like a super-power I possess.