PiraBit
if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.
Ariella Broughton
It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.
Quiet Muffin
This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.
Zlatica
One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
vincentlynch-moonoi
I watched this film for two reasons. First, I lived in Asia for a while, so I like a little re-taste of the culture. Second, I've always liked Russell Wong, who plays the son here. Unfortunately, I felt disappointed with both aspects of the film.The only thing moderately interesting about the film is the surprise ending...IF you don't see it coming...which I did. That means everything else is a disappointment, as well. And monk spunk...I'm sorry, but I don't think you just masturbate into a styrofoam cup in order to artificially inseminate someone. I thought my family was screwed up. We couldn't hold a candle to the family portrayed here. In fact, that's my main complaint -- far too much animosity among family members.I'm not very impressed with the cast, either. Russell Wong was a disappointment here, although I have liked him in other films and his short-lived television series. The other actors and actresses here were totally unfamiliar to me. They all did their jobs, but nobody stood out.Nope. I may enjoy Asian culture. But I didn't much enjoy this film.
VIETgrlTerifa
As an Asian-American who is always dying for more representation, I was really rooting for this movie to win. I either seriously enjoyed most of the actors in other material or thought they had potential but haven't found the right vehicle yet.That said, this movie makes me wonder what it could have been in more capable hands. If the screenwriter had a lot more craftsmanship to juggle all of the introduced ideas and actually resolved them in a very natural and realistic way that didn't seem tacked on or written by someone who cannot write fully realized characters with deep human motivation and emotion in a realistic way. If the director knew how to set up scenes and make the action go organically rather than in the very stilted manner this movie was done in.There were also some weird issues, like how everyone sounded dubbed in this movie. That made the acting seem mechanical and fake, and did nothing to help us buy into the scenes at all. With the already lacking screenplay which doesn't properly provide any real subtext for the characters and the wooden directing of scenes already not helping our perceptions of the actors' abilities, the dubbing just made the acting seem worse than it had to be.I could write a huge essay about all the specific plot points that were haphazardly introduced and then dropped and how the audience is supposed to simply accept certain things without actually being shown or feeling as if those things actually happened to these characters. I've done so on the message board. Instead I'll just conclude that there was an idea here with potential, but it was not realized.I will say the best scene was when the siblings joined one of the other characters in Tai Chi. That scene seemed like it could have came from the hypothetical well-made movie I thought this movie could have been.
right left
This movie tries desperately to be in so many other movies footsteps that it just winds up tripping all over itself. This movie is essentially The Joy Luck Club's, Ugly Twin Sister. Although the writing is bad, it's not completely a mess. I do like that it tries to show that Chinese Americans are progressive in American society, but it never departs from some serious jingoistic dialog that seems borrowed from a bag of fortune cookies. The Family is actually a bore, but the writer thinks that by making one a lesbian, and another marry a Black Man would make them more interesting. Also, having all the non-family members play completely humble, somewhat quirky, incredibly understanding, and knowledgeable to the family's "attitude" is just unbelievable. The Directing is somewhat amateurish but better than some Chinese Soap Serials. The actors are all so stiff in their performances - I've seen better performances with claymation. On the bright side, Russle Wong's acting has improved just enough to be the best performance in the whole movie - that's bad.
tonghua2005
I guess whoever made this movie wanted something like Chinese version "Two Weeks" but with more twist, more dramatic, and they so did that, terribly!From the beginning, all the family members hated their mother so much, dislike each other so much, and as the days goes by, they start to learn to celebrate life? why? because the memory from the childhood? but what made them hated their mother, stopped talking to each other? isn't that the same childhood? As the story plays along, instead of revealing the reason why they become so bitter, the big twist kicks in, even though nothing above was ever explained, the twist made me understood why they hate their mother so much, but strangely, all of the sudden, instead hating her like I felt, they all start loving their mother,loving each others, then everyone start happily eating funeral Dim Sim. Is this a joke?Overall, the story line is awful, I would give it a 0 if I could, the only reason I gave it a 2 is that some of the actors are decent(not Bai Ling, she does not how to act at all in this film)Oh, another funny thing is, when the mother went to Hongkong, it said that she was 16, which is in 1960s, so she will be 63 the most by 2008, then the age of all the roles can't add up, so they got a 81 yrs old to play the mother role, wired huh? or is this a movie about future?
