Dim Sum Funeral

The lesbian actress Meimei (Steph Song), the doctor Alexander (Russell Wong), the real state agent Elizabeth (Julia Nickson) and the journalist Victoria (Françoise Yip) are contacted by Viola (Talia Shire) that tells that their mother Ms. Lingy "Lynda" Xiao (Lisa Lu) had died. The Chinese-American siblings head to Seattle with their families where their mother's assistant Viola tells that her last wish was a seven-day Chinese funeral with her dysfunctional family. Meanwhile, the stranger pianist and Tai Chi Chun follower Chow Lin (Chang Tseng) arrives from Beijing for the funeral. Along the next days, Meimei and her partner Dede Chan (Bai Ling) try to get sperm from the monk Bruce (Curtis Lum), and Viola delivers a letter from her mother telling the truth about her father. Alex tries to reconcile with his wife and former Miss Taiwan Cindy (Kelly Hu). Liz still grieves the loss of her son Sammy and is not ready to return to her husband Michael (Adrian Hough). On the sixth day of the funeral, the siblings have a huge surprise.

"Dim Sun Funeral" has a potential story about a dysfunctional family with estranged siblings, loss of traditions, bitterness and reconciliation with many wealthy characters. Unfortunately the director Anna Chi makes a poor work and the plot becomes a melodramatic and sometimes boring Chinese-American soap opera, lost between the comedy and the heavy drama. Anyway, there are many interesting values and traditions from the Chinese culture and it is worthwhile watching this movie at least once. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Meu Último Desejo" ("My Last Wish")

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.

First of all, let me begin by saying that I am appalled by critic reviews of this movie. Describing the film as 'predictable' and involving a 'typical Chinese-American family' is an insult to the cast and crew. There is nothing typical about this Chinese-American family. Seeing as how many film critics are introverted white Americans, it is easy for them to forget that these people have very different values than other Americans. To be able to critique this movie fairly, you must know a good deal about Asian culture on the whole. The 'predictable' twists that occur may be typical of your average American family--but in Asian families, it is more of a rarity.

Needless to say, I was quite surprised at some of the revelations the children had about their deceased mother, especially considering the fact she was born and raised in China. These revelations give a more human feel to the rigid culture of the Chinese, and give the movie substance.

Asian intolerance of infidelity, interracial marriage, and homosexuality is also explored in depth. This part of the movie personifies the characters before they even speak more than a few lines, and helps humanize the 'Dragon Lady' over the course of the movie. There is much more that I could say about this movie, but I believe I've said enough to offer a conclusion: As Americans, we don't generally put much thought into ideas like homosexuality, interracial marriage, and infidelity. Its all around us--and we become numb to it. But these ideas can become catalysts for mayhem in Asian families, where such ideas are shunned or outright forbidden. Understanding this fact will help you understand--and enjoy--the movie.

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.

I was intrigued by the story background because it seemed to offer a lot of potential on exploring the typical conflicts of a Chinese American family from the perspective of the children living with Western values and a parent with traditional Chinese background. The opening offers some hope of shedding some light but as the movie continued on, I realized that my expectations were not going to be met. The only reason why I continued to watch the entire movie was to watch the story unfold. The acting wasn't stellar but it wasn't that terrible either. I was trying to figure out what went wrong with this movie and decided it was a combination of the script and direction.

We were told about what happened between the mother and her children and how she was perceived by them and how through others they discovered a different side to her they never knew. That wasn't too well fleshed out either. This is a movie that I continue to keep saying had a lot of potential.

Sometimes the scenes try to make light of a situation or give us few laughs but they seemed manipulated and artificial. The characters seemed stiff and not very personal. It's not the fault of the actors but the lack of meat in the script to allow the actors to flesh out the characters and the directing. I'm not sure about why some parts of the plot were in the movie because they were pretty ridiculous and implausible. The twist is something pretty ridiculous that destroyed and hope of being taken seriously.

This is the problem of the movie. What does it want to be? A comedy? Drama? Both but with a twist and some sprinkling of life's lessons mixed in, all neatly tied up. If it was better focused with a tighter script it could have been much better.

I really wanted this movie to work for me and like I said, I watched it until the end hoping for something to redeem itself. The twist was stupid and unbelievable.

What a waste