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
