VividSimon Simply Perfect

Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Kidskycom It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

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.

Mikel Koven It's rare for me to post anything about a bad movie, particularly one I've not even finished watching yet, but my gods this is a dreadful flick. Self-righteous, preachy, maudlin, clichéd and simply embarrassing rip-off of the much superior Joy Luck Club. I'm just waiting for someone to cry out in anguish "Mom loved you best!" Not sure how long I can actually keep my dinner down for..."Tradition. It's important" "Yes. It is."I approached this film thinking there might be some interesting ethnographic material about ethnic Chinese funeral customs, but when one of the daughters who is lesbian, approached one of the officiating monks about being a sperm donor so she and her partner can conceive, and then he produces a turkey baster filled with 'monk spunk' and the realization he is not cut out to be a monk... And the final plot twist of the film ... why? At what point did a grown person think, "hey- this is a good idea". Truly a remarkable entry in the slop bucket of contemporary cinema.

filmgal24 I completely agree with the other reviews panning this movie. It's too boring to be a pop movie and too stupid to be a serious one. You may hang in there despite the fact that the characters are so unlikeable (particularly the dead woman) and insipid, you may multi-task through the cringe-worthy dialogue, press pass the predictable sequence of events (though there's no one to root for, no one to motivate any sense of engagement), all the while thinking, there must be one kernel of novel insight or characterization, something that would justify making a whole movie. Particularly as a Chinese - American, you hope for this kind of thing to succeed and to derive something interesting and relevant to your own life and experience. But somehow it manages to get less interesting, to get bafflingly superficial as though the divine muses at Disney had intervened to demand a more pat and sociable plot. At the start, the problems at least have the potential to be interesting though very predictable and thoroughly explored in other better films. I was vaguely intrigued by the thorough unlikeability of the mother, all the other films had provided the parent's perspective (for example, why destroying a daughter's relationship with the love of her life because he's black may actually be understandable or have some redeeming rationale; and showing acts of love by the parent for the child that reveals the parent's humanity, their own resistance to the shackles of culture) - was this a new take? alas, no. The siblings begin to cooperate in the "last wishes" of their mother out of what is clearly guilt, and from no where that guilt is transformed into honest grief, respect and love, like blood into wine. There's very little exploration of the reasons for the hatred by the children. But presumably, like in real life, it was failure to do the things that actually inspire honest grief, respect and love - like being there and helping the eldest daughter through the loss of her son (my mom would simply have come to me and camped out indefinitely), sending a present for her black grandson's birthday or attending her granddaughter's recital. It's not clear to me why death would absolve a mother from her duty in such acts of forgiveness and love, in my experience, death is when a miserable bastard really pays the piper. This felt uncomfortably like the work of someone who couldn't stand their mother but felt really guilty about it.

maryszd Dim Sum Funeral is about a family of estranged siblings who find themselves having to get back together in the process of planning their mother's funeral. In doing so, they all stop fighting and learn to accept each other. This is a charming film in some ways, but its depiction of sibling rivalry is not realistic. In a truly dysfunctional family, which this family purports to be, occasions like weddings and funerals are not times to come together, they're times to wage further warfare. And once things like wills and inheritances are thrown in, the fur starts to fly. This would have been a better and more psychologically true movie if the siblings continued to be estranged from each other at the movie's end; it would have shown the difficulty of healing childhood wounds and the essential loneliness that adults who've had an unhappy childhood carry throughout their lives.