Claudio Carvalho
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")
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.
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?
AD
