deschreiber This film had some potential. The premise was reasonably interesting - a mother with two grown sons who are both gay wants grandchildren and tries to ensure that her third son, a high school student, doesn't turn out gay too. It's the kind of thing that might make for a good sitcom. The main actors, Sylvia Chang and Martin Yan, carry the weight of the story easily. Chang is an accomplished actor, and Yan has a good comedic streak. The cinematography and editing are professional, although one wonders why more wasn't made of Singapore as a background. All we see are the old shophouses of Singapore's Chinatown and some parkland; there are a lot more locations that could have given the film more visual interest.The real drags on the film were the script and a number of the actors. The sons were wooden. This was particularly unfortunate in the case of the youngest son, who played an important role in the film. The actor added nothing to the part. The son who worked for an airline was even worse. Mélanie Laurent, playing the girl from France who was going to change everything, had some excellent moments when she was being playful and teasing, but overall the script didn't give her enough opportunities.The script allowed several good scenes, but generally it was poorly done. Where can one begin? The son is asked to show the girl, who has just arrived in Singapore, the nightlife for young people. He takes her to a cemetery. Yes, I know, he did not want to take her anywhere, but taking her to a cemetery is just silly and implausible. He is a total jerk for the entire movie, yet when the girl falls off her bicycle and is nearly hit by a car, the boy helps her up - and this is enough for her to invite him into her bed that night. Completely implausible, except perhaps if you take the racist view that French girls have no morals and give out sex as a reward, like candy to babies. She was a university student, he was still in high school, he had a repulsive personality with no interests except bicycle racing - it's inconceivable that she would fall for him. At one point she is found staring at water going down a drain; when asked, she remarks that it swirls in the opposite direction than in France. The point is that she is an educated, intelligent girl. Much later in the movie she confesses that she had lied about the water going down the drain. I don't know what the point of that was. (In fact, water does swirl in different directions above and below the equator.) The climax of the movie takes place in a cooking competition, where Martin Yan unaccountably lets the boy stand in for him to compete against his own mother. Silly, silly, stupid plotting. Almost the entire last hour of the film is filler; it should have been cut to about 15-20 minutes.I enjoyed the first half hour or so and was expecting to be mildly entertained, but by the end, some of the acting and the stupidity piled upon stupidity of the script spoiled it all for me. I've given it a rating of only 3.

the amorphousmachine Aptly called 'Rice Rhapsody' in Australia, this comedy is not very funny nor very satisfying. The basic plot is a single mother and restaurant owner has raised three sons all by her lonesome. Two of them are gay, and she fears the youngest may also be that way inclined. So, she comes up with a plan to hook him up with a sexy French student named Sabine.All in all, this film just doesn't work and the chemistry between Sabine and Leo doesn't gel. The film seems indecisive in which direction it wants to go, and the male lead is rather unpleasant throughout the whole movie. And, why the heck was one character called "Batman"? This is quite a lazy comment, but 90 or so minutes really dragged for me- especially towards the end.**1/2 out of *****!

samuelding85 Rice Rhapsody may sound promising, in terms of making its ways to several film festival, a pretty well known cast and crew (Taiwanese award winning actress Sylvia Chang and world acclaimed celebrity chef Martin Yan as the leading cast, with Jackie Chan as the executive producer), and together with the help of Singapore Film Commission. However, the serving of chicken rice turns out to be tasteless and tough.This is young director Kenneth Bi's debut feature, where Rice looks like a movie from the final year students in a movie school doing its final year project.Sylvia and Martin were horribly miscast as the role of Jen, a chicken rice seller, and Kim Shui, a duck rice seller. Jen and Kim Shui are rivals in business, as their stall is just opposite one another. However, Kim Shui is a bachelor who admires Jen, and try all ways to woo Jen.Jen no longer trusted any man after her husband left her 16 years ago. With her secret chicken rice recipe, she brought up her 3 sons. However, Daniel and Harry, who are the 1st and 2nd son, turns out to be gays. Jen placed her bet on Leo, the youngest son, who is barely a teenager around 15 and 16 years old, to breed an offspring for the family line. Fearing that Leo would follow his brothers footsteps, Jen and Kim Shui try all ways to match him with Sabine, a female French exchange student who is coming to Singapore.A night of passion with Sabine and the loss of his bestfriend makes Leo discover his sexual orientation. Kim Shui comes out with new duck dishes that beats Jen's chicken rice business. Double pressure coming down together makes Jen loses hope on the people around her, except for Sabine, where Sabine teaches Jen that there are more things in life to look out for.It just sounds like your typical family drama, where someone wants to go their way, while others are trying to pull the whole family together. In terms of being a family drama, Rice has achieved only about 50% of it. The main focus on the film is all about how Jen is trying to prevent Leo from becoming a gay, so as to pass down the family line.Placing Sylvia Chang the role of a typical Singaporean housewife is a bad choice. Poor language usage of dialogues in the film worsen the whole movie. No matter how hard Sylvia try to speak like a Singaporean women, her American accent English simply pulls her effort down, making whatever she said sounds pretendous.Placing Martin Yan as Kim Shui is the worst choice. His heavy American accent English do not sound like a typical Singaporean hawker who owns a duck rice stall at your neighbourhood Singaporean coffeeshop (and i do not mean Starbucks in American terms.) Instead of using Chinese dialects, Mandarin and Singapore style English in the film, perfect English were used instead, giving Singaporean audience a good laugh, where two non-Singaporean Chinese were chosen to play Singaporeans. It puts the audience into a big puzzle: is this an total English speaking Singapore production? The ending of the film lacks punch, where Leo and Jen participated in a cooking competition. No tense atmosphere, no grand showdown, just the love between a mother and her son. Apparently, wrong location was chosen for both the mother and the son to express their love for each other.Though Rice was slapped with an M18 rating (which refers to not suitable for audience aged 18 and below) for discussing and glorifying homosexuality, Rice is not a gay drama. It looks into the love between a mother and her gay sons, her acceptance of homosexuality and how to strike a balance between her traditional values and homosexuality.If more details could be put in and having Singaporean cast to play the role of Jen and Kim Shui, the chicken rice would taste much more better.

ken_lee54 Review: Rice Rhapsody (2004) By Ken LeeThough director Kenneth Bi's _Rice Rhapsody_ (2004) generates much interest primarily of its homosexuality theme (that troubled the Singapore Board of Film Censorship inasmuch as its month-long deliberation for the film's wide release in the city state in which the film is set and made), it explores at its core generational conflict; specifically, how a single parent's inability to adapt to modern circumstances leads to disillusionment and more misunderstanding. So it'd be misleading to categorize this as a "Gay" film, per se.The plot is set in contemporary Singapore's Chinatown. Sylvia Chang, wonderful and enarmoured with supposed Singlish, plays a single mother (Jen) struggling with the uncertainty surrounding the sexual orientation of her third son, Leo (played by a certain delectable newcomer, Tan LePham), when his two elder siblings are both out and proud, much to her dismay, bringing issues of same-sex marriage and their boy-friends back to dinner table discussion. The lives of the family are going to be changed with the arrival of a French foreign exchange student, Sabine, played by a cooky Mélanie Laurent, who has a thing or two to show about finding common grounds, and knowing what's truly important in life. The issue of homosexuality isn't a "modern" circumstance, of course. Its open acceptance (or tolerance) and embraced and head-on examination as an "idea", however, is, especially in this city-state notorious for its anti-gay "lifestyles" stance. So even if the movie isn't without its flaw, it's still ultimately uplifting, and a welcome addition to a growing list of movies purport to examine social, cultural and political aspects of the city-state, from "12 Storeys" to "Eating Air" to "Chicken Rice War".Recommended.Little known facts: Director Kenneth Bi is the son of Ivy Ling (Ling Bo) who is a mega star in Shaw's Huang Mei Diao era. She has a cameo appearance in this film.