The Worst Film Ever

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

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")

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.

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.

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.