Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

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

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The Joy Luck ClubThe upside to playing games with your parents is they give you longer to pay your debts before breaking your legs.Mind you, the mothers in this drama aren't the kind to offer their children such leniencies.June (Ming-Na Wen) takes up her deceased mother's position at a weekly mah-jong game where she finds herself privy to the heartbreaking back-stories of each of the elderly players (Tsai Chin, France Nuyen, Lisa Lu). As the group plays the tile-based game, the other daughters of the players deal with their own anxieties as a result of their stern upbringings in America. Offering a disquieting glimpse at the lengths that these women had to endure to give their offspring a better life, this 1993 adaptation of Amy Tan's bestseller flawlessly captures the intensity, turmoil and tenderness of this moving mother/daughter tale. Moreover, old people reminiscing during game play allows for some epic cheating. Green Lightvidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

As an Asian in the US I really hate this movie. I think it's a very narrow one-sided and stereotypical portray of Asians. All the Asian women have terrible stories of being dominated by jerks (usually the husband). I must say that some of the cultural and historical background is true and I will admit that some of these do reflect reality in China or Asian cultures, but it is overly dramatized and exaggerated. The plot has so much room to play with that I expect to have more breadth and diversity. It just seems unrealistic that all 8 women have such tragic lives. It bothers me so much that this is the way China and Asian cultures are being portrayed in a movie that is popular in the west.In the scene where Waverly brings her white fiancé Rich home, Rich didn't know some Chinese dining etiquette. When Waverly's mother said her fish is not salty, she was being humble and actually wanted everyone to praise it. Rich actually criticized the dish and just poured soy sauce on the fish. It hardly seems like something anyone with decent manner would do. The character of Harold, who is Lena's husband and splits the cost of everything they share, and Lin-Xiao, who is Yingying's ex-husband and abused her and openly brought his mistress home, both seem overly flat, dramatized and unreal. There are also many noticeable flaws in the plot. For example, Ted became bored in his marriage with Rose because Rose has lost herself and let Ted makes all the decisions. Ted was going to divorce her for another women. During the divorce, Rose realized her mistakes and yelled at him "Get out of my house" and the next thing we know they are back together. The film never explained how the 4 women came to the US too.Besides the plot, the acting, filming, editing, etc. are actually good. It's annoying some people in the scenes in China speaks mandarin with an American ascent but I'll give them a break.

The Joy Luck Club shows writers the commercial and critical success that is possible by using the structures and techniques of advanced screen writing. I have long argued that the old 3-act structure is too elementary for anyone wanting to write a mainstream Hollywood script that will actually sell. Trying to write an advanced film like The Joy Luck Club with it would be laughable.Here is a film that tells the story of eight women over the course of approximately sixty years. Does this film have three acts with plot twists on page 27 and page 87? Of course not. You could try to impose such a system - and I'm sure someone will - but what good would it do? The 3-act structure was never designed to help writers create a script. Its main use has been in demarcating a script after it's written.To see how this film is put together - and how you might write a film like it - we have to look at how the seven steps of every story interact with advanced structures.Every good story is founded on seven dramatic steps: problem/need, desire, opponent, plan, battle, self-revelation, and new equilibrium. Sure enough, the first thing we notice when exploring the structure of The Joy Luck Club is that each of the eight stories works through the seven steps.Clearly some of the stories in the film fulfill the seven steps better than others. In general I found the mothers' stories more compelling than the daughters'. That may be due in part to the nature of history and geography. The mothers' stories take place in a brutally patriarchal China that is going through vast social and political upheaval. As a result, the mothers' stories have an epic canvas, and the problems these women face are more tragic and profound.The daughters, on the other hand, face the problems of the affluent American, of what has also been called the "end of history." Without the burden of war, famine, and slavery, these "modern" women are free to concentrate on the psychological, on the painful bond between parent and child, or in these cases, mother and daughter.Indeed, the biggest flaw of the film for me is that the psychological needs and self-revelations of the daughters are virtually identical. Each woman feels inadequate in the face of her mother's expectations of her. And each learns, through the help of her mother, that she is a valuable and unique individual. I don't mean to diminish the importance of this problem or revelation. On the contrary, I was overjoyed to see such a powerful feminine perspective coming from a film industry that is so excessively masculine. But the sameness of the daughters' problems makes these parts of the film drag.To see the power of this film, we must go beyond a simple seven step breakdown of each of the eight stories. The trick to this film is the way these stories are tied together. And for this, we need to look at advanced structures.Unlike the linear seven or twenty-two step structure used by almost all Hollywood films to track a single main character, advanced films require specialized structures that can tie a number of characters and stories together into an organic whole. This is a complex subject; there are over 15 different advanced structures (see the Advanced Screen writing Class), and each serves a different thematic purpose.The Joy Luck Club uses a variation of the branching structure. In branching structures, the author sets up a main trunk, then takes the story out to a series of branches that can be organized in an infinite number of ways. The problem with branching structures is: how do you sequence the branches to avoid repetition and the sense that the story is stopping and starting all the time.The Joy Luck Club strategy is to center the story within a communal event where we can meet all the characters and return after each story to get anchored. The main trunk of the story is provided by the desire line of June. She wants to visit her long-lost sisters in China. This single line creates the reason for the communal event, returns again and again throughout the story, and gives the story the ending that not only completes June's story but thematically completes the stories of the other seven characters as well.To finish reading this review and to find others, please visit http://www.truby.com/im_jlc.html

This most wonderful movie "yes,yes" is at the top of my list for all time favorites.Every time I watch, I am amazed by the excellent ability of these actress's to pull you into the story and believe they are the characters. You love, you laugh, you cry, it's wonderful! Ming wa is wonderful as June and Auntie Lindo is absolutely adorable!The scenery is wonderful as you travel with some of the characters to China, and the United States too. It makes you want to do research into the times and places they show, where you can more fully understand the storyline.You will definitely enjoy this movie.