Customer Reviews

The Joy Luck Club

5 star:		(63)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

It's a great film about mothers and daughters and generation gaps which cause misunderstandings between them. Love stories where there is reconciliation once truths are revealed.

This tearjerker adaptation based on the book by Amy Tan, is about four Chinese mothers and their American born daughters, and how the distinct cultural chasm in their upbringing, play into their daily lives.

The flashbacks into the young lives of each mother is masterful storytelling filled with rich imagery.
But it is the everyday struggles of modern life with their daughters and the conflicts between them that most will easily recognize. In this way the movie does not exclude the general viewer from identifying with their own personal relationships with their mother, spouse, or friends.

This is one of the best technically engineered movies I have ever seen. The way in which the lives of the characters are weaved together is nothing short of genuis, and the movie slides flawlessly from the present to the past and back to the present again

The story of each mother's youth is both heartbreaking and wonderful at the same time, and with their somewhat broken english offer up an amazing amount of simple yet profound statements and insights as they tell their story and try to impart upon their daughters wisdom gained through both suffering and sacrifice.

The modern day entanglements of each daughter and their often tense relationships with their moms, show us in the end that no matter who we are, or where we come from, the bond between a mother and daughter is often a complex enigma, full of conflicting emotions.

Throughout all this, the main underlying issue is the trip to China one of the daughters is about to embark on, to meet for the first time, two sisters previously abandoned in wartime China while at the same time paying a personal tribute to her own mother.

If I had to flaw the movie it would be the constant onslaught on one?s emotions right up until the very end.
Nevertheless, I still give it 5 stars although I am sure this movie will appeal more to women.

FAVORITES MOVIE QUOTES:

"..and on that day, second wife's hair began to turn white"

"All around me I see the signs. My daughter looks but does not see. This is a house that will break into pieces"

"But Lena had no spirit, ..because I had none to give her"

"I like being tragic mom... I learned it from you"

Summary: "The Joy Luck Club", based on the novel by Amy Tan, is the story of four Chinese mothers and their American daughters. In particular, it is the story of their struggles for independence and self-discovery, told in lushly filmed vignettes that bind together the transcendent theme that self-esteem doesn't come cheaply.

---

A feather. The feather of a swan. A feather that carries with it all the hopes and dreams of a Chinese woman who left everything behind as she fled to America. Her hopes and dreams of a daughter who would be born in America, speak "perfect American English", and implicitly, live happy and free of the horrors her mother had fled in China. So begins the "Joy Luck Club", a story of four such Chinese mothers, their struggles for self-discovery in China, and their daughters' equally powerful struggles in America. There are eight stories here, but one overarching theme unifies, reinforces, and amplifies the lesson of self-esteem and it's survival value.

Lindo (Tsai Chin) was sold as a young girl in China. The sale was cemented when she was four or so. She was delivered at age fifteen, to a pre-pubescent husband who likes to play with lizards and a mother-in-law who sees her as nothing more than a grandson factory. Her brilliant escape from this nightmare grips with the same force as her daughter Waverly's escape from a different sort of prison.

An Mei (Lisa Lu) was the daughter of a lowly Fourth Wife, a mere concubine in a patriarchal home. Dealing with her mother's death, and learning the importance of knowing one's worth, sets the stage for her daughter Rose's story. Played brilliantly by Rosalind Chao, Rose finds her voice, and discovers her worth, when coming to grips with a marriage gone sour.

Ying-Ying (France Nuyen) wasn't sold. She wasn't born into a hopeless situation. Hers is a story of self-betrayal, and its price. A self-betrayal so horrifying that it left her soul fractured, sometimes paralyzing her into a catatonic state, unconscious of everything in the world except for one unspeakable regret. In her daughter Lina she sees the same weakness of spirit, the same tragic humility, and, most gratifyingly, a way to recapture what she had previously surrendered. In the defining scene of their story, she tells Lina: "Do you know what you want, I mean from him? Then tell him now. Do not come back until he gives you those things. Losing him does not matter. It is you who will be found." In nurturing her daughter's self-affirmation, she makes huge strides in healing herself.

The feather is Suyuan's (Kieu Chinh). In her escape from China, she carries nothing but her dreams, and the memory of what she left behind in China. It is that story that closes the film, as her daughter June returns to China to discover her mother's past and to find her own fulfillment of her mother's hopes.

The movie The Joy Luck Club based on the novel of Amy Tan was a simply beautiful and uplifting treasure! The movie follows the origonal story well and doesn't try to add anything new in. This movie shows us both China and the relations between mothers and daughters. The movie is done mostly in flash back memories of a certain part in their life when everything was down hill. In these stories adventually you see how these clever people pulled through this rough period in their lives and survived.
The Joy Luck Club also has a wonderful ending to it. I must say in the movie the ending was done much better than in the book. The movie had many parts better than the book. My reason for saying this is that the movie added more emotions, more strong feelings! It gave me a greater feeling and understanding for these charectors!
So, now you know a little about this spectacular movie. Please don't miss out on owning this remarkable little treasure! Act now and buy it. You'll love it! I guarentee it!

This movie was no longer available in the stores! I'm glad I found it here and got it quick & in perfect brand new condition. Will definately use seller again!

Plenty of people have pointed out the movie's good points but beyond the mother - daughter theme that is so wonderfully dealt with, this movie is also about the immigrant experience. In this world today, so many people immigrate and must contend with the difficult process of watching their children grow up in another culture - wonderful, different, distant, restive - and they have to figure out how to connect with their children. "Joy Luck Club" portrays this poignantly. How many children of refugees really have any idea what their parents went through? Many people from a variety of cultures will appreciate the film for that reason alone.
As for those who say Tan is "male-bashing", keep in mind the very loving character of June's father. Also, if you've read Tan's other books, (The Kitchen God's Wife, for example), there are both good and bad men with great depth of character.
Let's remember, too, that history is not exactly littered with the stories of women, and Tan is just trying to rectify that imbalance. Having lived in Asia for 8 years, I'd say that male privilege is still alive and well...and in support of Tan's story, the (lack of) legal rights of women alone in pre-war China should illustrate the possiblity that four women might have had such experiences.

Having spent a year in China (1948), I admit to a soft spot for the Chinese people and their stories, and especially for Amy Tan, whose books I have read and loved. This superlative movie was based on her book of the same name.

In this story (the script was written by Tan and Ronald Bass) the tension between four Chinese women, who were born in China and later came to the United States, and their Americanized daughters, is the foundation of the story, and is the theme that epitomizes Amy Tan's stories. She has noted in an interview that such tension existed in her own life between her and her own mother.

Much of the tension is due to the cultural clash. Times in China were hard a few short decades ago, and life was harsh. Starvation and disease was rife even in later years, when I was there in the late 'forties. When Americans today refer to poverty or hunger in this country, they have no conception of the real poverty and hunger that existed in China in the 'thirties and 'forties, or customs like the very painful historical binding of women's feet, which in effect crippled them for life, in the name of beauty, or the custom of wealthy Chinese men often having multiple wives and concubines, or the total degradation of women which existed and was totally accepted throughout the culture. Not to mention the impact of continuing warfare between warlords, the nationalists (Kuomintang) and communists, and the Japanese occupation all of which lasted for generations.

This is an emotion evoking story. It is more than simply entertainment; it is a story with which you will identify, with characters with which you will empathize.

Amy Tan knows whereof she writes, and her stories are compelling and sympathy evoking. Another Chinese woman who wrote her autobiography which touched on some of the same themes, who was in Tsingtao when I was, and whose tale enchanted me, was Dr. H. Mei Lu, who now lives in Honolulu, and whose book was titled, "Grandfather's Microscope" q.v. Coming from a humble background, in China, she became an esteemed pathologist in the United States. I heartily recommend her book as well as Amy Tan's, for any Sinophile. These ladies both write extremely well, and have immensely interesting things to say.

Joseph (Joe) Pierre, USN (Ret)

author of The Road to Damascus
and other books

when i read the book as a little girl, i thought that it was wonderful...

yet, some things should be marked "handled with care" when being made into movies....

this movie was a HUGE disappointment. the actors themselves were wonderful, but they had little to work with....

by skipping many parts and changing others, they've basically lost a big part of the book. it's gone from a touching reflection of the lives of chinese women to just plain cheap sensation. sure the story was "touching enough".....but WHAT a disappointment.

but hey, what can i say? it was a long book. and some things are too complex for the 2-D movie screen.

This is one of the greatest films to examine mother-daughter relationships. It is also a great film that examines how a women are treated in different cultures. It is a very full film. It covers all the bases.

The flashbacks are very smooth and everything interlocks with all the storylines. The acting is superb. It is very genuine.

This is a must-see for every person that appreciates good films.

This is one of my favorite movies of all time because of several reasons: 1) It came out at a time when I desperately wanted to see Hollywood make an Asian-American film. 2) The American stories totally brought back my childhood. I almost felt like I was watching my life story. 3) It is a very well produced film - it just looks gorgeous. 4) It makes me cry every time I see it. I admit though, it's not a perfect movie. The acting was only okay. Rosalind Chao and Lauren Tom were very good, but Ming-Na Wen was only decent (she's gotten better through the years) and Tamalyn Tomita was kind of awful. The mothers were pretty good overall, with France Nguyen being the most memorable. The best acted scenes were the ones in China - or maybe it just seemed better because it was in Chinese. The script was also shamelessly cheesy at times - "You take worse quality crab because ... you have best quality heart!". Okay so that made me cry the first time, but that doesn't make it good writing. :) Still, despite it's flaws, this movie will always have a certain place in Hollywood history and it will continue to make me cry everytime I see it. As for the DVD version, it looks great but no Chinese subtitles?!?!?! That's just wrong.