bigWOWO Rating: Asian American Bronze
Let me first begin by saying that I’m not a frequent consumer of artsy-style indie films. So take my words below with a grain of salt.
I received several e-mails announcing Children of Invention, but I usually ignore movie announcements since I live in po’ dunk Oregon and usually can’t see them anyway. In this case, however, TMM let the world know that you could “rent” this movie on YouTube. That’s right, for the low price of $3.99 and a YouTube account, you can see this movie over the web. A rental gets you 48 hours of unlimited viewing. It’s a really great way to get your movie out while still getting paid. I’m glad that Tze Chun decided to go this route.
Let me begin by saying that I thought the movie was enjoyable. I think people should see it if they have free time. I like the actress Cindy Cheung, and I thought the little kids were cute. The great grandfather (I think that’s who he was) was really cool. The Cantonese radio playing in the background of his house brought back lots of memories for me.
For me, supporting this movie was all about supporting my peeps. Asian American actors, writers, and directors face and upward battle, and seeing the effort that was put into creating this movie–which wasn’t bad–was enough for me to try it out and throw some support behind someone trying to make a difference.
Here’s my full review (with light spoilers that don’t reveal anything that wasn’t in the trailer):
This movie was good. I had fun watching it, and felt good to think that I was supporting my people by doing so. I could tell that there was a lot of effort and money put into this, and so I encourage people to watch it.
In terms of artistic quality, the end result was decent. The photography was very good–I appreciated the views of Boston.
Among the actors, the breakout actress was Crystal Chiu, who played the little girl Tina. Her acting was great, and I thought she really personified the little girl who wanted to see her old house and who wished things could be what they used to be. I think she has a bright future ahead of her–provided we can change up the system to make more roles for Asian actors.
The little boy, Michael Chen, was stiff, both in his speech and his physical movements. I actually thought he pulled a great deal of the energy out of the film, and I was sorry to see that. I’m not sure if it was his lines, or just the way he spoke them, but I’m guessing it was a combination of both. Michael probably could have brought more into the role, and the writer probably could’ve given him a bit more to work with.
Cindy Cheung, who plays the mother Elaine, is a talented actress, but this role didn’t work, and I think the writing was more to blame than the actress. Cheung did okay–she looked like the harried single mom that she’s supposed to be–but there was nothing in her role that allowed her to break free as an interesting character. For one thing, she’s forced to use a fake (and not-so-convincing) Canto accent the entire time. A great deal more of her conversation should have been in Cantonese, rather than in Cantonese-accented English.
Second, Elaine’s story didn’t make sense. If you were broke and forced to move, why would you opt to make money from (what really is) Amway, and why would you try to make it by going outside your sphere (we see her talking to people whom she obviously did not know prior to selling her services)? It makes no sense. That’s not how Amway works, and that’s not how people work. Most people would go for a wage earner position. Elaine used to have a wage earner position. According to the cop who arrests her, she was working on an expired visa, which most likely is an H1B (since the U.S. doesn’t give visas for jobs for which they can find local people to do the work). She has highly specialized tech abilities. So why would she be trying to do something totally different, especially in a job that had no guaranteed salary?
One last thing–the “Chinese” conversation between the two other Chinese Amway ladies bothered me. Has anyone else ever seen a conversation where bilingual Chinese/English people have a totally normal conversation where some people speak only Mandarin and some speak only Cantonese? It doesn’t happen. In cases like this, people default to English. The writer should have made all these women speak English to one another, and he should’ve had the kids and Cindy speaking Cantonese to each other.
Anyway, it’s not a bad film. I appreciated Tze Chun for stepping up and creating a big film like this; it’s not easy. I hope that he will do it again, and I look forward to seeing his next work. This is one of those films that we should support just to support; with more money going his way, hopefully it will demonstrate our community’s support for our actors and movie-makers.
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i loved this movie. economics and the asian american family aren’t really discussed on screen, and using the perspective of children was a very creative way of tackling the subject matter.