The Joy Luck Club Reviews and Ratings


  • glois1610
    October 29, 2008
    glois1610
    jeje maybe
    we'll see
  • donnarenee2006
    October 25, 2008
    donnarenee2006
    One of my favorite movies. Joy Luck Club is based on the stories of 4 women that have each different tales on their lives in China before coming to America. Wonderful characters and the actresses were amazing.
  • Ingrid85
    October 13, 2008
    Ingrid85
    Moments that truly made me laugh and truly made me cry. 8 stories in 1- one is bound to touch your heart and open your eyes.
  • amysturf
    September 22, 2008
    amysturf
    I love this movie. The story is great. It makes me want to read the book. The point of view relaying the story makes viewers feel like they can relate to the characters.
  • koreis2
    September 20, 2008
    koreis2
    Passionate
    Involving
  • ynotcall2
    September 12, 2008
    ynotcall2
    Have not seem will look for it
  • SweetstheSexyNinja
    September 4, 2008
    SweetstheSexyNinja
    A very good movie, loved it, also very tear-jerking!...lol
  • EarthlyAlien
    August 30, 2008
    EarthlyAlien
    "I tell you the story because I was raised the Chinese way. I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people's misery, and to eat my own bitterness. And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way. Maybe it is because she was born to m...( read more)e and she was born a girl, and I was born to my mother and I was born a girl, all of us like stairs, one step after another, going up, going down, but always going the same way."

    Photobucket

    Wayne Wang's fine adaptation of Amy Tan's best-selling "The Joy Luck Club" had an enormous importance in the breakthrough for films about Asians in America. Beautifully made and acted and emotionally moving in the bargain, this Bergman-esque dramatic study of relationships between Chinese mothers and daughters through the century is still widely accessible to all viewers, although women will certainly comprise the base audience. A surprising entry from Hollywood Pictures, this lovely production hasn't aged a bit, like no film about human beings ever does. Instead, The Joy Luck Club may prove to be the most important Chinese-American film ever made.

    Conventional Hollywood wisdom offered many excuses why Tan's novel, the No. 1 fiction best-seller of 1989, would not make a viable film: it centered on Asian women. The names and faces would be confusing. Too many stories jumping around in time, and much of the dialogue would need to be in Chinese. Quite impressively, however, screenwriters Tan and Ronald Bass and director Wang solved all these potential problems in a very lucid explication of the major tales related in the book. Even more important from a commercial point of view, they've retained, and perhaps even magnified, the universal emotional qualities of the material, making this story of innumerable hardships and sacrifices one that was destined to move and inspire audiences worldwide.

    Joy Luck Club is an "immigrants" picture par excellence. Beautifully put together, the film is an emotionally heart-rending study of generational gap - but also continuity - between Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters. The film probes such universal issues as mothers' expectations for, pressure on, and disappointment in their daughters when they don't surpass them, when they end up being just as victimized or abused as they were in China.

    I couldn't do justice to the richness of the film and book (which I read about a decade ago, in the 6th grade). The exposition, which embraces decades and goes back and forth from past to present, and from one woman to another, is always lucid and riveting. What unifies the episodic structure is a farewell party for June (Ming-Na Wen), one of the daughters, as she is ready to go to China and meet her twin sisters. Their mother was forced to abandon the twin babies during her flight from war-torn China.

    Another touching (and surprisingly funny) episode is when one of June's mahjong-playing aunties, Lindo (Tsai Chin) tells how she was sold into marriage by her mother when she was 15, and how she and her daughter Waverly (Tamlyn Tomita) endured hard years before they finally reached reconciliation. Rose (Rosalind Chao), married to an insensitive, career-oriented white (Andrew McCarthy), reveals the devastating saga of her mother An Mei (Lisa Lu), who was one of many wives to a Chinese lord and sacrificed herself for her daughter.

    As filmed, the entire story is a fabrication that allows each woman to experience an extended flashback that highlights the flashpoint moments in her life. Each mother's flashback merges into her daughter's memories. The boundaries are not always separable and each of the eight stories told here are engrossing and stirring. The gravity of the events that these women experienced in China, the differences and similarities in the lives of these daughters who've grown up in America - none of that pain and suffering is evident from a cursory glance at their lives. Within the film, they scratch past the surface and pierce our sensibilities with marksman-like precision.

    The casting must have been a major challenge, as each of the eight women is beautiful and distinctive. Naturally, the acting is variable, ranging from splendid performances by the veteran actresses (Tsai Chin, Rosalind Chao, France Nuyen and Lisa Lu) to not as great ones by the younger ones (especially Ming Na-Wen). The miracle is that the film just happens to be politically correct. It's not a feminist agenda picture (although some of the men eventually come out as selfish cunts), and though dealing with Asian-American women, it propagates cultural diversity and it's essentially a film most people can relate to.

    Ingmar Bergman, who was also fascinated by women, made some of his best films about them. In its sensibility and style, The Joy Luck Club brings to mind Cries and Whispers and especially Autumn Sonata, a masterful melodrama about the conflict between a pianist mother (Ingrid Bergman) and her bitter, neglected daughter (Liv Ullmann). As in those films, the visual style here is rich, but not sumptuous and overbearing. As befits its intimate scale and psychological nature, most of the film is done through close-ups. It's a visually splendid film, with Amir Mokri's luminous lensing, Donald Graham Burt's production design and Lydia Tanji's costumes fusing into a rich look that is not overly self-conscious. Toward the end, there's one crucial sequence that is shot in an epic style, recalling Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor. It's the only sequence that uses long shots and that somehow "violates" the otherwise personal nature of the material.

    My only complaint against the film is that it's too long (2 hours and 20 minutes) and that it contains, as does the book, too many stories and too many flashbacks. But at its best moments, The Joy Luck Club provides a rare perspective of a cultural experience that has been missing from Hollywood productions lately. Each of the stories is different, yet the overall emotional tone is coherent and the thematic link clear: most of the women, of both generations, have been victims in one way or another. And finally, there's something here for all history buffs and people with a slight fascination with China. While the film's focus is always intimate, the fascinating political context makes the issues broader, more resonant. Like all great films, Joy Luck Club is at once particular and universal.
  • hlg69
    August 8, 2008
    hlg69
    This movie tells the story of mothers and daughters in a way that will make you weep everytime you watch it. To say that this movie is wonderful, doesn't do it justice.
  • asun23
    August 7, 2008
    asun23
    This movie is spectacular. Yes, it more then likely will make you cry but if you can stay with it till the end you'll be glad you did.
  • ghettoqueen747
    August 2, 2008
    ghettoqueen747
    Love Amy Tan! the book was great and so was the movie!
  • ruth3111
    July 28, 2008
    ruth3111
    Those babies are alive
  • andylou15
    July 7, 2008
    andylou15
    This is a fantastic movie. You learn a lot about another culture and what it is like having to grow up through it.
  • xxGoneWithTheSinxx
    July 6, 2008
    xxGoneWithTheSinxx
    Very emotional story about Chinese/American mothers & daughters. Fantastic film!
  • dredzag
    June 26, 2008
    dredzag
    I recently saw this after a long break and fell in love with it all over again. The casting is perfect. If you haven't had a chance to watch this I encourage you to do so.
  • FireAndLightning
    June 26, 2008
    FireAndLightning
    It was a different way of telling a story. We see 8 Chinese womans stories trough their memories, they tell us what has happened. I didn't think it was an all interesting movie, but I like to know that I've seen it, I thought it showed some China parts from another perspective.
    ...( read more)It had some slow moments, but over all good. I recognized like 5 Chinese people =D ^_^"
  • absolutnormal
    June 26, 2008
    absolutnormal
    I was really surprised how much I liked this movie. It was really well made, awesome cast and story!
  • thmtsang
    June 20, 2008
    thmtsang
    Based on the novel by Amy Tan, about four elderly Chinese women who left China for America and their relationships with their American born daughters. Each relationship is strained because of the hardships that each mother had endured. How come Andrew McCarthy never ages?
  • TheMightyCelestial
    June 19, 2008
    TheMightyCelestial
    I was supposed to take my girlfriend at the time to go see this movie, but she was one of those type of girls that in order to get attention, whenever I would call her to tell her that I was on my way to pick her up, she would always tell me to come right over, but that she could...( read more)n't guarantee that she would still wanta to go out when I arrived, cuz as always 4 her, she was feelin' like she was comin' down with some sort of sickness or somethin'. So, on this day, I had decided that I had had enough, called her on her bluff, & then told her to that we would just skip the whole thing & she can stay home & get better ( what she actually wanted was for me to go "Aww, you poor thing!" & come over & "baby" her *eyes roll*...). So then, I went to go see this movie by myself, just to p#ss her off, not really expecting anything from it.
    However, by the time the movie was over, I could feel that my eyes had actually become substantially watered.
    Right there & then, I knew that my relationship with my girlfriend was over.
    Cuz no one makes me cry my own tears.
    No one.
  • LitelBluHli
    June 1, 2008
    LitelBluHli
    This is a great film that takes you into the lives of these women. Each story is different. I love it!!! Mothers and daughters...watch it together!!!
  • montoyaevans
    May 22, 2008
    montoyaevans
    i am not chinese but this makes me cry
  • JustJordin
    May 19, 2008
    JustJordin
    i loved this. it was very interesting how every woman had her own story, i loved everything about it. and of course, i cried.
  • dreamcatcher2127
    May 18, 2008
    dreamcatcher2127
    I can watch this movie over and over again.
  • ladyphoenixxev
    May 12, 2008
    ladyphoenixxev
    The best film to teach people about women. I loved this.
  • theluckiest7
    May 8, 2008
    theluckiest7
    This has been a favorite movie of mine since I was a little girl. Through the years of watching it the sutleties that didn't effect me as a child have really made this story grow and age in my mind. There are a lot of movies that have trouble telling just one persons story but ...( read more)this one manages to fit four life long stories and interweave them together to form a heartfelt and lovely movie.
  • zenmaster112
    April 25, 2008
    zenmaster112
    wow these stories were sad. Really good drama.
  • godsbassist93
    April 7, 2008
    godsbassist93
    I was forced to watch this in English class in gr 11.....i felt like dying
  • bmoezile
    March 28, 2008
    bmoezile
    VERY GOOD MOVIE AND SOOO CONFUSING
  • QueenOki
    March 27, 2008
    QueenOki
    i cried like 15 times but there were a lot of funny parts too
  • ElisaLopez20
    March 24, 2008
    ElisaLopez20
    Both sweeping and intimate, a lovely evocation of changing cultures and enduring family ties The Joy Luck Club is loaded with heart, filled with life and completely entertaining.

    This rich and fully dimensional ensemble character study also boasts a first-rate cast of entranci...( read more)ng performers. And though the audience may not have seen many of these players before, there's no question that each will stay in the hearts and minds of those who are fortunate enough to see this film.

    Eight stories unfold, those of four women born into traditional Chinese culture and their adult daughters, all born as Americans. Each of these stories is ultimately interwoven with the others as we observe the tragedies and triumphs experienced by these older women, and the traditions their daughters have, in some cases, chosen to ignore - or unwittingly embraced in a distorted form. How each comes to terms with these situations is the crux of the film. How the stories are told is the film's main strength.

    Probably the sappiest movie ever made but I love it anyways....so blah!
  • lanae8i8
    March 23, 2008
    lanae8i8
    This one is a little slow to start, but is a good flick overall. Always wanted to read the book.
  • KeepGuessing
    March 22, 2008
    KeepGuessing
    Great movie. The cast does a superb job of shouldering the film through-out the story. Not only that, great story pacing through numerous time periods turns the movie into a success. I'll even go as far as to call this movie a classic
  • kryskreations
    March 20, 2008
    kryskreations
    Fantastic insight on eastern (asian) philosophy. Very touching, very endearing!
  • arusa
    March 19, 2008
    arusa
    I used to watch in english class, but didn't get through the end, it's the very good and interesting movie, every character have the interesting past, I'll find a chance to watch it again!
  • ghostbug
    March 15, 2008
    ghostbug
    I've loved this movie since I first got sucked in when it was on tv; the book was amazing too!
  • mijmark
    March 4, 2008
    mijmark
    My mum got me to read some of Amy Tan's works and I liked them. The movie does the author justice.
  • annacelesteagustin
    February 26, 2008
    annacelesteagustin
    cried here a lot... a very heart-warming story of mothers and daughters... watch it! recommended for persons with strong ties w/ family
  • Beinimiya
    February 15, 2008
    Beinimiya
    I hear this movie from my friends, this movie talk about real ABC's life i think.I can find something from this Movie.Nice! if want know more about chinese,watch is one.
  • pinkangelfromasia
    February 10, 2008
    pinkangelfromasia
    ive also read the book.. its really inspirational and moving.. i love it!
  • KaraokeLee
    February 7, 2008
    KaraokeLee
    Take the "human test" and watch this. If you don't cry, guy or girl, you are nOT human!!!
  • Ghw12158
    February 6, 2008
    Ghw12158
    one of my all time favorite movies, great story engaging and well acted balances that sad/funny nearly perfectly
  • Mzpeaches805
    February 3, 2008
    Mzpeaches805
    its just a great movie from all aspects
  • quoththeravennevermore
    February 1, 2008
    quoththeravennevermore
    didn't this book come out recently? wow, hollywood doesn't beat around the bush!
  • matrinise
    January 30, 2008
    matrinise
    One of the best quality movies i have ever seen. So moving... poignant. Portrays the ups and downs of mother-daughter relationship. Watched it several times, just can't take it out of my mind...vividly haunting!
  • TheFaerieKat
    January 27, 2008
    TheFaerieKat
    Totally one of my favorite movies, starting with the opening credits and the story of the swan feather, this movie is simply incredible from start to finish. The actresses and the story lines are finely honed and simply fabulous!

Summary

The Joy Luck Club Summary