The Joy Luck Club (1993)

“This one moment would decide for my whole life whether fear would rule or I would. I decided. Underneath I knew who I was. I promised myself never to forget. ” – Lindo

Number of Times Seen – 1 (19 Sep 2016)

Brief Synopsis – The stories of the lives of 8 Asian American women (mothers and daughters) are told as they all get ready for one of their own’s journey to rediscover her roots in China.

My Take on it – This is another movie that I have been interested in seeing for years, but just never got around to it.

The 4 actresses who play the daughters are all actresses that I have seen in other films or TV shows and it was nice seeing them here because of my familiarity with them.

Lauren Tom played Ross’ girlfriend Julie on Friends

Tamlyn Tomita was in one of my favorite episodes of Quantum Leap and in the movie Come See the Paradise (1990)

Ming Na-When was on ER and is now on Agents of SHIELD

and Rosalind Chao was in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space 9.

This film does a very good job of telling 8 different backstories in less than 2 and a half hours which is no easy task.

I’m sure that the book does a much better job explaining the whole stories and gives the reader a much more comprehensive history of the characters, but they do a great job with what they have.

One of the things that I really liked about this film is the fact that since I knew absolutely nothing about Chinese culture before watching this, I found the film to be extremely informative and educated me in more ways than I could imagine about that culture.

Bottom Line – Very interesting and diverse stories help make this film even more intriguing. Its not easy telling so many stories in less than 150 minutes and they do a fine job of it. The book is probably much more comprehensive and tells the stories more completely. The cast is superb and despite knowing next to nothing about Chinese culture, it was extremely enlightening watching it. Recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – In the novel, it is revealed that the real name of the character played by Ming-Na Wen is Jing-Mei. On ER (1994), Ming-Na plays another character named Jing-Mei. (From IMDB)

Rating – Globe Worthy

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