Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

chrishend I have a pretty high tolerance for slow period pieces, but this one pushed me to the limit.The first 5 minutes, and the last 10 minutes were okay. Everything else in between was a snore fest.If you don't mind watching annoying, boring children try to act for over an hour straight then I suppose this might be the movie for you. Personally though, I spent most of the movie hoping all those kids would fall in a well.The plot was contrived and relied completely on massive coincidences to drive itself, the children had way too much screen time and were annoying, and I got about ten times as emotionally attached to a puppy that was on screen for about 30 seconds than I was to any of the main characters.Three thumbs down!

chowjoe ...does a pre-adolescent girl who'd lost her hearing manage to run away from a small village and in 10-15 years end up living in a big city high-rise apartment complete with a storage room, a well-equipped private screening room that seats at least ten and a balcony that just happens to overlook the hutong inhabited by her long-estranged parents...in contemporary China (population: 1.4 billion)? I know one is supposed to suspend disbelief at the movies, but this is beyond ridiculous! And how about the fact the the young man she injures in the present-day part of the story just happens to be an "adopted" childhood playmate from whom she was separated dozens of years before, hundreds of miles away? And the fact that she doesn't even recognize the guy whom she thinks has killed a beloved pooch and yet trusts and sends him to look after her fish, so that he can conveniently discover their childhood connection that lasted, what, maybe a week, which is more than enough time for an enraged father to locate his errant son in a small Chinese village? This is probably the worst-written Chinese film to make it to western arthouses and festivals in many a moon. It is an insult to the pre-Communist and Communist movies about which it waxes nostalgic. And shame on the critics who bestowed even an iota of praise on this wrongheaded and sentimental hogwash!

jbailiff Jiang Xian uses the complex backstory of Ling Ling and Mao Daobing to study Mao's "cultural revolution" (1966-1976) at the village level. The film has the elements and pace of Chinese opera and so appears slow and sometimes sentimental to the foreign viewer. But the movie provides a window onto contemporary life in China, with its focus upon villagers in the city, the consuming quality of subsistence--daily struggle, family and local cruelties--and the appeal of movies as escape, fantasy, and, ultimately, as source of community. This last is the most radical element in the film, for it suggests the modern--and universal--experience of culture will replace the insular Chinese traditions. The child actors are particularly fine.

michael@piston.net This film is great at presenting fascinating characters, but fails to weave them into a compelling narrative. The film begins by introducing an instantly attractive protagonist, a movie addicted water delivery boy. He is abruptly introduced to the feminine lead through the most original device of her attacking him with a brick. Subsequently he gains access to the woman's life story, and then the film becomes a journey through her past, with the ultimate goal of discovering what could have provoked the attack. It is true that both his attacker and her beautiful, would be actress mother are intriguing characters, but their stories are little more than a series of unrelated personal disasters, bound together only by nostalgia for a supposedly golden era of Chinese Communist propaganda films, as presented through the magical medium of outdoor cinema. If this filmmaker could craft plots nearly as skillfully as he does characters, he would be well on his way to greatness.