all in all, dim sum funeral was a very nice, elegant and heartfeltsurprise and i recommend it. 8 out of 10.

"Dim Sun Funeral" has a potential story about a dysfunctional familywith estranged siblings, loss of traditions, bitterness andreconciliation with many wealthy characters. Unfortunately the directorAnna Chi makes a poor work and the plot becomes a melodramatic andsometimes boring Chinese-American soap opera, lost between the comedyand the heavy drama. Anyway, there are many interesting values andtraditions from the Chinese culture and it is worthwhile watching thismovie at least once. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Meu Último Desejo" ("My Last Wish")

Dim Sum Funeral is about a family of estranged siblings who findthemselves having to get back together in the process of planning theirmother's funeral. In doing so, they all stop fighting and learn toaccept each other. This is a charming film in some ways, but itsdepiction of sibling rivalry is not realistic. In a truly dysfunctionalfamily, which this family purports to be, occasions like weddings andfunerals are not times to come together, they're times to wage furtherwarfare. And once things like wills and inheritances are thrown in, thefur starts to fly. This would have been a better and morepsychologically true movie if the siblings continued to be estrangedfrom each other at the movie's end; it would have shown the difficultyof healing childhood wounds and the essential loneliness that adultswho've had an unhappy childhood carry throughout their lives.

I guess whoever made this movie wanted something like Chinese version"Two Weeks" but with more twist, more dramatic, and they so did that,terribly!

From the beginning, all the family members hated their mother so much,dislike each other so much, and as the days goes by, they start tolearn to celebrate life? why? because the memory from the childhood?but what made them hated their mother, stopped talking to each other?isn't that the same childhood? As the story plays along, instead ofrevealing the reason why they become so bitter, the big twist kicks in,even though nothing above was ever explained, the twist made meunderstood why they hate their mother so much, but strangely, all ofthe sudden, instead hating her like I felt, they all start loving theirmother,loving each others, then everyone start happily eating funeralDim Sim. Is this a joke?

Overall, the story line is awful, I would give it a 0 if I could, theonly reason I gave it a 2 is that some of the actors are decent(not BaiLing, she does not how to act at all in this film)

Oh, another funny thing is, when the mother went to Hongkong, it saidthat she was 16, which is in 1960s, so she will be 63 the most by 2008,then the age of all the roles can't add up, so they got a 81 yrs old toplay the mother role, wired huh? or is this a movie about future?

"Tradition. It's important" "Yes. It is."

I approached this film thinking there might be some interestingethnographic material about ethnic Chinese funeral customs, but whenone of the daughters who is lesbian, approached one of the officiatingmonks about being a sperm donor so she and her partner can conceive,and then he produces a turkey baster filled with 'monk spunk' and therealization he is not cut out to be a monk…

And the final plot twist of the film … why? At what point did a grownperson think, "hey- this is a good idea".

Truly a remarkable entry in the slop bucket of contemporary cinema.

Needless to say, I was quite surprised at some of the revelations thechildren had about their deceased mother, especially considering thefact she was born and raised in China. These revelations give a morehuman feel to the rigid culture of the Chinese, and give the moviesubstance.

Asian intolerance of infidelity, interracial marriage, andhomosexuality is also explored in depth. This part of the moviepersonifies the characters before they even speak more than a fewlines, and helps humanize the 'Dragon Lady' over the course of themovie. There is much more that I could say about this movie, but Ibelieve I've said enough to offer a conclusion: As Americans, we don'tgenerally put much thought into ideas like homosexuality, interracialmarriage, and infidelity. Its all around us–and we become numb to it.But these ideas can become catalysts for mayhem in Asian families,where such ideas are shunned or outright forbidden. Understanding thisfact will help you understand–and enjoy–the movie.

I completely agree with the other reviews panning this movie. It's tooboring to be a pop movie and too stupid to be a serious one. You mayhang in there despite the fact that the characters are so unlikeable(particularly the dead woman) and insipid, you may multi-task throughthe cringe-worthy dialogue, press pass the predictable sequence ofevents (though there's no one to root for, no one to motivate any senseof engagement), all the while thinking, there must be one kernel ofnovel insight or characterization, something that would justify makinga whole movie. Particularly as a Chinese – American, you hope for thiskind of thing to succeed and to derive something interesting andrelevant to your own life and experience. But somehow it manages to getless interesting, to get bafflingly superficial as though the divinemuses at Disney had intervened to demand a more pat and sociable plot.At the start, the problems at least have the potential to beinteresting though very predictable and thoroughly explored in otherbetter films. I was vaguely intrigued by the thorough unlikeability ofthe mother, all the other films had provided the parent's perspective(for example, why destroying a daughter's relationship with the love ofher life because he's black may actually be understandable or have someredeeming rationale; and showing acts of love by the parent for thechild that reveals the parent's humanity, their own resistance to theshackles of culture) – was this a new take? alas, no. The siblingsbegin to cooperate in the "last wishes" of their mother out of what isclearly guilt, and from no where that guilt is transformed into honestgrief, respect and love, like blood into wine. There's very littleexploration of the reasons for the hatred by the children. Butpresumably, like in real life, it was failure to do the things thatactually inspire honest grief, respect and love – like being there andhelping the eldest daughter through the loss of her son (my mom wouldsimply have come to me and camped out indefinitely), sending a presentfor her black grandson's birthday or attending her granddaughter'srecital. It's not clear to me why death would absolve a mother from herduty in such acts of forgiveness and love, in my experience, death iswhen a miserable bastard really pays the piper. This felt uncomfortablylike the work of someone who couldn't stand their mother but feltreally guilty about it.