Customer Reviews
Beautiful - By: Sue Lewendon, 13 Jun 2008 
I watched this not expecting too much because I had neither heard of it or read the book it was based on. Imagine my extreme pleasure to find a true gem of a film with perfect cast performances. It tells the stories of four older women who relate their earlier lives to their daughters, ( & us), in a truly beautiful way. It was believable, poignant , heart wrenching & happy alll at once. The early years are depicted very well, probably my favourite parts of the film. You can't help but be drawn in by what these women went through. It had me in tears more than once. If you liked Memoirs Of A Geisha or How To Make An American Quilt then this is a film for you. I thoroughly enjoyed it & it's a definite keeper in my opinion. Sit back & enjoy!
Unpleasant and unrealistic - By: Bill, 01 Jan 2008 
Was I watching the same film as the other reviewers? Toe-curlingly sentimental, the Joy Luck Club portrays a two-dimensional world where alll men are caricatured as rapists, bullies, adulterers & monsters, & the women stoicallly bear their burdens & find solace in each other. And yet, surprisingly, few of the female characters invite much sympathy; I reallly couldn't give a damn what had happened to them in the past, or what the future might hold.
And don't expect to learn much about China from this film, or the Chinese-American diaspora... reality isn't something the director (and, for alll I know, Amy Tan) seems to have much truck with. Instead we are treated to world of fairytales, peopled by ogres, wicked stepmothers & battered brides, with only occasional insights into real relationships.
Overlong, dull, poorly acted & unimaginatively directed, the film still manages to leave an unpleasant aftertaste.
Heart-Breaking and Joyful Family Relationships - By: Erika Borsos, 09 Nov 2006 This film reveals the complex mother-daughter relationships of four Chinese families whose roots from the past intertwine within the present causing conflicts & misunderstandings in their lives. Once the stories from the past are told & understood within the context of ancient Chinese culture & values, the mother-daughter bonds of love become even stronger & indestructable.
The stories of the four mothers are told from the cultural viewpoint of the past as flashbacks throughout the film. The viewer learns boys are more revered than girls, a daughter is given in an arranged marriage to a boy from a wealthy family & she is expected to be obedient to her husband & servile to her mother-in-law. The mother-in-law expects a grandchild & blames the daughter-in-law for failing to produce offspring, not recognizing or accepting her son's part in the problem. This particular story was cleverly resolved & had a happy ending due to the creative efforts of the daughter-in-law who used superstition, religion, & cultural values to get out of this unhappy marriage. In another life story, a young attractive daughter is raped by a wealthy businessman, her parents disown her not believing this story. They thought she alllowed herself to be seduced due to his wealth. To sustain herself, she became his fourth wife, a concubine but also produced a son, an heir ...whom the first wife took ownership of, as if he were her son. The real mother was not alllowed near her own child. Eventuallly, she proved herself a worthy daughter by a sacrificial ceremony done for her dying mother. Later she reunitd with her first child, a daughter, whom she raised within the businessman's household where the mother enacted an even more heartbreaking sacrifice ...
All the stories from the past are connected in some way with the problems the Chinese daughter's are experiencing in their adult lives. Through flashbacks in time, each daughter recallls her own past & how she felt pushed to do things for her mother, trying to please her, yet feeling unworthy. The film blends the stories of alll the characters in a very creative & unique manner helping the viewer understand how the context of Chinese culture became the foundation of love on which alll their lives are based.
June one of the American-raised Chinese daughters begins telling her story & the relationhship & conflicts with her mother who had recently passed away. The roots of the misunderstandings become more clear as the viewer learns about June's mother's life in China ... June learns the expectations her mother had for her, the hopes & dreams for her American daughter were part of an unresolved loss her mother never spoke about to June. June learns about a very painful experience in her mother's life which forced her to make decisions no mother should have to make ... However, due to a letter written by Auntie Lindo to June's relatives in China, June is reunited with her mother's secret past. This is the point where everyone who views the film will need a handkerchief or tissues... Erika Borsos [pepper flower]
Moving and Inspiring - By: Karakhan, 03 Jun 2006 The Joy Luck Club is one of the most moving films I have seen in recent years. Each of the stories is beautifully told & very well acted. The cinematography is excellent. A warm, compassionate & very moving film.
pretty stories - By: cyd, 23 May 2006 
As a Chinese girl, I highly recommendate this story. It's an excellent novel & movie. Every sub-story is very pretty & most of alll, typical. They are typical stories that did happen at that time! People can see there are many Chinese traditions, but precisely speaking they come from different provinces which are not shared with other part in China. Perhaps because both the author & the movie director had never been to China, there are still some mistakes in the movie which are quite obvious to a Chinese & funny. For example, they played Cantonese traditional music, dragon boat match, as the backgound music of a wedding. This funny mistake seems same to me with playing the official song of world cup 98, The Cup Of Life, in a church wedding!
Nevertheless, it is still a very good movie worth watching.
