A family falls apart in Cannes-favorite `Yiyi'

Movie reviews

`Yiyi'

Unrated (adult language, violence) Sun score * *

"Yiyi" begins promisingly, with a boisterous wedding that deftly explores the tense, convoluted undercurrents that can rip apart large family gatherings.

A-Di has dumped his long-time girlfriend for a young assistant who is pregnant with his child, to the dismay of his family. And on A-Di's wedding day, against the backdrop of a banquet hall cloaked with the Chinese lucky color red, his family quietly unravels:

His brother-in-law, NJ, bumps into the high school girlfriend whom he has never forgotten, and embarks on a poignant mid-life crisis. NJ's 15-year-old daughter Ting-Ting discovers friendship and a confusing first love. A-Di's mother has a stroke and ends up in a coma. And NJ's 8-year-old son discovers the world around him by photographing the backs of people's heads so he can show his subjects what they can't see.

Edward Yang, who won the Cannes Film Festival Best Director award for "Yiyi," adroitly logs the silent disintegration of a multi-generational Taiwanese family. And audiences are likely to identify with the characters' heart-tugging efforts to find themselves. (The film is in Mandarin and Japanese, with English subtitles.)

But "Yiyi" - which means "one, one" in Mandarin - is flawed. The characters are wonderfully fleshed out, but they can't sustain the audience's interest beyond the first two-thirds of the film. And that third hour seems to last forever.

- Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

`Recess: School's Out'

Rated G Sun score * * *

If your kid is a fan of "Disney's Recess," one of the hotter properties on ABC's Saturday morning cartoon lineup, the new inspired-by-the-TV-show movie, "Recess: School's Out," will be quite a hit. But even if you've never caught the animated series, chances are you and your children will enjoy the whimsical, engaging story.

The improbable plot involves a plan by the Third Street School's ex-principal (James Woods) to yank the moon from its orbit, instantly turning the Earth cold - and eliminating summer vacation, so as to keep kids in school at all times and raise test scores.

The kids, led by T.J. (Andy Lawrence), become the heroes, naturally, though in the course of whupping the bad guys they discover that their school's current leader, Principal Prickly (Dabney Coleman), and a teacher who lives to hassle them, Ms. Finster (April Winchell), really aren't so bad after all. Adults of a certain age will hoot when the movie time-travels to 1968, when the now-wizened administrators were hippies. The soundtrack includes such nostalgia-stirring oldies as Three Dog Night's "One"; Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild"; and Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze." The movie's only scary moment comes at its end, thanks to a running gag in which Robert Goulet supplies the singing voice for one of the kids, Mikey. As the credits roll, Mikey sings lead on "Green Tambourine." If you thought William Shatner was bad on his Priceline spots, wait till you hear the Vegas treatment Goulet gives to a once proudly psychedelic song.

Knight Ridder Tribune