Netflixable: “Finding ‘Ohana” is the PG “Goonies” riff kids didn’t know they wanted

Somewhere in the bowels of Mousewitz in deepest, darkest Burbank, a Disney executive is streaming Netflix’s “Goonies Lite” kid-pic “Finding ‘Ohana” and weeping into her Hermes clutch.

Take some consolation in the fact that it gets lost in the whole “treasure hunt” hook that sucks up the last half of the movie and makes it drag past two hours if you want. But this is a cute Hawaiian hoot of a comedy, too much “Indiana Jones” is a small price to pay for that.

“Goonies,” “Raiders,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” Keanu Reeves and “Drunk History” were the filmmakers’ reference points and source of running gags. They and a cast of mostly-unknowns brings wit and representation to burn in a movie about Hawaii and Hawaiians, starring a lot of Hawaiians and people of Polynesian descent.

New Yorkers Pili (Kea Peahu), brother Ioane or “E” (Alex Aiono) and nurse-mom Leilani (Kelly Hu of “Nash Bridges) are pulled back to Hawaii because Grandpa Kimo (Branscombe Richmond) is having trouble keeping out of the hospital and keeping up with the old homestead.

Pili has to miss out on geocaching camp, Ioane misses out on New York high school girls and Mom has no clue how much her Dad has fallen behind on…everything. And Kimo? He’s appalled at how little Leilani has taught his grandkids about Hawaii, how to speak and live Hawaiian.

Yes, he peppers his speech with his native tongue, talking about “wailua (spirit) and serving Spam delicacies, leaving the kids a little lost.

At least “E” has lovely local Hana (Lindsay Watson) to unimpress. And thank Lani that geocacher Pili finds an old pirate’s journal that her Grandpa has been studying for years.

All she needs is a walking encyclopedia, pale and named “Casper,” redheaded and nicknamed “Ginger Stark” by Pili’s brother, to help her solve the puzzle and find a lost treasure.

“Drunk History” kicks in with some amusing Pili-translated/narrated scenes of the pirates’ history — acted out in flashbacks starring Mark Evan Jackson, Ricky Garcia and Chris Parnell.

“Keanu” comes into play as the name of Casper’s too-handy walking stick, and in E’s irritation at trying to get New Yorkers to learn his name. “Keanu” is the “only Hawaiian name anybody knows. And he’s the WORST.”

“Keanu’s a HAWAIIAN TREASURE,” Hana shouts back. “The sadness just makes him...hotter!

I love the inclusion of bits of Hawaiian myth (“Nightmarchers”), traditions and scenery. A visit to the scenic Kualoa Ranch Nature Preserve, a favorite filming location (“Jurassic Park,” a TV series or three) sets up a “Who comes all the way to Hawaii to see where they filmed ‘Lost?'” bit, an evisceration that only an island-dwelling nerd could deliver.

Young Miss Peahu may hit her Brooklynese a tad too hard, but she’s got spunk and screen presence. Youtube singer and actor Aiono is amusingly clutzy, and none of the cast lets the side down.

The “Goonies/Indiana Jones” cave stuff is pro forma, a real paint-by-numbers job. And it goes on for far too long. But there are jokes between the pre-ordained obstacles (spiders, cave-ins), and even a Meghan Trainor sing-along, to break up the recycling.

And as overlong as this is, in the end, here’s a final tip that contradicts that. Stay through the credits.

MPA Rating: PG, a little profanity, a smidgen of peril

Cast: Kea Peahu, Alex Aiono, Lindsay Watson, Branscombe Richmond, Owen Vaccaro, Kelly Hu and Chris Parnell

Credits: Directed by Jude Weng, script by  Christina Strain. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:03

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Movie Review: A dull thriller that is to cinema what “Dead Air” is to radio

Rarely have still photos from a film so perfectly captured that indie horror thriller so well that a review seems redundant.

“Dead Air” is as dazzling, chilling and spine-tingling as the two photos posted above.

Get the picture?

A “Frequency” story of HAM radio conversations traveling through time, it is tedium itself — deathly dull.

Scene after scene of bland, “therapeutic” chats between a guy (director Kevin Hicks) trying out his dad’s old HAM set, and an older woman (screenwriter Vickie Hicks) who goes by “Melder Girl.”

“Melder” is German for “reports,” by the way.

As Will is in 1984, and this “Ava” “Melder Girl” is using the occasional archaic English term, has never heard of “agoraphobia” or “shrinks,” well — see where this is going?

All these conversations, some of them “drunk,” with two dullards who aren’t even amusing drunks, can’t hide their long-delayed final destination from us.

I’m talking about the characters. But as they’re played by the pair who wrote and directed this, they might take that personally. Go nuts, kids.

This story, as it crawls ever-so-slowly towards its mysterious “AHA,” interrupts the sleep-inducing radio chats with Will’s visits to a psychotherapist (Chris Xaver) where he undergoes hypnosis in an effort to regain lost memories.

He goes under. We go under watching him go under.

Unwatchable.

MPA Rating: unrated, profanity

Cast: Kevin Hicks, Vickie Hicks, Chris Xaver

Credits: Directed by Kevin Hicks. Script by Vickie Hicks. A Chinimble release.

Running time: 1:30

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Movie Review: “Body Brokers” are the foot soldiers of the Rehab Industrial Complex

Sure, you’ve seen those TV ads starring this or that “ex-addict” now running a tony drug rehabilitation facility. Maybe you’ve seen news stories on addiction and rehab for fun and profit. Perhaps you caught the documentary American Relapse” from a couple of years back and you remember what “junkie hunters” are.

Here’s a feature film set in that unsavory “system,” a reminder that the opioid manufacturers and marketers, and the doctors who prescribed America into it’s “other” epidemic, aren’t the only ones making bank from our appetite for self-destruction.

“Body Brokers” is a drama set against that reporting, a film about good intentions twisted, raped and pillaged by the predatory. It’s about the Afford Care Act’s inclusion of drug rehab provisions, something meant to help deal with an already rampant opioid abuse crisis. And it’s about those who figured out how to game that system — get rich quick rehab owners, junkies paid to go into rehab, the “hunters” who recruit and pay off those addicts — and a world of good intentions, and government and insurance industry cash, flushed down the drain.

Writer-director John Swab (“Run With the Hunted”) delivers a B-movie with few surprises but plenty of good, solid punches at a mess that didn’t fix a problem, it just allowed a fresh field of predators to profit from it.

Utah and Opal are in masks when we first meet them, knocking over a Columbus, Ohio convenience store. She (Alice Englert of “Ginger & Rosa,” “Beautiful Creatures”) is the scarier of the two, the one who does most of the threatening, the one most eager to shoot up after the stick-up.

Utah (Jack Kilmer of “Palo Alto,” “Summer ’03,””The Nice Guys”) is just as addicted, but more along for the ride. That’s why he’s the one who listens when they’re offered a meal by the stranger they bum a cigarette from.

Wood, played with a streetwise charm by Michael Kenneth Williams (“The Wire,” “Red Sea Diving Resort,” “Lovecraft Country”), isn’t from some “church.” No, he’s not about charity. But he’s got a business card and a suggestion.

“Don’t wait to start the rest of your life.”

His promise of brokered rehab in California doesn’t distract Opal. But Utah has never seen the ocean. He doesn’t hear the cynical voice-over narration, a blizzard of numbers about start-up rehab centers. tens of thousands of “beds to fill,” and the money everybody on the consumer end of drug abuse can pick up just for offering to go and get clean.

New West Recovery has a kindly, supportive receptionist/nurse (Jennifer Rothe), group therapy and counseling from Dr. White (Oscar winner Melissa Leo) and hope.

“Just keep doing the right thing,” Wood urges, after checking in Utah. “One day at a time!”

Even people with little knowledge of three-act dramatic structure can smell where this is going. Yes, there’s good work going on inside those walls. Yes, somebody “else” is paying for it. And yes, a system set up life that is ripe for corruption.

So we’ll be served a first act of hope, a second act of success, and eye-opening revelations, and a third act when the corruption comes home to roost and the whole rotten system is exposed as the zero-sum game it has been twisted into.

Swab’s formulaic script allows the mind to drift just enough to weight the net value of such a system — SOME people are getting clean, getting better and getting out — before disabusing us of any notion about the odds working in society’s favor.

That’s the job of our testy, winking narrator, who happens to be the guy who set up New West just like a dozen other ex-addicts running rehab resorts we see advertised on TV. He happens to be played by the wonderful character actor Frank Grillo (“Hell on the Border,” “Point Blank,”TV’s “Kingdom” and “Billions”).

Vin has the comforting, “speaks your language” sales pitch of a fellow ex-addict, perfect for pep talks with every new group in his facility. But to his staff, to “foot soldier” junkie hunters/recruiters like Wood, he’s all about “keeping the beds filled and the money rolling in.”

Grillo’s Vin narrates the staggering numbers, the insane profits with plenty of room for payoffs, bribes and skimming, generated by this Rehab Industrial Complex.

The two main heavies — Vin and Wood — use the same words, “Do the math.” Vin is the one who narrates the car repair shop “thrive on repeat business” analogy. “Don’t do a good enough job” rehabilitating an addict, “they don’t come back. Do too GOOD of a job, they don’t come back either.

All the good intentions, the empathetic work of the women like May (Rothe) and Dr. White is for naught if their patients don’t have a support system, don’t join a twelve step group and listen to Wood’s offers of cash and sympathy — “You ready to come back, yet?”

Kilmer doesn’t give us much here that shows he’s a bit player ready to be a leading man. He seems to shrink in almost every scene he’s paired up with somebody else in, almost understandable considering most of his scenes are with Williams, Grillo, Rothe and Leo.

The predictable turns in the story have us a couple of steps ahead of the game, pretty much form the start. And any film built on narration this certain of its “answers” invites scrutiny and questioning its own agenda.

“Body Brokers” still manages to be a generally compelling, always-damning indictment of a system that is supposed to help, costs a fortune, and probably isn’t helping nearly as many as it should.

MPA Rating: R for strong drug content, pervasive language and some sexual content

Cast: Jack Kilmer, Kenneth Michael Williams, Frank Grillo, Alice Englert, Melissa Leo and Jessica Rothe

Credits: Scripted and directed by Jack Swab. A Voltage film, Vertical release.

Running time: 1:51

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Movie Preview: A tender story of a gay couple and a problem child — “Rain Beau’s End”

An early contender for the year’s worst title, this March 8 features Sean Young and Ed Asner in supporting roles.

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Movie Review: “Flora & Ulysses,” the “Disney Version” of a beloved kids’ novel

Kids movies like “Flora & Ulysses” make you appreciate the acting profession.

A talented, accomplished cast can be signed on to an effects-driven picture aimed at a very young audience. But the thing that makes them act the daylights out of it, “sell” this silly concept, is professionalism, committing to the job and by force of will, making us buy in or at least have a laugh to three.

Alyson Hannigan (“How I Met Your Mother”), Ben Schwartz (“Sonic the Hedgehog”), Anna Deveare Smith (“Can You Ever Forgive Me?”), Danny Pudi (“Community”), Bobby Moynihan (“Saturday Night Live”) and Kate Micucci (Big Bang Theory”) are pros who give this version of the Kate DiCamillo novel their all. And if they can’t make it come off on their own, they come darned close.

Because heaven help me, I laughed a few times at this herky jerky not-that-quirky adaptation of Kate DiCamillo’s hit kid-lit novel.

The story is a Marvel Meets Mehitabel mashup, a tale of a squirrel whose access to a keyboard lets his squirrel’s-eye-view “poetry” come out into the world. The much-honored novelist borrowed ee cummings’ “Archie & Mehitabel” gimmick of critter-typewritten poetry and married it to America’s obsession with superhero comics and won her second Newbery Medal (“Because of Winn-Dixie” won the other) for the idea.

Disney owns Marvel and has the bank account to make a squirrel, sucked into a robot vacuum and thus given super powers, come to the screen. The digital-animated squirrel isn’t exactly lifelike, or even based on one native to North America. The hairy, pointy ears suggest he’s a Eurasian Red Squirrel, but no matter. All he’s got to do is fly like a superhero and as Deadpool reminds us, “stick the (superhero) landing.”

Matilda Lawler plays Flora, a comic-obsessed 10-year-old whose Dad’s comic, Incandesto, never caught on.

That failure sent her family into a stress-induced divorce spiral. Dad (Schwartz) moved out and works at an office supply warehouse store. Mom (Hannigan) is a romance novelist who “wrote about love because she had love,” but who has lost her romance and developed writer’s block.

Flora’s comic-book fueled belief that “miraculous things happen” has curdled into cynicism.

And then that robotic yard vac — Ulysses is the brand name — sucks a squirrel into its innards and Flora has to save him. CPR doesn’t work, so mouth-to-mouth it is.

Squirrel breath? Pretty much what you’d expect. “Fuzzy, damp and kinda nutty.”

Flora becomes convinced this illegal pet was put in her care for a reason, that he has super-powers. All he has to do is log-on to prove it.

The screenwriter has “Wild Hogs” and “Yogi Bear,” “Spies in Disguise” and “Ferdinand” in his credits, so there’s a lot of slapstick mixed in with the comic book jokes and temporarily-blind neighbor kid (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) gags.

Flora’s imaginary companion — Dad’s Incandesto character — is an afterthought the movie doesn’t need. But every time the squirrel “sticks the landing” I chuckled. When Flora narrates “There’s always that moment in any ‘origin story,'” I had to giggle. When the blind kid, perhaps making a point about the value of the “poetry,” shows up with a collection of Rilke poetry, I cackled.

How’s even a temporarily-blind 10-year-old know Rilke, or even know he’s handing off the right book?

Digital squirrel trashing a donut shop? Kind of funny. Kate Micucci playing the waitress? Almost. Danny Pudi as a demoted animal control officer hellbent on catching that “rabid” squirrel? Not funny enough.

Even the “life affirming” squirrel poetry, a real selling point because it worked so well for the writer DiCamillo stole the idea from, is just shy of getting the job done.

“I love your round head,” Ulysses types. “The brilliant green, the sky so new. These letters, this world. You…I am very hungry.”

DiCamillo’s messaging feels shoehorned into all this rather than an integral element of the story, a common complaint in adaptations of her work. “Turns out,” sad Flora narrates, “the hardest thing about having hope is watching the people who don’t.”

Maybe her books aren’t particularly adaptable. Anybody remember “The Tales of Despereaux?” The movie, I mean?

Maybe this screenwriter and this second-time director (she did “The Tiger Hunter”) weren’t the right people to weave profundity and sadness in with animated squirrel slapstick.

The actors may give their all and the squirrel might indeed “stick the landing.” “Flora & Ulysses” still falls a little short of the mark.

MPA Rating: PG

Cast: Matilda Lawler,  Alyson Hannigan, Ben Schwartz, Danny Pudi, Anna Deveare Smith, Bobby Moynihan and Kate Micucci

Credits: Directed by Lena Khan, script by Brad Copeland, based on the Kate DiCamillo novel. A Walt Disney/Disney+ release.

Running time: 1:30

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Movie Preview: Disney gives us Emma Stone as “Cruella”

Damn girl.

Emma Thompson and Mark Strong also star in this May 28 release.

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Netflixable? Very smart dogs save the day in “June & Kopi”

Finding a family friendly film involving animals and kids that co-stars living, breathing critters is proving more difficult with each digital upgrade that comes down the CGI pike.

It’s not just digital chipmunks any more. If you can talk Harrison Ford into co-starring with a digital dog in “Call of the Wild,” there’s no point in asking what animated squirrel co-star Disney has cooked up for its adaptation of “Flora & Ulysses,” which I will be reviewing shortly.

That makes this Indonesian dramedy, “June & Kopi,” a genuine throwback — emphasis on “genuine.”

It’s about two dogs — one of them front and center — who play a big role in a family’s life, especially in the safe upbringing of their adoring daughter. The dogs are real, real smart and real cute. You and your kids don’t have to be able to read subtitles to see what they do, and that June the White Swiss Shepherd and Kopi, her grey pitbull (I think) pal, are very very good dogs.

Aya (Acha Septriasa) is the one who finds and names this dog she finds in the first month of summer “June.” She has no collar, and as we’ve seen her chase chickens and be chased by rowdy tweenage boys, we know she’s lost.

Aya is so petite that you wonder if she’s a teen, but no. She’s married and a professional. When she brings the dog to their upscale home, there’s another dog there. Kopi is smart as a whip, able to open and close doors and respond to commands. He’s also there to shake hands when the husband (Ryan Delon) gets home.

As June has been left in a room which she pretty much trashed, husband Ale is ready to be rid of her. They’ve gotten a hint she isn’t good with kids, as well. But the room June trashed was “the baby’s room.” There is no baby. A framed ultrasound tells us there almost was one.

What is the dog doing by sniffing at Aya and giving her the attentive whimper-growl? She’s telling Aya to take another pregnancy test.

“June & Kopi” is that kind of movie. Little canine miracles like that abound. And as their little girl (Makayla Rose Hilli) is born and starts to grow up, June comforts her and becomes her inseparable companion.

Don’t even THINK of taking a vacation without that dog, unless you want the two of them to break out and track the family down and save the day. Again.

This story is so simple that it could have been filmed without dialogue like that French film “The Fox and the Child.” Images, visual clues and the dogs expressive faces and eyes tell the unadorned story.

All we get from the dialogue is that Aya is a comic book creator who is unemployed because she can’t come up with a decent idea (until the dog shows up), and that Indonesia is still pretty patriarchal, as Ale puts his foot down several times about “that dog” only to melt when that dog saves the day.

I don’t want to oversell this because this story is small-child-simple, slim-to-trite. There’s barely enough shepherd slapstick to go around. But it is surprisingly touching. And if you’ve got pre-school kids, they can follow “June & Kodi” without understanding one language or reading subtitles in another.

Seeing smart, soulful, well-trained dogs do their thing on the screen could make younger viewers reject any film that tries to use digital animal substitutes. And that would be a good thing.

MPA Rating: TV-14

Cast: Acha Septriasa, Ryan Delon, Makayla Rose Hilli 

Credits: Directed by Noviandra Santosa, script by Noviandra Santosa and Titien Wattimena. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:30

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Writers Guild nominates “Palm Springs” and “Ma Rainey,” “News of the World” and “Judas” for WGA Awards

This is an easily defended set of nominations for best original and adapted screenplays.

Quibble with “Borat Subsequent Movie Film” if you want, the omission of “Mank.”

But “Judas and the Black Messiah,” “News of the World,” “The White Tiger,” “One Night in Miami,” “Promising Young Woman,” “Sound of Metal,” “The Trial of the Chicago Seven,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” even “Palm Springs,” hard to find fault with any of those.”

No, “Da Five Bloods” and “Mank” weren’t dazzling scripts. “Nomadland” was and is.

The complete list is here. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/news/wga-awards-original-adapted-documentary-film-nominations-revealed?__twitter_impression=true

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Movie Review: It’s not the drive that kills, it’s the Quebec destination — “Death Trip”

You can’t review a movie based on the degree of difficulty in getting it finished. Even if it’s “Fitzcarraldo.” Ok, maybe if it’s “Fitzcatraldo.”

The Canadians who filmed “Death Trip” suffered for their art. Characters run into the snow in shorts and shirtsleeves. The wrestle and pummel each other on the snowy surface of an iced-over lake.

You can see their breath and their goosebumps. Even Canadian actors would have to be cold performing that.

But to bend a phrase, once they’ve suffered for their art, it’s our turn.

“Death Trip” — stupid misnomer of a title, BTW — is a stumbling, obscurant stab at horror littered with logic lapses, inexplicable violence, flash-forwards and gore.

Some years back, a bunch of American indie filmmakers built a genre out of characters who talk and talk and talk, jokey, relationshippy films that even included a few stabs at horror. “Baghead” and “Creep” were the two best known “mumblecore” horror titles.

Director/co-writer James Watts and co-writer/star Kelly Kay, making their feature filmmaking debut, may have invented a variant on that genre — “prattlecore.” Honestly, nobody in this movie ever seems to shut up, until the bloody finale, that is.

Four Montreal friends head off the a “cottage” “in the North,” out in the country. It’s winter, a great time for Kelly (Kelly Kay), Tatyana (Tatyana Olal) and Melina (Melina Trimarchi) to pile into Garrett’s old Dodge Caravan for a little wilderness partying.

Garrett (Garrett Johnson) is taking three women and a lot of booze to the nondescript ranch house his granddad just died in. There’s a lot of kvetching about who actually sleeps in the bedroom where Grandpa died. Garrett, being gallant, lets Kelly take that hit.

But bumps in the night notwithstanding, that’s not what this thriller is about, any more than it’s about a “Death Trip” to a “remote cottage in the woods.” The “trip” is “meh.” The cottage is in a village. There are neighbors, including a young woman whom the gauche, drunk and unfiltered city slickers peep at as she changes clothes with the curtains open.

“Her Dad killed her mom,” is the gossip. Maybe. Maybe not. Will we find that out the hard way?

Kelly is the cute blonde we saw having sex in a bathroom mid-party in the film’s opening scene. Her spooky walk home is the first red herring this red herring festival serves up.

Melina likes the booze, the weed, and has no boundaries or real inhibitions. Her pal Tatyana is Black and notes that “White people are crazy all the time,” and gets no pushback for that.

“Flash forwards” used to be super rare, and even though they’re a lot more common these days, in films like “Death Trip,” showing this character covered in blood or that one staggering across the ice with a hammer is just a spoiler very early in the film.

“Death Trip” doesn’t have a good scene until the third act, when the loud, mouthy out-of-towners are invited to a party with locals the same age. That sequence of scenes has genuine suspense — fear of date rape, suicide, fistfight, murder orgy all cross the mind as it plays out.

“Anything could happen” is how you pull viewers to the edge of their seats. “Nothing happening but people prattling on” is the perfect way to kill the mood.

MPA Rating: graphic violence, drug abuse, sex

Cast: Kelly Kay, Tatyana Olal, Garrett Johnson, Melina Trimarchi

Credits: Directed by James Watts, script by Kelly Kay and James Watts. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:41

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Netflixable? “Little Big Women” of a Taiwanese family cope with loss and disappointment

“Little Big Women” is a most watchable dry-eyed weeper about a family of Taiwanese women coming to grips with death, disappointment, and divorce, and those are just the “Ds” in their litany of woe.

“Woe” is a bit strong here. “Downbeat” is a better descriptor for this immersive, well-acted, soapy and sentimental Taiwanese melodrama.

Everybody knows Mrs. Lin (Shu-Fang Chen). Her name is on every vendor’s lips as she walks the seafood market, selecting velvet shrimp, eels, milkfish and a lobster. She runs up a big bill.

Yes, she’s buying for a restuarant.

She has a regular taxi driver, and a favorite maudlin ballad she sings karaoke to on her rides (Installed in the cabs there, apparently).

And today is her “big day.” She’s turning 70 and her daughters have arranged a banquet.

That makes this the perfect day for her to hear from a husband she hasn’t spoken to in decades. And he’s calling from the hospital. He picked “today,” Mrs. Lin’s siblings later joke, “on purpose.” Because she has no sooner stopped in than he coughs, wheezes and dies.

Not going to spoil her party, she grouses. Daughter JiaJia (Ke-Fang Sun) runs the restaurant, and has gone to a lot of trouble. Daughter Yu (Vivian Hsu) is a plastic surgeon, and is coming with her husband and their smart cookie teenage daughter Clementine (Buffy Chen). And oldest daughter Wangching (Ying-Hsuan Hsieh) has given her last dance class of the day and is on her way.

Mom’s resentments don’t exactly melt away at this sudden death, but the daughters are torn. One has actually been in touch with Dad, just a bit. One has just been told she has cancer. “Divorce” floats around the family like cigarette smoke, which is a really good way to get cancer.

And Mom wants to know about this woman, Mrs. Tsai, who dropped her soon-to-be-late husband off at the hospital. How long had she known him? What’s their connection? Will she come to the funeral?

The Joseph Chen-Chieh Hsu (he also makes his feature directing debut) and Maya Huang script takes us on a trip through Taiwanese traditions, fads and rituals. The family debates what sort of funeral to have, Ms. Tsai may have an opinion on that. If it’s in a religion the family doesn’t belong to, rituals will have to be rehearsed, a priest arranged.

Clementine, being the youngest, is our surrogate here — asking questions about the granddad she never knew (flashbacks prompted by family memories fill us in), what they’re going to do and what they have to do first.

“A wake is not fun,” Granny tells her (in Chinese with English subtitles), but it is the first step in repaying “a debt I owe” her late husband, she tells her daughters and granddaughter.

I like the messy lives explored here, with every character having complications that are both a product of their upbringing and their response to it. We figure out which daughter is the most responsible for Mom, which is most like “Dad” and which is the most frustrated with how life has turned out.


Hsu is the most familiar actress in this cast (to me), but Chen has been a sturdy presence in Taiwanese since the ’60s. They’re all subtly expressive performers.

Despite the sadness and flashbacks — too few to truly flesh out the father, a ne’er do well womanizer — this is no “Joy Luck Club.” There’s little of the daughters weeping over how hard Mom has had it. Because Mom is a hardcase and doesn’t invite tears of sympathy.

Lacking even a hint of a light touch, it’s no “Farewell” either.

But “Little Big Women” is a perfectly watchable genre melodrama, an old-fashioned “women’s picture,” with sentiment, intricate relationships, intrigue and not-too-heavy-to-take heartbreak.

MPA Rating: TV-14

Cast: Shu-Fang Chen, Ying-Hsuan Hsieh, Vivian Hsu, Ke-Fang Sun and Buffy Chen

Credits:  Directed by Joseph Chin-Chieh Hsu, script by Joseph Chen-Chieh Hsu and Maya Huang. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:03

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