The Joy Luck Club

Every once in a while a movie comes along that is so stirring and so moving that it stays with you long after it's over. Like a wonderful memory, it washes over your psyche for days and bathes it in some indescribable richness. The Joy Luck Club is just such a movie. This is filmmaking at its best: a wonderful story that transcends cultures. It is beautifully set and filmed, superbly acted and masterfully directed. [7 Sept 1993]

A beautiful work that could easily have turned into a four-hour-long affair but, at just a tad over two, is enticingly rich and shines with humanity. [8 Sept 1993, p.D1]

The Joy Luck Club is "Terms of Endearment" in quadruplicate, aimed at the heart and right on target. [24 Sept 1993, p.47]

The best thing about The Joy Luck Club is that it is not too cerebral, calculated or self-consciously arty. It is also an intensely emotional movie that celebrates the mystical undercurrent of life, that accepts the healing miracle of love, and - in the tradition of the great Hollywood "women's pictures" of the '30s and '40s - simply does not leave a dry eye in the house. [24 Sept 1993]

A highly emotional epic about what it means to be both Chinese and American. Read full review

Like a flowering of talent that has been waiting so long to be celebrated. It is also one of the most touching and moving of the year's films. Read full review

If The Joy Luck Club doesn’t make you cry, nothing will. In an age of contrived and mechanical sentimentality, its deeply felt, straight-from-the-heart emotions and the unadorned way it presents them make quite an impact. No matter how many hankies you bring with you, it won’t be enough. Read full review

Those unfamiliar with the book will simply appreciate a stirring, many-sided fable, one that is exceptionally well told. Read full review

Wang has made a dramatically confident move into the mainstream on his own terms with highly congenial material. Read full review

Never has political correctness looked so sumptuously handsome as it does here, and in its perfect-pitch instinct for the cultural vibe, this sweeping movie is so immaculately dead-on that it nearly transcends criticism. Read full review

Hits hardest when it bypasses sentiment to ponder the inextricable mix of love and pain that comes with the ties that bind. Read full review

Wang never loses the pieces, directing with clarity, force and evident affection, building a multi-plotted, multi-layered collection of intimate individual stories into a sweeping, emotional mosaic of life. Wonderful. Read full review

Gives refreshing -- and bittersweet -- dimension to the age-old clash between generations. Read full review

Mostly engrossing and always worthy of respect, it still hasn't quite the big-movie sweep to make it a tell-the-world experience. [8 Sept 1993, p.1D]

Fascinating and satisfying the way the diverse threads are knitted together into a single tapestry. Read full review

Pierces through your tear ducts in its ultimate path toward your heart. Read full review

The Joy Luck Club may be stylistically rickety, but Wang does a good job with the logistics of the movie, integrating multiple time periods, dialogue in two languages (English and Mandarin), two locations (San Francisco and China) and overlapping casts - several characters require two and even three actors to play them at different ages - to make a watchable whole. This is not a movie to be watched lackadaisically. Blink twice and you could lose the train of narration. [17 Sept 1993, p.C]

Pure melodrama, but stylishly done, with finely tuned performances played out against meticulously realized settings. Read full review

A sumptuous two-and-a-quarter-hour emotional epic built on one lachrymose climax after another. What little plot there is exists only to set up the next Big Cry. Read full review

Director Wayne Wang and his dreadful cast – the performances are almost across-the-board atrocious – had no chance. Read full review