Thi Mai, rumbo a Vietnam

I generally enjoy mixing humor with drama but here the comedy felt like it was put in just for the sake of having some jokes blended in. I had high hopes for the movie but where they injected humor it was out of place and distracted from the flow of the story.

What a lovely movie with cultural charms and sweet humorous plot! Beautiful cinematography. Moving dialogues. Happy ending for every one. Yay!

Enjoyable comedy delivers a lot of silly -but also really sentimental- situations, entertainment and amusement .The flick provides emotions , love stories , twisted incidents , funny comical sketches , tongue-in-cheek , grotesque situations and above all , it especially contains catching touches of humor and irony . It deals with Carmen (Carmen Machi) , a determined and obstinate woman , she along with her husband (Pedro Casablanc) to be aware her daughter Maria died in a car crash . After a couple of days , Carmen decides to go to her flat for some paperwork but here she finds out that Maria was about to adopt a Vietnamese girl called Thi Mai . Carmen then decides to go to Vietnam along with her two veteran friends : Elvira (Aitiana Sánchez Gijón ) and Rosa (Adriana Ozores) , although none of the three has ever left Spain in their life . During the search for Thi Mai , they become involved in multitude of amazing incidents . Through the film is described several distresses , clumsiness and misfortunes to carry out their purports , lousily proceeded by the bungling outfit in fits and starts . The three women will have the opportunity to experience nutty and comical situations caused by cultural differences . They will be helped by Dan (Nguyen) , a Vietnamese guide, and Andrés (Dani Rovira) , a young Spanish actor going to Hanoi to live with his boyfriend .

Funny , heartwarming and uneven comedy , appointed for all kind of public about an agreeable premise : three mature women move to Vietnam to carry out the adoption a Vietnamese little girl , there they bear several ungainliness , confusion and crazy mayhem . Lovely , attractive and charming flick with cultural clashes between Vietnamese and Spanish people . In the film they are giggles , irony , comedy , almost-surrealist scenes about a sympathetic trio of madure women suffering in Vietnam a great number of adventures , distresses and blunders . From the start to finish the good mood and humor are continuous . Sitting in a strange middle ground between the completely absurd and the stylishly enjoyable , being an agreeable comedy with brief dramatic elements, as well as sweet hilarious touches . There are some nice jokes in the film and the cast , playing eccentric characters , make a cosy fit . Passable and charming screenplay, though middlingly paced , by Marta Sánchez . The highlight and great clímax, of course , is the final , being executed slightly and quickly , with no much complications , including some surprises . The picture benefits itself of a great cast formed by the following ones : Carmen Machi who gives a sympethetic acting and the married woman who travels to Vietnam to bring home the young girl her recently deceased daughter had planned to adopt, she is well accompanied by Adriana Ozores and Aitiána Sanchez Gijón . Support cast is pretty good such as : Pedro Casablanc , Antonio Gil , Alberto Jo Lee, Neguyen and special mention fot the always humorous Dani Rovira , considered to be the new Alfredo Landa of the Spanish cinema

It packs a brilliant and evocative cinematography by Sergi Gallardo , being filmed on location in Ha Long Bay, Ha Long, Quang Ninh, Vietnam , Hanoi, Vietnam and Pamplona, Navarra, Spain . Atmospheric as well as sensitive musical score by Fernando Velazquez, J.A. Bayona's ordinary , adding the catching song El camino Written and Performed by Pablo López . The motion picture was professionally directed by Patricia Ferreira , realizing a stylish and colorful yarn . Patricia began working in cinema in the 2000s filming shorts and documentary , and has realized a few films , usually Thrillers and Dramas such as 2005 Para Que no me Olvides , 2002 El Alquimista Impaciente or The Impatient Alchemist and 2000 Sé Quién Eres . Rating : 6.5/10, decent dramedy .

This movie can't decide whether it's a tragedy or a comedy. Too many tragic moments, and not all of them can be taken lightly. One thing that really bothered me was that for men (for all of them in the film) to do anything good, women had to beg them and beg them and beg them, and cry and beg them.... It was hard to watch. Are men so slow and cowardly and heartless that they can't do anything good without women pushing them really hard to do it? It made me feel distaste for men and pity for women.

This film could have been good, had it focused on being a pure comedy. The funny moments are funny, all the actors are great, the scenery is perfect. Alternatively, this could have been shot as a tragedy, whether with good ending or not, to show the coldness of this bureaucratic world with heartless operatives. But the mix of the too feels unsettling.

I watched this because I'd seen Dani Rovira and Carmen Machi in Spanish Affair (1 & 2), and I had high expectations that Thi Mai might blend this slightly more serious plot with just the right amount of heartwarming humor. I wasn't disappointed!

When her daughter dies just as she's been approved to adopt a young orphaned Vietnamese girl, Carmen travels there with friends hoping to adopt the child herself. Battling bureaucracy and lack of a common language, Carmen won't give up, determined to coax some ray of goodness from a sad beginning.

A lot of light films resolve big problems in ways that are ridiculous. Thi Mai does better than many, with a solution that mixes the unlikely with the credible. The scenery, both rural and urban, is fascinating to those of us who haven't been there. My only gripe is that Vietnamese dialog wasn't subtitled. Perhaps the director wanted us to feel the protagonists' limitations?

If you're ready for a gentle tug on your heartstrings, this is a movie well worth seeing.