A Great Wall

The first American movie filmed in Mainland China presents a mild but occasionally diverting clash of cultures following the reunion in Peking of a thoroughly westernized Chinese-American family from San Francisco with their Old World relatives. The comedy catalogues the bewilderment of host and guest alike when confronted by peculiar foreign customs, with the best laughs coming from the People's republic point of view: students singing 'Papa Rawdi' (Pavarotti) and reciting, in unique pidgin, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address; an old man coping with the electric blanket presented as a gift by his American brother-in-law; the question of whether or not everyone in the United States has VD. The Western perspective is less interesting only because it's more familiar (football, rock 'n' roll, and so forth) but everyone benefits from the mutual exposure, including the audience.