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90Thought provoking and brimming with charm, match that with an infectious sense of humor and outstanding performances.
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88An insightful, clear-headed look at relations within a Chinese-American family.
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A juicy Chinese-American romance about preserving "face" at the sacrifice of your whole being. This Sony Pictures Classics release is a comic gem.
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80A sweet, true and, at times, universal love story it is.
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75Younger viewers might be annoyed with Saving Face for not being more in-your-face progressive and edgy. Older audiences will be happy that it's not.
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75Nicely acted.
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75Just plain fun. Don't miss it.
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75A worthy addition to what must take up a whole section of the video store - the heartwarming comedy that reaffirms the power of personal choice, while also promising to love and to cherish even the most hidebound cultures.
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75Tender and often extremely funny.
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75A first film with a deft comedic touch and a trio of charming stars, Saving Face isn't deep - but it doesn't profess to be.
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75An affable comedy (with some serious notes).
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75Despite the mysteries of the plot, a sitcom-style sense of expectation creeps into Saving Face, which sometimes feels comfortable but mostly serves to spotlight the shortcomings in a script that invents compelling characters but doesn't give them much out of the ordinary to do.
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70It has the heart and spirit of a true romantic comedy, and a lightness of touch that you rarely see in a debut picture.
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70Alice Wu's debut film is so deft, natural and exquisitely specific, it feels fresh.
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70What makes Alice Wu's debut so pleasurable is its easy rhythms, its sly juxtapositions, and its relaxed but funny performances.
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70The film's appealing characters and amusing situations prevail over its general shortage of energy.
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70It abjectly collapses into feel-good nonsense.
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67Surprisingly fresh and charming overall.
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67The writer-director, Alice Wu, fudges a lot of the basics -- I never believed the heroine was really a physician -- but the final, proudly public girl-on-girl smooch still jerks a tear.
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67A convincing and compelling community of characters with a sure comic sense and an at times screwball sensibility.
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63Actually the problem with Saving Face as a romantic comedy is that its central romance is a drag.
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63There's almost a perverse pleasure in watching occasionally weak performers mar an essentially sound screenplay. That's the saving grace of Saving Face -- Wu gets the hard part right.
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60The film is simultaneously sweet natured and sharply observed, and if love eventually conquers all, it takes its own sweet time doing it.
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60In her charming debut feature, writer-director Alice Wu works hard to sidestep both pathos and antic comedy, an admirable ambition that makes for a relentlessly low-key film that nonetheless builds to a third act rich in surprising turns of character.
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60Everything that happens in the last half-hour betrays the canny, hardheaded perspective of what came before.
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50Despite a fairly explicit lesbian boobfest (projected attendance just went up!), the film is more good-natured than provocative.
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50Part of the reason that it doesn't quite succeed is that these messages are so tried and true.
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40The umpteenth variation on second-generation American immigrants bucking the traditions of their first-generation elders.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 12 out of 13
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Mixed: 1 out of 13
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Negative: 0 out of 13
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MarcK.8
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MariaD.10This is the best Chines made movie ever. Very up close , very personal. Very deep, very funny, very intellectual.
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krisl10