One would think that a film opening on New Year weekend would be at least watchable to compete with big holiday blockbuster movies. It is not the case with We Are Family (我們全家不太熟), a college comedy revolving around a group of pals who suddenly break into song and dance in polka-dot costumes.
Writer and director Wang Chuan-tsung (王傳宗) actually fields a solid cast of promising talents and old hands, but even the brilliant Sandrine Pinna (張榕容) cannot save her boring role.
Pinna plays Kaka, an attractive young woman who quits school and returns home from a trip to Australia with a baby boy. The bulk of the story fixates on Kaka trying to hide her illegitimate son from her grandfather (Chen Sung-yung, 陳松勇), who raised Kaka alone. As preposterous as the story is, Kaka enlists help from her old classmates Willy (Chang Shu-hao, 張書豪), Fatty (Hao Shao-wen, 郝劭文) and Yaya (Daniel Chen, 陳大天), who are staying at her grandfather’s apartment.
Photo courtesy of Double Edge Entertainment
The three college buddies, whose world has hitherto been all about skipping classes and playing computer games, now face the seemingly insurmountable challenge of babysitting. This is where the movie tries to be funny, pulling out all the comic stops, including a couple of music numbers, but none of it works. The cameos by seasoned comedians Hsu Hsiao-shun (許效舜) and Lin Mei-hsiu (林美秀) as a loudmouthed couple are embarrassingly dull. Acclaimed thespian Wu Peng-fong (吳朋奉) is thrown into the plot as a self-help instructor for no apparent reason.
Later, when the baby’s biological father comes into the picture the story quickly turns into a bad soap opera, culminating in an ending that will leave people wondering why they came to see the movie in the first place.
June 23 to June 29 After capturing the walled city of Hsinchu on June 22, 1895, the Japanese hoped to quickly push south and seize control of Taiwan’s entire west coast — but their advance was stalled for more than a month. Not only did local Hakka fighters continue to cause them headaches, resistance forces even attempted to retake the city three times. “We had planned to occupy Anping (Tainan) and Takao (Kaohsiung) as soon as possible, but ever since we took Hsinchu, nearby bandits proclaiming to be ‘righteous people’ (義民) have been destroying train tracks and electrical cables, and gathering in villages
Dr. Y. Tony Yang, Associate Dean of Health Policy and Population Science at George Washington University, argued last week in a piece for the Taipei Times about former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) leading a student delegation to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that, “The real question is not whether Ma’s visit helps or hurts Taiwan — it is why Taiwan lacks a sophisticated, multi-track approach to one of the most complex geopolitical relationships in the world” (“Ma’s Visit, DPP’s Blind Spot,” June 18, page 8). Yang contends that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has a blind spot: “By treating any
This year will go down in the history books. Taiwan faces enormous turmoil and uncertainty in the coming months. Which political parties are in a good position to handle big changes? All of the main parties are beset with challenges. Taking stock, this column examined the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) (“Huang Kuo-chang’s choking the life out of the TPP,” May 28, page 12), the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) (“Challenges amid choppy waters for the DPP,” June 14, page 12) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) (“KMT struggles to seize opportunities as ‘interesting times’ loom,” June 20, page 11). Times like these can
Swooping low over the banks of a Nile River tributary, an aid flight run by retired American military officers released a stream of food-stuffed sacks over a town emptied by fighting in South Sudan, a country wracked by conflict. Last week’s air drop was the latest in a controversial development — private contracting firms led by former US intelligence officers and military veterans delivering aid to some of the world’s deadliest conflict zones, in operations organized with governments that are combatants in the conflicts. The moves are roiling the global aid community, which warns of a more militarized, politicized and profit-seeking trend