Mad Professor

Bad, bad, bad! This movie has horrible acting and a thin plot. Just watch it if you want to see bad fake sex. There is plenty of it.

I came across this one while "surfing." The only reason that it stayed on was to find out who some of the people were. The database didn't have the character names or I wouldn't have spent more than five minutes on this stinker. It was playing merely as background and that was enough to get the tiny plot!

Wow! Beautiful and intelligent women, beautiful food and touching stories that intertwine with some unexpected turns. I don't usually have the patience for sub-titled movies (I'm much less fond of dubbing), but this one really grabbed me. If only we could master more than a couple of languages and schools in the US would teach multiple languages like the European schools do, but I digress.

Three daughters and their widower father share the family home. One roof covers many separate lives. The mother has been dead for 16 years. The youngest is in school and is 20 years old. You really feel the middle daughter's pain as she tries to reconcile her desire for leaving home and finding love against her success at work. The oldest daughter, a teacher, too has trouble with love, since her "heart is still broken after nine years."

The father is also ill and his failing palate is not supporting his fantastic cooking skills. This first shows up in the Sunday night family dining ritual. He is a Master Chef in a huge restaurant with his brother Wen and he loves to cook lunches for a little girl that is the daughter of an old family friend. She is his virtual granddaughter, or is she? The food is as much of a character as any of the others. It looks so good that you wish that you could reach out for some of it.

This family has difficulty talking about what is really happening to them in their personal lives. They communicate only when they are eating during the family ritual. This family has many emotional hills to climb and we get to watch as they learn to open up with each other and grow together.

I would gladly watch this movie many times and appreciate getting to hear the language since it is sub-titled instead of dubbed. This film has broad appeal to many audiences and cultures.

The basic premise is "Can a fish out of water (the California surfer) fit in with the Cincinnati tough guy Hockey players." The Hockey players are dismayed by the surfers laid back and stay chilled attitude. They do everything they can to try to get him to fight with them. This is paralleled by his need to find something worth fighting for.

I was surfing the dial one day and happened upon this gem. I found it very entertaining and engrossing. The plot was mostly High School formulaic, but it was executed charmingly. The romance was at a pleasing level and contributed to the tension in the plot. Overall, I found the film very well balanced and the actors very attractive. It also ends up being enjoyable by many different age groups. While High School is a couple of decades behind me, the writing and action was indeed good enough to keep my attention.