#TongYao #童瑶 #TheNewYearEveofOldLee #过年好 - Film - short review

The New Year's Eve of Old Lee - 过年好

I finally got around to watching this in part to see if it's any good and in part to check out Tong Yao's cameo in this film.  It's not bad but it's also not great.  It's merely a relatively generic story about an elderly man, Mr. Lee, who's suffering from Alzheimer's disease.  His daughter Yang Duo just found out about it and returns immediately with her daughter Julie in tow to celebrate the Spring Festival.  Several simmering grievances surface during this short visit leading to several tense moment but given that this is a Lunar New Year film, you can expect a happy ending.  Which means, in a film like this, the journey is more important than the conclusion.

The most interesting part about this film is the relationship between Mr. Lee and his daughter as meetings with old classmates, students and relatives bring old resentments to the fore.  Both Zhao Benshan and Yan Ni were quite good as the father and daughter.  It's mostly because they were so convincing in their roles that it made this pretty clique film watchable to the end.  They were the film's emotional core and even though the narrative wasn't particularly noteworthy, they made you actually care for these two characters and wish them well.

The strange random insert scenes really don't work too well for me.  I think they were supposed to be amusing and maybe they were meant to breakup some of the seriousness of the main dramatic storyline between Mr. Lee and Yang Duo.  But many of those random scenes don't add much or anything at all to the story and its themes.  They mostly serve as moments where they can show off all the guest stars they got to come on as cameos.  

My other issue was that Julie was extremely annoying, shrill and grating which made this hard to watch since she was one of the more "important" support characters.  Rayza who plays Julie was serviceable.  But this character is pretty much just a stock character to the end.  She's just really there to move the plot along.

Also, the ending was horribly draggy.  They had this mass dance that felt indulgent and never seemed to end.  I was so glad that I was not watching this in the cinema.  I usually don't walk out of movies and would probably have endured this to the end and then cursed at the movie for putting me through it.

Tong Yao's cameo is really just a cameo and it's a pretty pointless one.  She's credited as Pretty Girl A.  It's like a random snippet at about approximately TC 00:19:23 and lasts about 19 seconds.  All it is is just three pretty and ditzy girls prancing through the street and getting scared by firecrackers.  She has one line where she says, "怎么回事啊!" and that's it.  I'm pretty sure she doesn't appear anywhere else.  I even tried to keep my eyes peeled though that excruciatingly long dance sequence at the end to see if she's in it but I didn't catch any shots of her.

There are several notable actors and cameos in this film so if you're a fan of any of them you can try and watch the film.  Also, the credit roll at the end contains greetings from cast/crew members and a number of well-known celebrities like Huang Xiaoming, Li Yifeng, Yang Mi etc.  So if you are fans of any of them, you might be interested in the credit roll.  The film itself is watchable if you can get pass the annoying Julie and the random pointless scenes.  I won't really recommend it though because in spite of the good performances from Zhao Benshan and Yan Ni; the story and characterization is paper thin.  

For Tong Yao fans who just simply want to watch her, I have saved you the trouble of watching this 1hr 45min film by editing the clip and uploading it here.