DIM SUM FUNERAL

Name: DIM SUM FUNERAL
Item: DIM SUM FUNERAL
Author: Review

"Dull and Dim"

Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

DIM SUM FUNERAL opens with the death of the widowed mother of four adult Chinese-American children, who thoroughly despised her, calling her the Dragon Lady. All four of her children make a trip to her Seattle home. There, they discover that their mother wished to have a traditional seven-day Chinese funeral. Upon their arrival, it’s clear that the children don’t like each other either. They reluctantly agree to follow through with their mother’s request. Over the course of the funeral, the siblings discover more about their mother and begin to make peace with each other. They also attempt to mend their own personal relationships, which have been all but destroyed by tragedy and immoral personal choices.

DIM SUM FUNERAL is a sometimes dull drama about a dysfunctional Chinese family’s attempts to reconcile personal and family relationships. It stresses forgiveness and the importance of family at the end, but fails to deliver this in a Christian or biblical form, or a completely satisfying one. Instead, it often celebrates false Eastern religion and embraces a lesbian relationship. The R-rated movie provides some laughs, but the acting is unconvincing, and the characters and dialogue need work.

Content:

(PaPaPa, PCPC, FRFRFR, HoHo, BB, C, O, LL, V, SS, N, DD, M) Very strong syncretistic, somewhat politically correct pagan worldview embracing or celebrating favorable views of the false religions of Eastern religion and Buddhism, including a reference to feng shui, a reference to reincarnation, images of fancy and precious objects burnt as part of a Buddhist/pagan ritual for the afterlife, and Buddhist monks chant and pray multiple times in kneeling in front of Buddhist shrine with Buddha in a home during seven-day Chinese funeral activities with family members kneeling and praying at various times before shrine as part of funeral ritual, as well as strong homosexual content with homosexuality being accepted and embraced, mixed with some strong moral and light redemptive elements extolling forgiveness, repentance, and reconciliation, including two positive references to God, which don’t really fit in with the movie’s mixture of pagan theologies but are positive and slightly uplifting nevertheless, and an occult reference when woman says she believes in ghosts; nine obscenities (including about three from young teen boy) and seven light profanities; a slap and angry woman violently rips covers off bed when she learns a startling truth; strong sexual content includes one brief depiction involving adultery, verbal references to other past adulteries and numerous homosexual references, including a lesbian relationship is embraced and depicted and Buddhist monk donates sperm to lesbian couple; upper male nudity and upper back male and female nudity, plus some female cleavage and two young practicing lesbian women in bikinis in and out of hot tub but no salacious sexual activity other than an occasional kiss and light touching of affection; light alcohol use; one character smokes marijuana at least three different times during the film; and, gossip occurs twice and is rebuked once, lying, secrets kept, and children hate their late widowed mother and don’t get along with one another but reconciliation occurs.

More Detail:

DIM SUM FUNERAL is a sometimes dull drama about a dysfunctional Chinese family’s attempts to reconcile both their personal and family relationships. The last act picks up, but the movie has a very strong syncretistic, or mixed, pagan worldview, including an acceptance of homosexuality.

The film starts with the death of the widowed mother of four adult children, a woman thoroughly despised by her children and their families. After her death, all four of her children make a trip to her Seattle home. There, they discover that their mother wished to have a traditional seven-day Chinese funeral.

Upon arrival at the home, it’s clear that the children don’t like each other. Though disappointed that they will have to spend a week together, the children reluctantly agree to follow through with their mother’s request. Over the course of the funeral, the siblings discover more about their mother and begin to make peace with each other. They also attempt to mend their own personal relationships, which have been all but destroyed by tragedy and immoral personal choices.

Though DIM SUM FUNERAL ultimately stresses forgiveness and the importance of positive family relationships, including two positive references to God, the movie fails to deliver these in a Christian or biblical form, much less a completely satisfying one. Instead, it more often than not celebrates Eastern religions, especially Buddhism. This false pagan content overwhelms the two references to God.

DIM SUM FUNERAL also embraces a lesbian relationship that one of the mother’s younger daughters is having. The daughter brings her lesbian partner with her for the seven days of the funeral ritual. In addition, the movie contains a brief depicted sex scene, references to past adultery, and the daughter’s lesbian “partner” smokes marijuana at least three times. The amount of foul language is moderate and mostly light, but there are some “s” words.

DIM SUM FUNERAL provides some laughs from the mother’s old friend that she met in Rome and some touching moments. But, for the most part, the acting is unconvincing and most of the characters aren’t as compelling as they could have been. Too much of the dialogue is static, especially during the first two acts.

Of course, it is ultimately the mixed theological messages in the movie that hurt it the most. Not only does it make for an inconsistent worldview. It also shows how many Americans and immigrants have adopted a politically correct, dim-witted New Age worldview. Such a syncretistic, or mixed, pagan worldview sometimes likes to retain a very watered down biblical element that sometimes honors God (as in the two references to God in the third act of DIM SUM FUNERAL) but ultimately places it into a New Age, Neo-Pagan, Buddhist, Hindu, and/or Deist context that is false and sometimes (if not often) also watered down to one extent or another. The God of the Bible, however, is real, sovereign, creator God who alone worthy (Exodus 20:5). All human beings are supposed to worship Him and Him alone (Deuteronomy 5:7 and 6:4,5). Finally, Jesus tells us in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life! Without me, no one can go to the Father” (CEV).

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What you listen to, watch, and read has power. Movieguide® wants to give you the resources to empower the good and the beautiful. But we can’t do it alone. We need your support.

You can make a difference with as little as $7. It takes only a moment. If you can, consider supporting our ministry with a monthly gift. Thank you.

Movieguide® is a 501c3 and all donations are tax deductible.