MovieChat Forums > Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2011) Discussion > Disappointment.

Disappointment.

posted 12 years ago by SomewhereFar
7 replies | jump to latest

Even though i don't like to admit it, the movie was a big disappointment.

I read the book several years ago and loved it, I was ecstatic when i heard they were turning it into a movie.. Now i watched it I don't know what to think.

I know they sometimes change a few things in the movie to make it more appealing the the masses.. Unfortunately it didn't do much good.

Everything felt so rushed, especially the bits that took place in the past..
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[–] Toodles50 12 years ago

This movie is really bad. I read the book and this movie makes no sense!

Toodles

[–] lizabeth5 12 years ago

I was looking forward to this film, and it was sad that it wasn't more faithful to the book. I thought "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" was a very good novel. It makes no sense that the film makers took SO much liberty with the story. Adding the modern characters wasn't needed; the original plot would have been just fine, IMHO. So much tampering resulted in a jumbled film with too little time allowed for real character development.

The film was striking visually, but that wasn't enough to counteract the damage done to the plot.

:(

[–] rc-108 12 years ago

I really liked it..
It was a tearjerker of the first degree.

not an action film.. but a love story...friendship...trust...loyalty...
and powerful emotionally for me

a 7 from me..

won't be a big seller though...
I have not read the book...so I can not compare...

[–] harveythepooka 12 years ago

I really liked the movie too. I am actually surprised with how many people here seem to dislike it. First of all, I am automatically going to give this movie the benefit of the doubt because this is the first movie I have ever seen where men are completely superfluous. Sure, the ladies all have relationships with men but the core of the story is about understanding of female friendship. It made perfect sense to me, and I wasn't confused at all. I did want more information about what happened in the past, being we knew so much more about Snow Flower and her family and life than we did about Lily. But for me that just went to show that Lily might have appeared to have a lot going on, but really she was totally dependent on her relationship with Snow Flower, and that's what made the who thing so much more heart breaking. And in the present I would have wanted more information about Sophia. The time line did flip flop, and then jump in that time line but I didn't have a problem with that. It isn't a perfect movie but I really liked it.

[–] arkay 11 years ago

He was trying to make The Joy Luck Club II, but the 2 novels are too different.

[–] MissAngelCakes 11 years ago

I really liked it to.
From a complete fresh perspective, I haven't read the book, but it was a powerful tale of sisterhood and loyalty and how so many different things can tear people apart.

The cast was great, and I liked the time-jumps, it really contrasts at how different times have changed, but how bonds like Snow Flower and Lily have can still happen today.

[–] thepoet26 10 years ago

I just saw this movie a few days ago and I still can't get over how BAD it was. I expected a lot from Wayne Wang, being that The Joy Luck Club is one of my all time favorites and I feel he did a really good job bringing that book to life on screen. THIS movie, however, was a disgrace to the beautiful book from which it is supposed to be based on.

First of all, there was absolutely NO NEED for the invention of the modern day characters AT ALL. They didn't exist in the book and served no purpose on screen, other than deflecting away from the actual story of Lily and Snow Flower. Why the screenwriters felt the need to take this beautiful story and try to put some sort of 'modern twist' on it is beyond me but they failed miserably and did the book a disservice in the process.

All I could think while watching this book was how disappointed Lisa See must have been to see her beautiful book reduced to this. It wasn't even a good attempt at modernizing the story! BOTH stories became completely uninteresting because neither story gelled well with the other and the writers seemed hellbent on trying to carry the movie largely on the back of the story of the modern friends, which was BORING AS HELL.

Then to have the same two actresses playing both the ancestors and descendants, when in truth, the girl telling the story wasn't related to either Lily OR Snow Flower. But we are to buy the idea that she looks just like Lily and her bedridden friend somehow looks just like Snow Flower, even though the bedridden friend was actually related to Lily. (The modern friends were so boring, I can't even recall their names!)

I'm not usually a person to bitch and moan about film interpretations of good books but this movie barely even resembled the book it was supposed to be based on. Just plain AWFUL.

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