A comedy about dying but coming from the Chinese-American director Lulu Wang, less maudlin than it might have been. Nai Nai, (an excellent Shuzhen Zhao), is the Chinese grandmother with only three months to live, so her American family come up with an excuse to fly to China to visit her; they plan a wedding which gives them a reason to celebrate rather than to mourn, (and the wedding itself is superbly done).
This is a sweet-natured, sentimental film that still feels like it's strung out way beyond its expiry date and is ultimately redeemed by Zhao's performance. As the granddaughter who wants the family to tell Nai Nai the truth, the much vaunted Awkwafina is so laid back as to be almost horizontal, (she still won a Golden Globe), and yet a lot of people love this film, (maybe they're Chinese and 'get it'). It's at its best when it points up the differences between East and West but that's not enough to make a movie and ultimately this is less "The Farewell" as something of a long goodbye.
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