Pushing Hands

This first feature by a Taiwanese graduate from the NYU Film School has a crippling central flaw. The film is about an elderly tai chi master from Beijing who clashes with his all-American daughter-in-law when he retires to his son's home in up-state New York. The culture gap is so extreme (and on her side, so vehemently expressed) that you wonder why on earth she married a Chinese guy in the first place - a question the script blithely ignores. That said, this is a reasonably amiable comedy-drama with a strong streak of sentimentality. It falls a long way short of Wayne Wang's Chinatown movies.