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Reviews
Margaret Cho: CHO Revolution (2004)
Definitely not her best work
Fundamentally, there are two comediennes who work under the name of Margaret Cho.
There is the highly verbal, acid-tongued, trash-talking woman who does not suffer fools gladly and verbally lays waste to everything in her path. This Margaret Cho appeared in "I'm the One That I Want" and "Notorious C.H.O.". She is brilliant and almost literally made me wet myself laughing.
There is another Margaret Cho who does physical comedy based on contortions, facial gestures, and making fun of accents she doesn't know that well in the first place. This Margaret Cho came out briefly in "I'm the One That I Want". Do you remember the routine where she jumped around the stage for 5 or 10 minutes, aping a black accent and saying "I'm here to wash your Va****"? Well, that Margaret Cho is back in force in this film. She probably gets the better part of an hour of the film's run time. If you find that Margaret Cho to be funny, then you'll loooove Revolution! I find her annoying. She's all right as a counterpoint to the verbal Margaret Cho, but I would be annoyed to spend an evening in her company.
Unfortunately, since the physical Margaret gets most of the stage time, that's pretty much what happened the other night.
I want to be sympathetic to Margaret Cho the artist. She probably wants to expand her routine and not put out show after show that is pretty much like the last one she put out. Unfortunately, Physical Margaret is just not a quarter as funny as Verbal Margaret. Viewer beware.
Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity (2002)
A promising premise, but could be much better
While I'm not going to be as harsh on the film as Frank L., this is a movie that has some great material to work with but was compromised by the director not following through.
Characters started speaking English at times which seemed inappropriate (likely because the director thought that viewers would lose interest in reading subtitles through 80% of the film), story threads such as the conflict between the father and son seemed half-baked and not well-developed, etc. etc.
And yes, Sandra Oh's inability to speak Cantonese (she flounces through 3 syllables at the beginning of the film, and reverts to English for the rest) puts her at odds with the rest of the characters in her group.
In film productions, shots that are not up to standards are marked as CBB, for Could Be Better. This is a film that with more planning and a more coherent vision of how the story arc should work could have been great. Instead, it is marred by things which I'm sure someone winced at including in the final cut.