Cheap Yellow (DVD) (Chris Chan Lee) Price

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Customer Reviews of Yellow

Energy and Creativity Outweigh Unevenness
With the three earlier Amazon reviewers, I first celebrate this film for its obscure but crackling subject matter: teenage Korean-American life in L.A.! Second, I celebrate the film's ambition and complexity: it tries to reveal a community of characters, not merely one or two; and the plot's many twists, combined with its many ironic/jarring scene transitions, compresses a lot of ideas and commentary into a short space.

Do the parts combine into a congruent whole? No. The shocking plot twist of the film's final quarter sends the whole thing rollicking into melodrama/surrealism; and the same twist makes the ending psychologically, emotionally, and analytically unsatisfying.

However, there is soooo much to like here: The fumbling "Fur Elise"; the adolescent-to-baby-sister commentary on the shrink-wrapped doll; the aunt's colloquial comment on the cost of her nephew's birthday present; the cupped-rice soliloquy; the ATM PIN number sequence; the beach; the "pappa san" scene in the restaurant; etc. This young writer/director has perhaps bitten off more than he can chew; but his intelligence and promise are truly exciting.

I judge art by what it reveals to me about myself and about the world: good art provides unusual/unique flashes of reality and insight into the human condition. YELLOW reverberates throughout with these flashes. It is the work of a creative, intelligent, artistic young director whose potential is overwhelming.

I can only hope that the Biz gives him many chances for future explorations of life, love, and culture-clash.

By the way, the film is extremely funny/ironic throughout, and the musical soundtrack is marvellous.

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Has exactly one thing going for it....
...that is that it's about Korean Americans. It's always nice to see an ethnic minority other than blacks represented in an American film... it's so very rare. But that fact also makes YELLOW so much more of a wasted oppurtunity. This movie should dispell the myth that independant films are automatically better written than Hollywood films. These characters are so stupid they belong in a bad horror film. They don't belong in a good one. Like a bad horror film, the story depends on the stupidity of the characters to advance. I can't blame the actors for not being able to do much with the roles. The film is stuck in a rut where it attempts to "represent" Korean American youth. That isn't a bad thing when the characters are written like real human beings and not just as representatives of Korean American issues. But that is the case here, and the sad thing is, the characters also fail as representations. I'm not Korean, but I am a child of immigrants so I am familiar with the issues the film is trying to tackle... familiar enough to know that the protagonist Sin is acting just as much with mind numbing stupidity as with second generation Asian angst. I also know that Koreans sleep. I can understand the teens roaming through the night without sleep... but exactly why is Sin's father awake and available for a chat at what must be 2 or 3 in the morning? He's not the only one... nearly all of the characters, young and old, seem to be staying up all night for the convenience of the plot. I bring this up as an example of how messy the script is. It meanders from one event to another with no focus or logic glueing it together. Eventually the film gets silly, the characters doing things that make no sense whatsoever. Then there is a plot twist, while explaining away one example of character stupidity, just winds up making the character seem that much more the fool and renders the film's entire sequence of events utterly ridiculous. This film basically deserves one star but it gets a bonus star because it's about Korean-Americans. Maybe I'm being too harsh... there actually were a couple of amusing scenes. All I know is, someday, something much better will come along.

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It Hurts Me to Say This
This is more a review of the movie than a review of the DVD.

I was excited to see Yellow because I had heard that it was about Korean-American youth and I was sick of the tear-jerking, mother/daughter-dominated portrayal of AA's in the Joy Luck Club.

But to be honest, it was cringingly painful to sit through this movie. The acting ranged from decent to unbearable, the portrayals of Korean-American life was inaccurate, and the development of the main protagonist was too sudden and unbelievable.

First, let me list the annoying parts of the movie: 1) The main character, Sin, has an overbearing Korean father and so he is naturally very obedient and deferential. But the actor who plays Sin overdoes it, looking constipated most of the time, and gives the viewers such a dap-dap-hae (frustrated in Korean) feeling that you just want to slap him and say snap out of it! 2) Sin's best friend is supposed to be Korean (the friend has an aunt in the movie who speaks Korean) but this guy so obviously does not look Korean but rather Filipino or Chinese. A minor point I know, but still irritating. 3) The Korean parents in this movie are stereotypically out-of-touch and speak stereotypical bad English with accents. I don't mean to say that Korean parents should have fluent English but rather that most Korean parents speak Korean to their children with few English words thrown in. It would have been more accurate to have them speak in Korean and then just subtitle it. A lot of KA children also throw in poor Korean back to their parents and that should have been included as well. 4) The other characters, and there are plenty more, are not developed at all 5) Sin's transformation from constipated man to confident man is not believable, partly because he did such an excessive job in the beginning to show how submissive he was.

The good points: 1) At least the movie attempts to show Asian Americans in a different light (i.e., empathetic portrayals of Asian American men, humorous characters, urban settings, and not just the mainstream assimilated Chinese-Americans depicted in Joy Luck Club) 2) There is an Elvis-loving villain in the movie that is pretty funny. 3) That's about it.

A real portrayal of Korean American youth would have shown settings at church or at Korean booking clubs (because I'd say 80% of urban KA's participate somewhat in one or the other).

I bought the DVD without watching it first on videotape because I want to support the Asian American cause but unless you are as loyal as I am, don't buy it.

You should definitely rent it however, just be prepared to cringe.