One would think that a film opening on New Year weekend would be at least watchable to compete with big holiday blockbuster movies. It is not the case with We Are Family (我們全家不太熟), a college comedy revolving around a group of pals who suddenly break into song and dance in polka-dot costumes.
Writer and director Wang Chuan-tsung (王傳宗) actually fields a solid cast of promising talents and old hands, but even the brilliant Sandrine Pinna (張榕容) cannot save her boring role.
Pinna plays Kaka, an attractive young woman who quits school and returns home from a trip to Australia with a baby boy. The bulk of the story fixates on Kaka trying to hide her illegitimate son from her grandfather (Chen Sung-yung, 陳松勇), who raised Kaka alone. As preposterous as the story is, Kaka enlists help from her old classmates Willy (Chang Shu-hao, 張書豪), Fatty (Hao Shao-wen, 郝劭文) and Yaya (Daniel Chen, 陳大天), who are staying at her grandfather’s apartment.
Photo courtesy of Double Edge Entertainment
The three college buddies, whose world has hitherto been all about skipping classes and playing computer games, now face the seemingly insurmountable challenge of babysitting. This is where the movie tries to be funny, pulling out all the comic stops, including a couple of music numbers, but none of it works. The cameos by seasoned comedians Hsu Hsiao-shun (許效舜) and Lin Mei-hsiu (林美秀) as a loudmouthed couple are embarrassingly dull. Acclaimed thespian Wu Peng-fong (吳朋奉) is thrown into the plot as a self-help instructor for no apparent reason.
Later, when the baby’s biological father comes into the picture the story quickly turns into a bad soap opera, culminating in an ending that will leave people wondering why they came to see the movie in the first place.
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
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