Palaest recommended

Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Bumpy Chip It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Pablo This film follows the story of two divorced parents searching for their abducted child. One of the most interesting aspects of this film to me was the fact that there was very little character development throughout the story. The film focused a lot more on the actual plot and extreme minutia than the characters themselves. All we really know about the father of the abducted child, PengPeng, was the fact that he worked at an internet cafe. The mother? she worked in some nice building. The wife of the abductor was a farmer who became very attached to the children. We don't even meet the abductor in the film because he supposedly died. The plot line however, gets pretty complex and deep. The foster mother of PengPeng and another girl is a farmer who thinks she is infertile, because her husband told her that she was as an excuse to go sleep with other women. PengPeng's parents find him and take him back. PengPeng, his birth parents, the farmer, and the other girl are in the police station when the decision is made to give PengPeng back to his real parents. They put the girl in an orphanage and the farmer woman is determined to get her back. She manages to find a lawyer and fights PengPeng's birth mother over custody. The end of the movie is very interesting and leaves many questions unanswered. The court decision hasn't been made because PengPeng's mother is mid divorce and the farmer is believed to not be legally able to adopt a child based on income, etc. We also find out that the farmer ends up getting pregnant after sleeping with a construction worker, proving that she was indeed fertile all along and that her husband lied to her. In general, the plot was pretty confusing and hard to follow. Also, the fact that the movie was 2h15m long didn't necessarily help

Cameron Crawford Dearest was a great, but depressing film which kept the viewer intrigued on what was going to happen throughout. The two main characters, the husband and wife, were constantly fighting while they had their son, but once he was kidnapped, they had to get along again in order to find him. This movie did a great job of sending the viewer on an emotional roller-coaster. A really touching and awkward scene was when they were in the missing child support group, and the wife mentioned that she saw Peng Peng running behind her car. I really sympathized for her in that moment, because I do not know the amount of guilt I would feel if I could have stopped my son from being kidnapped. Another aspect of this movie that I enjoyed was getting to know the abductor's wife. At first I hated her because she was part of the family that took Peng Peng, but as the movie progresses, you begin to realize that she is fairly innocent, and her husband was the only real bad guy in this situation. This movie left the viewer on a cliff for many of the topics which I wish were closed. The main topics that I wanted to see closed were whether the girl in the orphanage was adopted, if the main characters got remarried, and what happened to the abductor's wife's baby. Overall, I enjoyed this movie and it kept me engaged throughout.

thmurphy-37414 Dearest is a very good film that gives you the look on Child Abduction with a happier ending. This review will have many spoilers, but mainly focussing on what I thought was important. It all starts with a divorced husband and wife and their son. They argue with each other, and eventually, one day their son, Pengpeng is taken by an abductor who then brings him to a farm, which we later find out. The parents handle this just like everyone else would. They eventually join a group that helps with losing a child due to abduction, and that helps them cope with a joint feeling between the group members of remaining to search for their children. I am also interested to find out the number of families that actually do find their child after 3 years of searching. Anyways, when Pengpeng is finally found he does not recognize his parents anymore, and wants to go back to his abducted parent's home, which he believes to be his real home. You need to see the movie to know the rest, but I feel this movie did a great job explaining the whole process. The one thing I am questioning though is how Pengpeng's second Mom did not know of how she obtained the children that were brought to her by her husband. Dearest is a very good movie, and I recommend you see it.

tiffanyyongwt I had difficulty getting a friend to watch this film with me, as most expressed disinterest with reasons like, "I don't watch such kind (crying) films." But I thought Dearest is actually the Chinese version of "Taken" minus the actions and kidnapping triads. This is more realistic, given that it was based on the real documentary of how Tian and Lu found their abducted son three years later. The Ayes I did not cry as much as I thought I would, perhaps because I'm yet a parent myself. But I can definitely feel for the parents who lost their kids. This film have various characters where the different groups of audience will be able to relate with. And for me, it's more of the feeling of Lu Xiao Juan's second husband, the Yes-I-Can-Understand-But-I-Am-Not-Part-Of-It group. Most people will think that it's the typical lost-and-found-then-happily-ever-after movie, but nope. The film touches your heart first, and then make you think again. Think of questions that we will usually assume about the abductors. That how most would abduct to make the kids beg for money, that the kids will be suffering and pining for their real parents. It also make one look at the existing policies that might be erred. Like the police report allowed only after the child was missing for more than 24 hour; the rampant child abduction case in China; China's one-child policy; the guilt and repercussion on the parents who lost their child (feeling guilty having another child), all these thought-provoking questions will most probably be at the back of your mind after the film. The various actors were brilliant in their own way. Tian's desperate search for the kid, Lu's depression, followed by her breakdown and revelation on the secret she had been hiding in her heart for months. I teared, at the weirdest scenes, like when the 6-year-old newly-found son held her hand for the first time. The smile that crept onto her face was as if she had to control herself from dancing for joy . Han De Zhong, Captain of the self support group for parents whose kids were abducted and lost, was, I thought, an unimportant role and his performance was actually so-so, until the point where Tian and Lu had recovered their child, and the emotional struggle within him having to deal with a sudden pregnancy with his wife and realizing that only one couple within that support group had found their child. You could almost feel the pain in his heart when he left the celebration to cry in one corner. ... The Nays The opening scene which was the day the 3-year-old son, Pengpeng went missing, was filled with little snippets and details of a daily usual life. Wandering street cat, the massive and messy power line (tied with red ribbon and then marked with chewing gum) and fighting under-aged teenagers. It would be impressive if these details were related and linked to the end of the film (few years down the road). But they were irrelevant, hence making the opening stretch littered with insignificant scenes. This is not a typical blockbuster film that the public will look forward to watching, as it forces people to look at the evilness of humanity. Like Tian, I couldn't understand how could fellow human still try to con and rob a man who had just lost his child with fake news. With such a genre which looks depressing based on the trailer, Dearest (亲爱的) will be in for a tough fight against The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 which is opening on the same day in Singapore.