I saw this in the middle of the night on CBC; and bought the DVD so that I could see the first part.The acting is just amazing. It is a "different" comedy; but I would call it more a drama that has a lighter way of making a deep point; so that you do not realize how important the relationships will be. The purpose, I suppose is to give you more of an emotional impact because you just do not expect something so profound to happen.The movie is surprisingly magnetic .. particularly when "little Wu" is introduced and you can see the interplay as all the relationships develop. Also the acting is so brilliant, that you somehow understand way more then they present - so you can tell the history of the characters just by the way the actors bring out 3-dimentional characters.*Spoiler*** The ending, I really was not happy about - but the more I think about it, the more I am content with it. The original ending sounds better -- to me; if only to have the two main characters on the screen at the end. It is actually quite a shock as you really feel these two can heal each other.Anyway, I HIGHLY recommend it.

This movie carefully set up a lot of comic situations - an old man (Zhao), lost in his own denials of his incompetence, who is infatuated with a fat woman, and blind to the fact that she is a completely selfish money grubber, and in fact is lying left and right to try and impress her, because he has nothing to offer. He tries to make money by setting up a make-out room in an abandoned bus but he is too morally upright to allow the customers to use it. He tries to do a favor for the fat lady by taking her unwanted blind step child (Yu) and giving her a fake job at the bus (the "Happy Times Hotel"). He loses the bus so he makes a fake massage parlor for the blind girl. All of this is very amusing. It is clearly a comedy so far, set in a Cinderella-like story.Maybe it's just the American in me, but at this point, I was expecting two things to happen at some point in the movie: 1. The old man would come to realize what a witch the fat woman was. 2. His charming, scam artistry incompetence would somehow accidentally make their lives better, because, so far, it hasn't really done much for anybody.The fat lady's greed and wanton abuse of her step daughter don't seem to have any effect on Zhao, inexplicably. We would feel for his plight at not getting the favor of the fat lady, except: 1. She isn't worth it, and 2. He seems just as culpable because he ignores the abuse. So, there's no sympathy for any of the characters except for the blind girl.Eventually, of course, we come to feel for Zhao as he comes to start caring for Yu. But he can't support her himself, he's nearly broke as it is. It is amazing that he and his old co-workers can come up with the amazingly complex charade of a massage parlor, yet get stuck with the problem of having to have paying customers for Yu. They just keep going themselves, and making fake money after a while. How does it not occur to any of them to try and get real customers? It would have gone like this - The fake parlor would transform into a real parlor. Wild, unexpected success. Zhao shares in the money, is starting to be well off at last. Shows off to fat lady, dumps her. Massage parlor gets busted (by government?), or they get evicted from the factory, losing everything they gained. Yu confesses to Zhao that she knew what was going on all along, but she was very thankful none-the-less. With some small savings, she sets out into the world and tries to get a real job as a masseuse, which is easier now that she has experience and a good reputation from her disappointed customer base. Zhao is back where he started, but now he is happier because he feels that at last he has done some good in the world. Happy Times.Instead, they continue using fake money. Yu presents a letter for Zhao to read, which is from her father, which hasn't been read to her by her evil step-mom. Zhao reads it, literally. It sucks. She asks if there's more. I totally expected him to make up something nice on the spot, something poignant and meaningful to make her feel better, and realizing that although he's pretending it's from her father, it's really from him. Instead, he fumbles and decides to do that later. Apparently it's so hard for him to access real emotions that he has to work on it. Yu knows her life with him is a sham, so she leaves, leaving him a recording saying how thankful she was. Zhao writes the fake letter from her father, but before he can deliver it, he gets dumped by fat woman, and is so upset that he gets drunk and gets hit by a bus. Neither recording or note makes it to the other. Super duper, huge tragic ending. WTF???? How about: He makes up a nice letter from her father on the spot, at the restaurant. He realizes later that he really meant it, but knows that Yu thinks it's from her father, and is sad to think she doesn't know how he feels. Yu leaves for the big city, but leaves behind a tape: I know that my father didn't write what you said, and that you said it from your own heart. Wow. Beautifully touching ending to a funny movie.It may be that Zhang Yimou can only do tragedies, (which he does exceptionally well), which is a shame, because the first half of the movie was very funny, with the characters and situations. But it got sucked right into pointless tragedy land. This was a most jarring ending to a movie that took a wrong turn somewhere in the middle.My advice is to stop watching it right after the restaurant scene where he reads the letter from her father to her. It just goes straight downhill from there.

There's a whole lot more here than meets the eye. You don't have to be a friendless blind girl in a city of ten million to appreciate human frailty and kindness. Yimou Zhang is a very fine director and his vision can be thoughtful and appreciated on several levels. China is still exotic to look at from my American standpoint. The colors are garish and bright. The modern city bustles, the young are hip and making it where they can. The old worker's, many victims of the poverty and cruelty caused by The Great Leap Forward and other catastrophic Marxist disasters, are still searching for happiness. Now, in their fifties, they look about and their old factories are rusting, glass office towers are going sky high.I'm still not sure that the actress that played a blind teen is not actually blind. Either way, she's a genius. Her final scene, forsaken, blind, but brave China, venturing into the traffic. This is film-making.

About a retired factory worker who plans to marry an overweight, unattractive lady, only to wind up taking care of her unwanted, blind but beautiful daughter. Zhao Benshao's performance as the cheapskate, retired bachelor is outstanding, while newcomer Jie Dong (WuYing) plays the blind girl to perfection.Another unhappy ending by Zhang Yimou, but don't let that faze you by this funny, touching and inspiring movie. Hard to find another movie like this one. 8 out of 10.