Reviews

What an embarrassment... I don't even know where to start.

1. The poster boy who dies in the first episode 2. The macho-hero who wears suit even when digging bodies in the nearby woods 3. The overbearing treacher-preacher-propagandist that seems to hate her job and her students.

4. An absolutely meaningless line with Russian mafia (never heard of a Russian named Milo by the way... maybe a Russian dog).

5. The doom's-day-weapon-prostitute who fails to achieve nothing despite her training in NYC... why is she there aside of exposing herself in any possible way and attract the horny and the pervert audience?

6. The loner guard with the handicapped child and a miserable wife who is given a whole 3 minutes in the story... why even mention him? What for?

7. The... ok, that's enough. I'm getting frustrated just trying to remember all the ways they insulted my intelligence.

The most frustrating part is that I see 8s and 9s and 10s...

I really wanted to like this movie. Until the very end. Maybe it's because I'm an immigrant myself, maybe because I appreciate the East Asian culture and its work integrity idealization, but wow, what a disappointment.

Of course every immigrant, especially from Korea, will find similarities to their own story but this is exactly because the movie is so faceless and flat. Anything can fit. It absolutely lacks any plot and can be told in 5 min.

You see no financial struggle or hardship - the father gets the loan he needs, buys the equipment he needs and the only reason they have no water is because he was stingy and couldn't spend $250 for someone to dig a well for him (he had no issue paying $2000 for a tractor though...). The kids and the wife wear nice clothes and they own a car. They eat well and can afford visiting a doctor. In fact, the family of the boy who the kid gets befriended with seems, judging by the father figure, to struggle much more.

You see no struggle to assimilate. One visit to the church that has no content and no continuation.absolutely no contact to any other folk of Arkansas besides the lunatic/exorcist friend who fought in Korea but it even this angle is not being developed... What is it? Laziness? Time constraints? Budget?

And why the kid has to be sick, how does it contribute to the plot? Is it a personal tribute to a personal story we don't understand?

The little girl if completely forgotten. She doesn't even deserve a friend to spend some time with while the parents are away at the hospital and the boy is at his friend's... where did she go???

I have no energy to talk about the struggle of the couple. It's simply embarrassing.

And then the main question I have. What is this Minari??? Is it a herb they're going to sell after the other produce got burned? Is it something they're going to eat in order to survive? Why the movie called Minari?

Again. Wanted to enjoy the movie but had the awkward feeling of being ashamed for something I haven't done. I was embarrassed for those actors and the audiences that'll praise the movie since, hey, after all, it won the Golden Globe... Curtain!