“Finding Mr. Right”
Good (2 stars)
Unrated
In English and Mandarin with subtitles
Running time: 121 minutes
Distributor: China Lion Features
JiaJia (Wei Tang) is expecting and hopes to marry her wealthy boyfriend, Lao Zhong (Yiwei Liu), even though the two-timing philanderer already has a wife and family. But the miffed multimillionaire is so worried about the unplanned pregnancy creating a scandal that he’s willing to send his high-maintenance mistress all the way from Beijing to America to give birth.
Because JiaJia loved the movie “Sleepless in Seattle,” she asks him to arrange for her to fly there. Upon landing, she’s met at the airport by a mild-mannered limo driver (Xiubo Wu) who quietly endures her verbal abuse for arriving late.
What JiaJia doesn’t know is that Frank happens to be a famous heart surgeon who once operated on her own father back home. Currently, he’s moonlighting behind the wheel and caring for an ailing daughter while waiting for his credentials to be approved so he can practice medicine in America.
As directed, he deposits JiaJia at a maternity center catering to Asian women planning anchor babies with automatic U.S. citizenship. Soon, she finds herself at odds with just about everybody around besides Frank, who has the patience of a saint.
This is the point of departure of “Finding Mr. Right,” a charming romantic comedy featuring likeable leads and a colorful enough supporting cast to hold your attention in spite of its predictability. Written and directed by Xiao Lu Xue, the film is hitting these shores after enjoying a phenomenal run in China earlier this year.
The movie is unlikely to make as much of a mark here, given that several developments in the derivative storyline are apt to strike a domestic audience as vaguely familiar. Nevertheless, the plot thickens when the spoiled-rotten heroine stops behaving badly after being dumped by her baby-daddy and starts to exhibit a sensitive side.
A pat, paint by numbers romp that telegraphs its every punch.
