The Journey

Through his latest work, Chiu Keng Guan steps out of box from his previous great Chinese New Year films Woohoo! (2010) and Great Day (2011) to reflect on Malaysian Chinese traditional customs, typical ego and the progressive nature of the younger generation.

The Journey is a sincere, heartwarming and relatable film that touches on general local issues such as cultural differences, compromise, mutual acceptance,  language barrier, old friendship and of course, family. Ah Bee (Joanna Yew Hong Im) returns to Malaysia from England with her fiance, Benji (Ben Andrew Pfeiffer) for the first time since young to visit her father, Chuan (Lee Sai Peng), and to hopefully receive his blessing for the marriage. The young couple find it more difficult than initially expected to please the stubborn Chuan, who's old-fashioned and conservative, strict with Chinese traditional customs.

Screenwriter Ryon Lee and director Chiu captured all issues mentioned while facing them straight-on with answers, convincingly conveying all the right messages that may change the stubborn mindset of the old and young target audience. Although the light humour cracked me up in several scenes. The dialogues may be a bit too cheesy at times but it works, particularly towards the end where it's undeniably moving. They did, however, neglect on developing the relationship between the couple Ah Bee and Benji, but perhaps never intended to do so as it's not a romance flick.

All three of the main cast are first-time feature film actors did quite well. Lee Sai Peng's grumpy-faced role Uncle Chuan didn't require much but it's the most natural and realistic performance out of the three. Miss Astro Chinese International Pageant 2007 Joanna Yew Hong Im's performance is passable but her role Ah Bee could've been better written as her mix of Chinese and English dialogues are annoyingly pretentious. Her on-screen chemistry with England stage actor Ben Andrew Pfeiffer also seems restricted by the script. Pfeiffer's over-theatrical performance may make his character Benji seem like a mentally challenged and highly impatient white fellow at the beginning, but as the story progresses, Pfeiffer's fully dedicated performance makes Benji even more likable.

(ps: Pfeiffer actually comes from British heritage and the accent he was working on was from a more subtle region. He has 28 years experience in theatre, film and TV.)

I would love to see director Chiu to attempt to make a multilingual or a non-Chinese-focused film next. We all know he can truly make great Chinese family drama comedies and now, it's time to go beyond that in order to make even greater masterpieces that would go down in Malaysian film history.

(NG
"Ang Moh the Mat Salleh: Tolerating Old Chinese Folks" that's what I called funny😂😂😂)