The Kid from the Big Apple (2016) User Reviews

Puts you in a warm cocoon of nostalgia

[ctowyi · 6/10 · 24 March 2016]

The story is a simple and familiar one. A woman lugs her daughter from New York to Malaysia and leaves her 11-year-old rambunctious girl with her estranged father, while she goes to China to work. A severe clash of cultural identities and language barriers ensues but all will be well by the last act.

The story is emotionally manipulative and drips of near-choking schmaltz. Lots of over- acting. Nuance is not its suit and subtlety is thrown out the window. Pacing issues, clunky scenes, some major broad-strokes and it begs you to be forgiving. But the movie has a funny way of sneaking up on you, puts you in a warm cocoon of nostalgia and leaves you in happy tears. It wears a big heart on its sleeves.

The major coup is getting Ti Lung to be in the role of the grandpa. Even though he is 69, his screen presence anchors the film. I love the little girl and she looks the part even though she sounds nothing like the part (I detect no American accent on her).

Not a bad way to spend 2 hours. A pity it isn't very memorable and only emotionally resonating for lowest common denominator.

Nice

[mztang · 10/10 · 23 April 2016]

It is a nice video and hope this movie can motivate everyone and it's like an appearance of my childhood in Malaysia. So lovely and sweet memories I ever had. Basically, this movie's main language that the actors/actress use is English then only comes to mandarin. I would really recommend this movie to everyone. I will buy and keep it if there is an original CD. Love this movie endlessly. Pride in being a Malaysian. The part where Sarah's grand father call his grandson 'Salah' is actually quite funny. ('Salah' in Malay means 'wrong'). This movie is promoting the recycle activity. And that's all what I can comment. Hope you guys enjoy it.

Chunky, Clunky, Awkward, Poorly directed movie.

[wongkhai · 2/10 · 11 February 2019]

Typical Malaysian Production - Terrible! This movie has no continuity, in fact, its scenes are so awkward and weird that i have to rewatch it several times to clear up the mystery of why it seemed so weird. 1) The actors-They didn't even try to make the little girl Sarah who supposedly came from New York sound American or have an American accent, don't argue with me that she doesn't need to have an American accent to be from America, Yes, it needs to be there to show the dedication of the production team, if they didn't even bother to train her American accent, at least hire someone with an American accent to do her english voiceover to give the audiences more feeling.

2) Scenes-The movie scenes are just plain awkward, it hurts to watch. It would skip several times to different scenes to supposedly show things that Sarah would encounter while in Malaysia, but the scenes are awkwardly placed, showing a huge flaw (maybe they cut some scenes but edited it terribly so it looked weird). Example: suddenly they cut into a scene of people being curios on her, then that scene only lasted for few seconds and it cuts into another scene showing her doing other stuff, then it would suddenly be cut into her or other character doing random things or stuff that has no relation to the movie...

Pleasantly emotional but everthing else is bad, bad, bad.

[KADC · 5/10 · 17 January 2020]

This is a child's drawing of a movie: Sentimental but, objectively, not very good. I'm not sure who the target audience is as this appears to be a children's movie yet the story and subject matter are unlikely to be of interest to any child while the writing, acting, and directing are too juvenile to appeal to adults. Nevertheless, each clunky scene of the movie does convey genuine emotion which may appeal to anyone who appreciates feeling over substance, and for that reason I give this moving a just-passing grade.

Be warned, however, that native English speakers, particularly those from the U.S., may have a hard time tolerating the heavy accent and poor English (Google translated bad) of the main character who is supposed to have been born and raised in New York and it's not until about a half-hour into the movie that she mostly abandons her broken English in favour of Malay and Mandarin.

Lead child actor was the worst I've seen

[Marc-Ritz · 1/10 · 22 August 2022]

It is not tolerable. You are watching this movie about the relationship between the grandfather and his grandchild, but she is unbearably bad. It cannot be ignored. With all the good will in the world, you can't ignore how bad of an actress she is. The moment she uttered her first sentence, you know she is not a native English speaker. She isn't even competent in English. You can tell she doesn't speak it. Fine, I can enjoy watching movies by subtitles, but then she shocks you with her horrible acting in every scene.