This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

the dialog! man, the dialog! do i have to repeat this seemingly incurable and never be able to be corrected problem that taiwanese films always have? the horribly written dialog and the way to speak the dialog in every taiwanese film are just too unnatural, too pretentious and way too exaggerated that making watching every film from taiwan a torture. every word and every sentence would have a unnecessary prolonged end sound like ah, eh, la, ma, neh, ba...these ending sound does not just come from the min-nan dialect from china, it's also a fatal heredity left behind by the Japanese language. i would not say that the taiwanese films didn't have some good stuff, but this annoying and never break-thru problem of the weak taiwanese dialog in every film and the shallow, superficial way of writing the dialog has become the forever achilles ankle tendon that would snap every film made by the taiwanese. those unnecessary end sound of every sentence they finish in their daily life and on the screen only made every one who live in taiwan, a never quite grown up whiner, man, woman, male, female, young or old, everybody just whine whatever whenever they can.from the very beginning of this film, as soon as it started, i was suddenly facing the dejavu' again and simply couldn't stand it. i have to remind all the taiwanese actors here: i don't mean that you cannot act properly or naturally, it's the lousy dialog that makes you become a lousy actor as always.