The Worst Film Ever

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The film "The search of General Tso" is a documentary about the origins of General Tso Chicken. The reason for finding the origin General Tso Chicken is because most people in China do not know about the dish. The main target audience of the film would just be people who know someone that owns a Chinese restaurant or people who ate Chinese food before. It is also rarely on the menus of restaurants in China. To find how it started we have to go all the way back to the Californian gold rush when the Chinese first came to America in 1849. The film did a good job by gathering Chinese Historians from different universities around the U.S. They were able to add background information of when the Chinese came over and the discrimination they faced. It was helpful to give background so it can lead up to why the Chinese needed to adapt to the eventual creation of General Tso Chicken. They also visited General Tso's home to confirm that he has no relation to the dish. One of the most important things to note in a film is if you enjoyed it. If your engaged it must mean you enjoyed it to a certain extent. One of the good qualities of the documentary was their use of quick- cuts. The use of quick cuts increases the pace at which the film is going. If the pace is going faster, it is easier to stay engaged. If the pace is too slow it is very easy for the viewer to get bored and lost attention to the film. Fast-cuts can ease the boredom by having the scenes of silences. I make note of the fast-cuts and why I enjoyed it because there are some documentaries where the speaker speaks in a slow pace and the scenes have very slow transitions. The pace of the fast-cuts was not that fast but at a decent pace so it does not feel like they are just shoving information in your face. They were able to manipulate this skill very well to where it made me forget the time. It also keeps your attention by how they set up the question of the film and the viewer does not find out the answer until the very end. The film could have ended in 20 minutes but they made it longer but including more history of the other dishes before the creation of General Tso Chicken. It was important that they added other food because it influenced other chef to experiment. As it shows in the beginning of Chinese Cuisine adapting to American taste it slowly became more clear on why they made the dish and where it came from. The more information they revealed the more you would be drawn into it. The film was able to have a good end by tying everything together like a bow. You figured out why the Chinese came and why they had to adapt Chinese food to American taste. It kept you drawn in by not telling the viewer where it came from but instead it went through the history of other Chinese dishes that lead up to it. It had a great ethos by having Chinese restaurant owners, Chinese historians, and a relative of General Tso. Overall The film was a great watch and very informative of Chinese cuisine in America.

A fun and funny look at General Tso's chicken... how it's spelled, what he looked like, and what the heck is in it. We hear from menu collectors, people on the street, and restaurant owners, both American and Chinese. In hunan, we see a house which theoretically belonged to general tso. We even met a great grandson of "the general" who laments that all his ancestor is known for is the menu item. A Jewish guys talks about the odd link between Jewish families finding something to do on protestant holidays-- going out to eat Chinese food. Gengis Cohen. That's funny. The irony that the low wage workers can help build our railroads, but were treated as second class citizens for so long. Of course, they include Nixon visiting china, which helped bring back the popularity of Chinese food, and that seems to be about the time that the dish started appearing in America.Ian Cheney writes, directs, and narrates this interesting look at one single item from the Chinese food restaurant menu. An interesting mix of man on the street interviews, people taking guesses at that they think is the truth, as well as some actual historians of Chinese historians, from museums and universities. This is the first one of his projects that I have seen.... i'll have to check out his other numerous films. That's also an interesting list. This one is very comfortable. We hear many statements, some of which may be true, but it's too bad it wasn't made more clear what was true and what was opinion, or lore. Certainly entertaining....it made me want to go out for Chinese food!

I'm not sure what I expected from The Search for General Tso, but I really got a lot out of it. Being a documentary, I suppose one of its main purposes is to inform and teach the viewer. A few things I learned:1. There really was a General Tso. He seems to have been a very proud man, intent on preserving Chinese culture. And, he never ate the chicken dish bearing his name.2. President Nixon's trip to China not only opened the doors for trade with China, but led to an explosion in Chinese restaurants across the U.S.3. General Tso's Chicken was not created in either China or the U.S. It made it's first appearance in 1955 in Taiwan. And Chef Peng, the creator of General Tso's Chicken, seems unamused in what has happened to his original dish as it's spread across every corner of the U.S.4. Just as I suspected, there is no agreement on how to pronounce Tso. I believe I heard at least four, maybe five, different pronunciations in the film. Pretty funny.Informative and entertaining, The Search for General Tso is a winner.

Since I enjoy General Tso's chicken every chance I get, it was no surprise that I enjoyed this film. I was bothered about the omission of a pretty significant bit of Chinese food history in the U.S. While it is true that great numbers of workers were drawn here by the gold rush, not a few Chinese cooks came for the building of the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s. The eastern part employed a lot of Irish, but the western part was largely built by Chinese. They were sought not simply as cheap labor, but as experts in the use of gunpowder to blast right-of-ways through mountains. Unlike the Irish, who were hired individually, the Chinese were hired in gangs of 20, of which one was a cook. Part of the package deal was that the cook was to receive whatever supplies he requested, with the result that the Chinese enjoyed a much healthier diet than the "superior" Caucasians. After the railroad was built, Chinese cooks found work in logging and mining camps, as well as on ranches if the old television series, _Bonanza_ is to be believed. Chop suey probably got its start in a western logging camp.