Falling for Falling for Grace

Dish is painfully biased but it's enjoyable candy for those times when you're about to have a meltdown. Grace (Fay Ann Lee) is loveable as a money-savvy heroine who's grown up in the heart of Chinatown and at a snooty-mcsnootertown event gets mistaken for a fashion designer. It's really Lee's movie--not as much a romantic comedy, though you feel the love. While I shot green daggers at Grace during the trailer (how dare she get so close to Gale when I can't deflect her advances), I was thoroughly charmed by her. Of course, Gale did a fine job as Hunkalicious--and his hair fell in his face just perfectly, but really it's all about the craft and he acted well too. Fabulous secondary characters, heartwarming family vignettes that made me want to buy my parents a new refrigerator (scary dead things in the old one). The only caveats are those typical elements in romantic comedies:

1. Hero showing her how to bowl/golf/hold a bat so as to put pelvis up against heroine's ass and whisper in her ear.
2. Heroine has to fall at least once in front of people. Dish manages to confine her embarrassments to the privacy of her home, like in the bathtub b/c she's 100 years old.
3. At moment when hero is given push to chase after girl, he always says, "Can I borrow your car?" (Notting Hill, Love Actually) In FFG, Gale has been drinking at the bar, shotglass in front of him, therefore, he's lubed up before he gets behind the wheel, thank goodness.
4. After losing love, girl/boy always makes snap decision to move, heads to airport but someone either chases them or he/she changes her mind at last minute. Declaration of love often done on the street. (Mirror Has Two Faces, How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, Along Comes Polly, Something's Gotta Give, Sex and the City final episode)

Still loved it, will watch over and over until I hate it.