This movie is cute, fun, emotional... and predictable.

The rivalry between the western and eastern style music students, exacerbated by the incompetent staff, is a good foundation for the story. The individual characters are enjoyable, especially the 2nd Dimension group; straight out of a manga and well-portrayed. I especially enjoyed the character that didn't have a line in the whole movie, but played one of the main supportive parts.

The movie fell apart for me a bit near the end. It started with the well-known separated-by-bars competition that is shown on YouTube (which I imagine is what brings most people to watch this movie). To be honest, I didn't see a clear distinction of a "winner" there; both sides did equally well. So that bit of directing started somewhat of a downhill slide. Add to it that I could think of a far better, more cooperative end musical presentation that was more in line with the overall theme, and well, there was room for improvement. But that's okay.

I didn't mind the fanciful holographic projections in the performance, because the Chinese and Japanese are masters at mid-air holographic technology, projecting 30 foot Vocaloids in the middle of a crowd or having tigers running down the middle of a shopping mall. However, it was unnecessary, was a bit jump-the-shark, and the addition of two very-out-of-place electric guitars to the mix just pushed it that much farther... which is why I gave this 8 stars rather than 10. It was a good movie; the director just went off track a bit in the last 15 minutes or so. The focus should have remained on blending Eastern instruments and music down to the very end... and perhaps even blending the two methods into a harmonious whole. But bringing in two overdrive electric guitars out of nowhere into a traditional orchestra did not well-accomplish that concept.

So overall, a good movie that could have had a better final presentation. If someone wanted to be critical and focus on flaws they would have valid reason to do so-- if we're to take a manga-movie all that seriously. But as it stands it is well worth watching and enjoyable overall. Probably wouldn't mind watching it again, which for me is high praise for any movie.

It was really nice watching something with teen age girls that was not focused on rebellion, cussing, drugs and sex

This movie has 2 focuses, one it does well, one it should have done better in

The first focus is the respect and reverence that China has for its heritage, everyone in the world knows China has more of this than anywhere else, the movie did a pretty decent job of conveying this in terms of its musical heritage

However, most of the music in this movie is modern, even to the point of covering up the training and practice sessions with ancient Chinese instruments in the movie with elevator music

There was once when a harp and an ancient Chinese instrument were dueling, I could of listened to this for an hour, it was too brief. There was not much given to us in terms of real time music with these ancient Chinese instruments, even though that was the focus.

MORE ancient Chinese cultural immersion please with the real instruments being played, and not a LOT of elevator music.

I stumbled upon this chinese movie by accident and was quite positively surprised how compelling the storytelling was, and all the comedic quirks and oddities worked really well and were on point. It's style can be described as close to watching an japanese anime and there are references to japanese manga/anime subculture which is hilarious well portrayed, but doesnt get tacky or over the top, this is due to the actors who played out their roles convincingly well. This movie is fun, upbeat, touches the emotion and is a overall feel good movie!