Title: Reunion Dinner
Released: 6 Jan 2009
Genre: Famliy

Casts
Chen Li Ping
Huang Yu Qing
Patricia Mok
Chen Han Wei
Kym Ng
Alan Tern

Synopsis
In a light-hearted manner, Reunion Dinner reflects on the plight of families in the midst of inflation as costs soar and wallets shrink. The reunion dinner on Lunar New Year’s eve holds exceptional importance to the Chinese as it signifies the bond of the family. Amidst mounting tension, marriage woes and family problems, the heartlanders in the drama exhaust their means to ensure that their families are reunited to share that very significant and heart-warming meal together.

A-Chang (Chen Hanwei) is a plumber who’s also a compulsive gambler. His wife Fangfang (Patricia Mok) walks out on him in a fit of anger, having had enough of his gambling ways. He has forgotten to go to the supermarket to hoard rice because of gambling and as the Lunar New Year approaches, there’s still no sign of his wife. Anxious, he puts up missing-person notices with the help of their three children. An accident puts his wife in a coma and A-Chang is detained by the police for his perceived role in it.

Overnight, the three kids Si Si (Xiao Zhi Ying), Qiang Qiang (Chen Jie Le) and Ya Ya (Lin Yong Yi) lose both father and mother. Not only do they need to fend for themselves, their resourcefulness is put to test as well as they now have to earn enough money for the reunion dinner. On Lunar New Year’s eve, the little ones use their hard-earned cash to buy the ingredients for dinner, their innocent minds hoping for their parents’ return so that the family can gather for a cosy dinner.

A-Ping (Chen Liping) is married to a wimpy husband Tianhua (Wang Yuqing) who draws a measly salary and doesn’t dare ask his boss for an increment although his pay has been stagnant for years. To supplement the family’s income, A-Ping sells her home-made confections. Though she’s always kept on her feet baking, looking after her dementia-stricken father-in-law Zhigao (Zhu Houren) and caring for the family, A-Ping is never one to wallow in her plight. She takes everything in her stride and performs her duties to the best of her abilities, which earns her the nickname Iron Lady.

But the Iron Lady is not infallible. Faced with escalating costs, shrinking dollars, an impending Lunar New Year, the lack of money for red packets and her husband’s unemployment, A-Ping finally breaks down. To make matters worse, her brothers-in-law refuse to share their father’s medical expenses and intend to leech on A-Ping’s family on New Year’s eve. Outraged, A-Ping finally declares that there would not be any reunion this year.

Banana (Kym Ng) works as a supermarket promoter by day and a beer promoter in a coffee shop by night. Her husband Daxiong (Alan Tern) has been jobless for years and has reluctantly taken over his father Uncle Laksa’s (Liang Tian) food stall. Lazy by nature, Daxiong chooses to cut corners and not adhere to his father’s recipe. This results in poor business, a point of contention between the couple. Whenever cornered, Daxiong would use Banana’s inability to conceive children to turn the tables on her. She finally gets a check-up one day, proving that she is not barren. The arrow then points to a possible problem with Daxiong, effectively curbing his chauvinism.

Faced with intense competition from younger beer promoters from China, Banana is pressurised into enlisting her tenant Wang Hao (Hu Wensui) to teach her to swim in a bid to keep her physique in the best possible condition. This however incurs her husband’s jealousy, who suspects that his wife and the Chinese ‘study papa’ are up to hanky-panky behind his back. A blissful reunion dinner might not be easy this year.

+credits to mediacorp+