This movie is also called "Electric Shadows," not to be confused with the "Electric Shadows" listed in IMDb, which is a documentary about Hong Kong cinema. "Meng ying tong nian" is a drama set in Communist China. <br /><br />Anyway, this movie was slow,depressing and dull. If anything good ever happened in Communist China, it never made its way onto a movie screen. If you've seen a lot of movies from Communist China, you've seen others like this. There's a child protagonist, dreary conditions, and a not quite poignant plot. Of course there are scattered acts of violence, repression and bullying. The boy-favoring ways of Chinese families rear their ugly heads.<br /><br />Although advertised as being similar to "Cinema Paradiso," it isn't in the same league. It has that depressing Chinese movie feeling. The many clips of old Chinese movies shown in it are dreary and unlikable themselves. The landscape and buildings are mostly depressing.<br /><br />In the end it picks up a little, but that doesn't redeem the movie. I consider myself to have been rooked into seeing this movie by the "Cinema Paradiso" comparison. The art movie theater in my town is empty most of the time. They need to stop lying to the customers. We'd come out to see the good art movies if we could tell which ones they were.