The Moya View

Sundance: Shortcomings

Image courtesy of Topic Studios

Plot via Sundance:

Ben, a struggling filmmaker, lives in Berkeley, California, with his girlfriend, Miko, who works for a local Asian American film festival. When he’s not managing an art house movie theater as his day job, Ben spends his time obsessing over unavailable blond women, watching Criterion Collection DVDs, and eating in diners with his best friend, Alice, a queer grad student with a serial dating habit. When Miko moves to New York for an internship, Ben is left to his own devices and begins to explore what he thinks he might want.

Review notes:

A Korean American and Japanese American millennial couple work out their cultural, heritage, and cinematic differences in this oddly observed romantic comedy. There shortcomings there trigger jealousy, anger, create the usual rom-com stuff.

There is a lot of the director’s Randall Park television persona in Ben, the movie obsessed male lead. The awkward patter, with an semi-intellectual sheen, the nonchalant shrugging off of his many social flubs are all present to those who’ve seen Fresh Off the Boat and his latest incarnation as the fawning reporter that trails Dwane Johnson in the Young Rock. It’s taking the easy way out by falling back on what he knows best. Tone down the usual Park bravado and Ben almost seems a new variation.

In episodic 30 minutes bites that persona is tolerable as long his existence is background. As a lead it becomes insufferable, self absorbed and unwatchable. The movie needs the balance of the girlfriend who keeps him straight. Unfortunately she takes an internship in New York, a three month relationship break, and the movie stays off and listless. Even the lesbian filling in the space doesn’t correct this. She is just a female version of him.

Awkwafina might have juiced this role and saved it from its Shortcomings.

Credits:


DIRECTOR(S)
RANDALL PARK
SCREENWRITER
ADRIAN TOMINE
PRODUCER
MARGOT HAND
RANDALL PARK
HIEU HO
JENNIFER BERMAN
HOWARD COHEN
ERIC D’ARBELOFF
MICHAEL GOLAMCO
CAST
JACOB BATALON
TIMOTHY SIMONS
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS
RYAN HELLER
MICHAEL BLOOM
JENNIFER SEMLER
MARIA ZUCKERMAN
TIM HEADINGTON
LIA BUMAN
MAX SILVA
NEIL SHAH
RYAN PAINE
DANIEL HANK
ADRIAN TOMINE
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
SANTIAGO GONZALEZ
BASED ON THE GRAPHIC NOVEL BY
ADRIAN TOMINE
PRODUCTION DESIGNER
BILL BOES
EDITOR
ROBERT NASSAU
COSTUME DESIGNER
AVA YURIKO HAMA
CASTING DIRECTOR
NICOLE ABELLERA HALLMAN
PRINCIPAL CAST
JUSTIN H. MIN
SHERRY COLA
ALLY MAKI
DEBBY RYAN
TAVI GEVINSON
SONOYA MIZUNO
YEAR
2022
CATEGORY
FEATURE
COUNTRY
UNITED STATES
LANGUAGE
ENGLISH
RUN TIME
92 MIN


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