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Always Be My Mediocre by Doniphan Blair
'Always Be My Maybe''s Ali Wong ambition-shames co-star Randal Park, a move she should have applied to her own film. image: courtesy Nahnatchka Khan
SAN FRANCISCO GOT TARRED AGAIN
by another barely-funny rom-com set in The City, this time by an almost-entirely Asian team, proving that white privilege is not necessary to make pretentious overblown films and begging the question: Can you parody hipster idiots while imitating Hollywood at its most commercial?
No wonder “Always Be My Maybe” went straight to streaming on Netflix, the international media conglomerate whose business model—cheap, fast and obsessively-topical—can not help but produce 80% crap, on May 29th.
The tragedy is the talent wasted, notably the brilliant, beautiful Ali Wong, fresh off her second “pregnant and hysterical” comedy tours/films: “Baby Cobra" and "Hard Knock Wife" (2016 and 2018, respectively), also from Netflix (part of its masterful 20%). Born and bred in San Francisco’s wealthy Pacific Heights neighborhood, Wong apparently felt it was worth letting down her hometown by going completely commersh to cover tuition at SF’s ridiculously expensive private schools, which she now needs for two kids.
Wong’s co-star Randal Park is another eminence grise of Asian comedy, having created a string of award-winning shorts, played dictator Kim Jong-un in the near-war-starting “The Interview” (2014), and garnered a Best Actor Critics' Choice Award for starring in the TV show “Fresh Off the Boat” (2015-ongoing).
The freshman film from Nahnatchka Khan, who directed/produced “Fresh Off the Boat” and whose parents are from Iran, the directing is utterly unremarkable, a disgrace to her parent's homeland, the first film nation of Islam, if not the entire Global South. But it is the lackluster writing from Wong, Park and Michael Golamco, a respected—until now—Filipino-American playwright, that is truly odd.
Wong falls madly in love with Keanu Reaves—for only a few days—setting the stage for 'Always Be My Maybe''s most searing satire. image: courtesy Nahnatchka Khan
Of course, it must be said that, in regards to the “can you parody hipster idiots” question, Wong, Park and Golamco did write a stunning scene for Keanu Reeves, where he plays himself and steals the movie in a devastating satire of celebrity sick-fucks as well as hipster idiots.
Sadly, Reeves’s startling appearance only serves to highlight the paucity of searing self-effacement and surgical insight into their own story and characters, although they also do a decent take down of Asian hipsters in a character played by the incredibly-named and obviously-talented actress Vivian Bang, as the oversexed, dreadlocked lover of Park, during his long separation from his childhood beloved and eventual wife Wong.
There are also a lot a sweet moments for a host of underserved Asian-American actors, starting with the always-excellent James Saito (from 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles', 1990, on), who plays Park's character's father.
Indeed, the Reeves scene proves that buried within “Always Be My Maybe” is an edgy, funny film fighting to get out. This is also indicated by a half-a-dozen solid lines, like when Wong says something like, “I hope it’s not still as small and grungy,” and Park retorts, “I hope your referring to my car’s back seat”—Asian comedy’s now-requisite small-penis joke.
In fact, all Wong, Park and Golamco needed was a standard-issue studio script doctor to cut the lard, like all the trillionaire bits—does Wong really have to go from learning cooking from Park’s mom to the planet’s most famous chef without even a mis-en-scene???—and add a couple of aggressive pages, of which the writers undoubtedly have notebooks, drawers and suitcases stuffed full.
Instead of shooting white koi in a Zen garden barrel, how about some Asian-on-Asian humor, since Wong’s character is Vietnamese and Park’s is Korean, and we know there must be some fascinating and funny stereotypes harbored by each group about the other? At the very least, instead of all that drawn-out, feel-good childhood footage or the long march towards marriage, how about more riffing repartee, given Park emerges in the film’s finale as a vicious cutup.
While Rotten Tomatoes gives “Always Be My Maybe” a 91% approval rating, and Rolling Stones’ Peter Travers claims, “It’s an irresistible romantic romp that turns the familiar into something sweet, sassy and laugh-out-loud funny,” that’s obviously patronizing white people and middle brow people of color talking, not cutting-edge comedic analysis.
After years of minor roles, the talented Vivian Bang gets her star turn, albeit as the fall-girl for all the satire 'Always Be My Maybe' holds back from its main characters. image: courtesy Nahnatchka Khan
Just because people on the screen look like you, that’s only twenty percent of the battle. If they don’t think like the you that you aspire to be, if they aren’t truly visionary, monumentally human AND hysterically funny, they aren’t all that inspiring.
If “Always Be My Maybe” is what kids of color or non-binary gender—and there’s the obligatory gay secondary character, of course, who is also pregnant and even gives birth mid-film (a nod to Wong’s “Baby Cobra”)—are obliged to watch on their first dates or to get their rom-com fix, the new army of Hollywood integrators are shooting themselves in the foot.
Indeed, they’re sending those kids to search Netflix for actually smart and funny rom-coms about love, separation and reuniting, like “His Girl Friday”—almost 80 years old and ALL white, but that's the thing about true talent, it transcends ALL barriers—a futile search, in fact, since Netflix doesn’t even have it. (Fortunately, Amazon does: go here.)
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .Posted on Jun 10, 2019 - 11:55 PM