We all have shortcomings but in SHORTCOMINGS, all the characters have them in abundance. This funny, smart, modern comedy follows the lives and misadventures of Ben Tanaka (Justin H. Min, who played Ben Hargreaves in the TV series “The Umbrella Academy” and Jimmy Woo in ANTMAN AND THE WASP), his best friend Alice Kim (comedian Sherry Cola) and his girlfriend Miko Hayashi (actress/fashion maven Ally Maki) as the San Francisco Bay area twenty-somethings navigate relationships and just real life. Based on the graphic novel of the same name by Adrian Tomine, SHORTCOMINGS is filled with laugh-out-loud humor and sharp, witty dialog in a real-life tale that also shows the variety of Asian American experience.
Based on a graphic novel of the same name by Adrian Tomine, SHORTCOMINGS is actor-turned director Randall Park’s first feature. Tomine also wrote the screen adaptation of his graphic novel for this hilarious, pointed comedy, which premiered at Sundance.
The story opens at the movies, where a feel-good wish-fulfillment Hollywood ending to an Asian American romance is on screen. The empowering happy ending sends the audience out of the theater in a glow, to the delight of the people putting on this Berkeley Asian film festival. Ben’s live-in girlfriend Miko is the assistant director of the film festival and very pleased with the film’s reaction. But wannabee film director Ben is rolling his eyes at the crowd-pleaser, complaining that there is not a single realistic character in the movie. Miko defensively pushes back, saying the film’s slick Hollywood style and positive representation of Asian Americans actually will open doors for more varied Asian American films, like Ben might make. Still, Ben continues to argue, even carrying over his negative attitude into the next days, creating a rift in their relationship.
In what may be a breakout role, Justin Min does an impressive job making Ben likable despite the character’s tendency to be argumentative, whiny and self-sabotaging while having no insight on his shortcomings in dealing with people. Further, Ben also doesn’t like change even though he is drifting through life. He calls himself a filmmaker, but really he works as the manager of an art-house movie theater, where he shows minimal interest in the theater’s success.
The couple continues to drift apart, arguing over Ben’s secret habit of searching for photos of white women, an obsession he denies. Shortly after, Miko announces she is going to accept an internship in New York. Ben immediately bad-mouths New York but doesn’t try to talk her out of it. Actually, he is worried about losing Miko, but keeps his worries to himself. When Miko leaves, she tells tells him they should take a break in their relationship. Again, Ben says nothing. But he immediately hits on Autumn (Tavi Gevinson), a pretty white woman he just hired at the theater. Then he quickly drops her to go out with another woman, again white, Sasha (Debbie Ryan) even though his friend Alice tries to warn him off her.
Ben certainly seems like a jerk at this point, and a lot of the characters tell him, again and again, that he is the problem – one time even using a reverse of that classic breakup line “it’s not you, it’s me,” letting him know that it is not the culture, it’s not prejudice, it’s him. But clueless Ben resists taking any of that to heart. With Miko in New York, the film follows Ben and Alice and their romantic misadventures. Sparkling, smart and funny dialog is one of the treats in this comedy but so are the relationship exchanges, which are so real world that you could imagine them in any relationship. The characters and situations, while played for comedy, all have a refreshing realism, with messy real-life situations and characters who are likable, complicated, contradictory and flawed all at the same time. The warts and all characters are refreshing rather than irritating because we are given insights on why they do what they do, even when their behavior is not nice and the characters themselves don’t have those insights.
While Ben is bad at revealing his feelings to his girlfriend Miko, he is more forthcoming with his best friend Alice especially while Miko is gone. Alice, a gay graduate student with a history of serial relationships, can be as insensitive as Ben, which might be part of why they get along so well. While Ben wants to hold on to the relationship he has been sabotaging, Alice’s response to relationship troubles is to run away.
Despite his missteps, Justin Min keeps Ben likable enough that we still care about him, while director Randall Park makes clear that Ben is as much the target of bad behavior as he is often the source. They are all behaving badly, and as the story develops, we see lots of shortcomings of other characters, often with Ben bearing the brunt of that, despite the verbal drumbeat of it being all Ben’s fault. In a way, it is, because his lack of insight on himself and his self-sabotage is at the heart of his troubles.
This is a very funny film but director Randall Park also aims to use humor spotlight some things about Asian Americans rarely seen on scene, like the diversity in the Asian American experience. In one particularly good sequence, Alice, afraid to reveal that she is gay to her conservative parents, persuades Ben to pose has her boyfriend to meet her parents, one Korean and the other Chinese. But she doesn’t want him reveal his Japanese heritage to her Korean grandfather, even though Ben points out that his family has been in the U.S. for several generations, because she worries about lingering prejudices from WWII. It sets up a hilarious, farcical exchange but highlights something non-Asians might not think about.
Eventually, Ben and Alice do end up in New York, partly fleeing their own messes back home, but also giving Ben a chance to find out what is going on with Miko, who has been dodging his calls. We meet Leon (Timothy Simons) and Meredith (Sonoya Mizuno), and more craziness, hilarious moments and telling insights ensue, as the film cleverly wraps things up, although not with the predictably neat Hollywood bow.
With humor that catches you off-guard until the end, delightfully smart dialog, and unexpected insights, SHORTCOMINGS has few shortcomings as a clever, insightful, real-world comedy.
SHORTCOMINGS opens Friday, August 4, in theaters.
RATING: 4 out of 5 stars
