SHORTCOMINGS – Review by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
Ben (Justin H. Min) is a spectacular dickhead. He’s tactless, arrogant, selfish and mean. And in Randall Park’s directorial debut Shortcomings, Ben is about to become the main character of a film where he finds out that not everything always necessarily revolves around him. A somewhat pretentious Japanese-American cinephile who works at a small indie cinema on its last legs in San Francisco, Ben’s long-term relationship with his girlfriend Miko (Ally Maki) effectively collapses when she announces she is moving to New York City for a career-making internship. At first looking at it as a golden opportunity which allows him to pursue his undisguised sexual interest in white women, he soon has second thoughts and with the help of his best friend Alice (Sherry Cola) he decides to see what of his old life can be salvageable – and questions if it is even worth saving.
Adapted from regular New Yorker illustrator Adrian Tomine’s 2007 graphic novel of the same name, that Tomine also wrote the screenplay comes as little surprise; Shortcomings is alive with a kind of intimacy and sense of familiarity that feels like it could have only come from someone with a long, deep connection with the material. And it is this feeling of closeness that perhaps justifies why Ben can be himself with us – his own, true, shitty self.
Beginning with an undisguised parody of Crazy Rich Asians to which Ben has an emphatically negative reaction, Shortcomings wears its discourse on its sleeve. But what it lacks in subtext it makes up for in pure, dazzling energy; Shortcomings brings raw ‘90s indie romcom vibes to a contemporary story about race and sexuality (think Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Any More meets the animated series Mission Hill through a queer Asian lens and you start to get the vibe). As Ben’s lesbian best friend, Cola’s hilarious Alice almost steals the show, and the on-screen energy between her and Min is very much where the film gains its upbeat propulsive dynamic. But it is, of course, Ben’s story, and as an objectively awful person it’s no small accomplishment that we care so much to join him on his journey.
NOTE: Without actors and writers, we wouldn’t have movies. This review was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes in the United States, and the author of this review supports them unequivocally.
