1. Shortcomings
Directed by Randall Park
Year: 2023
Language: English
Shaun’s Score: 2.1/5 ★
Before Watching:
Have you guys seen Beef on Netflix yet? One of the better TV shows to grace streaming services from this past year, it looks primed to beat Prime at the 2024 Emmys, with nominations in categories from acting to directing and production. The show’s stellar cast, featuring Oscar-nominee Steven Yeun and Emmy-nominee Ali Wong, also highlights Justin Min as an unstable youth pastor (who also sucks at basketball). Min now joins Randall Park’s directorial debut Shortcomings in a leading role, which I was excited to see despite a middling 67/100 on Metacritic. I extended Randall Park an olive branch because of his previous comedic achievements like Always Be My Maybe (not because of his oddly persistent role of Jimmy Woo in the MCU). Unfortunately, the film’s name is apt, and Shortcomings just comes in short.
Justin Min plays Ben, the absolute worst type of cinephile you’ll ever meet. He clings to a dilapidated San Francisco projector house as his happy place, forces himself to vocally not enjoy blockbusters, and pronounces Éric Rohmer’s surname as “roamer.” Unsurprisingly, he has relationship troubles—his girlfriend Miko (Ally Maki) hates his guts, and when she leaves the Bay Area for a fellowship, their relationship is hung out to dry. The cast also includes Joy Ride’s Sherry Cola as Ben’s friend Alice and Debby Ryan (?!) in an unexpected supporting role. Oh, and Spiderman’s Jacob Batalon alongside that goddamn IKEA TikTok-er from Cocaine Bear as the movie theater’s cringeworthy attendants. Seriously, I just—who is casting film in 2023? This Life on Deck is just not as Suite as it used to be.
In my eyes, the movie’s twist on the anti-romcom genre and few chuckle-worthy soundbites are thwarted by two main pitfalls: 1. Ben is unabashedly unlikeable (and honestly, so is Miko), and 2. The dialogue is irrevocably bland and superficial. It’s difficult to sit through any of their bickering without Googling therapists in San Francisco.
Shortcomings premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, and is now available in select theaters.
After Watching:
Ok, at least Cocaine Bear boy pulled his weight this time with that Ruben Östlund joke. And I was delighted by Jonah from Veep being an incorrigible weeb. But the film still falls flat due to the aforementioned structural holes—Ben’s inability to accept Miko’s interracial relationship while incessantly pursuing one of his own, amplified by their joint inability to discuss anything without making it a fight. Is it a raw, realistic look at modern love? Eh, I guess for some, it might be. Is it refreshing or interesting in any way? Nope. Sorry Randall, this film will always be my maybe not
2. No Hard Feelings
Directed by Gene Stupnitsky
Year: 2023
Language: English
Shaun’s Score: 1.9/5 ★
Before Watching:
J-Law is back, bitches. And she’s back in the first real raunchy sex comedy since the pandemic, a deliberately cringe-worthy B-side flick called No Hard Feelings. If you didn’t see the film in theaters this summer, don’t worry—not many people did, as it only peaked 4th in the domestic box office. The studio initially marketed the film by running ads reading “Need a Car? ‘Date’ Our Son” across billboards and social media, plucking the film’s central construct and befuddling Americans who either 1. were eagerly anticipating a new Jennifer Lawrence comedy, or 2. needed a car. The Hunger Games: Mocking-pay me my damn Buick Regal.
Lawrence plays Maddie Barker, a Long Island girlie™ who (you guessed it) needs a car. In walk Matthew Broderick1 and Laura Benanti as Laird and Allison Becker, parents desperate to de-geek their hopelessly geeky son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) before he matriculates at Princeton. Naturally, the efficient markets theory presents a trade—the Beckers agree to give Maddie a car, and in exchange she agrees to Bark their precious Percy’s hitherto un-Barked Becker.2 I promise, you need no further explanation or set-up to imagine exactly how the rest of the film goes.
The film scores a few chuckles, but it disappointingly hovers inside the lines—they could have gone so much raunchier or made the story more unique. All major plot points follow the 21st century Hollywood mold (the real Silver Linings Playbook?), like the Hero’s Journey if the Hero were addicted to Instagram and could only speak in one-liners like some sort of Deadpool-ified Yoda.3 Thus, the film is ultimately pretty dry and not particularly funny—don’t go volunteering as tribute to see this unless you want some hard feelings.
No Hard Feelings was released in the United States in June, and is now available to stream on Netflix and Prime Video.
After Watching:
Some critics complained that the film glorifies sexual grooming by presenting the age gap in a disarmingly comedic setting, but I have to ask—did you see the same movie I saw? No Hard Feelings very deliberately makes what J-Law does seem cringey, and just because they don’t prepend the dialogue with a big red disclaimer “We Do Not Condone Trading Sex with Teenagers for Used Cars” doesn’t mean you can’t use your brain to intuit that on your own. It seems that some people are just incapable of encountering uncomfortable power dynamics in cinema without immediately assuming that they’re being exalted and not examined—these are the people who didn’t like Tár4 or May December5. Let’s slow down on the virtue signaling, folks—we don’t need to give Brie Larson6 any more ammo for poor judicial decisions.
Fresh off his star turn in Only Murders in the Building season 3.
Sorry, I just couldn’t resist since both of the character’s last names sound so explicit.
Blunt and brassy, I am.
*cough* Richard Brody *cough*
*cough* Ruben Östlund *cough*
Now that she’s done drooling over Park Seo-joon, even though he was in The Marvels for a total of 3 minutes.