Movie Review: “Always Be My Maybe” A Top Notch Realistic Rom-Com
ATTENTION: When you watch this movie you MUST and I mean MUST watch the end credits and listen to the end credit song. It is the cherry on top of this delicious ice cream sundae of a movie. (It’s on Netflix)
Ali Wong and Randall Park have created a masterpiece here, for so many, many reasons.
Reason #1 This is a story that flips a lot of the standard romcom tropes on it’s head.
Reason #2 All of the characters here have believable stories, are dealing with traumas that are relatable and the character arcs make absolute sense.
Reason #3 There are no “Oh it’s a romcom, the plot doesn’t have to really make sense” moments. Everything makes sense.
Reason #4 The humor is perfect, not over the top (well, mostly, Keanu pulls off such a pitch perfect meta Keanu performance, it skates along the edge of unrealistic, but it actually is dead on for the context in which his character appears.) Sometimes in romcoms the humor falls flat because the scenarios are convoluted, that doesn’t happen here at all.
Reason #5 The background of Asian culture and family dynamics. Now, I am white, so I am not going to comment all that much on this part as I have just a passing knowledge of this topic but I will say that I absolutely love seeing diverse characters and dynamics on screen, so, more of this please!
Now, to get into specifics. Let’s start with the set up — Sasha (Ali Wong) and Marcus (Randall Park) are childhood friends, they’re neighbors and one thing that makes this movie different is that they show a montage of their friendship at the beginning, which gets you immediately invested in their history. Sasha’s parents own a grocery store and are constantly at work making her basically a latchkey kid who raised herself. Marcus’ family is the opposite, both his parents spend time at home and Sasha basically becomes adopted by his family. They spend their childhood as best friends until tragedy strikes Marcus’ family when they are teenagers.
What follows is such a great moment of teenage awkwardness, lack of emotional awareness and hormones taking over the brain that manages to be both funny and heartwrenching and an very relatable experience for all of us. Without getting too far into spoilers, Marcus loses a parent and after some time passes in an attempt to help him feel better Sasha and he end up having utterly awkward teenage sex in the backseat of his car. The after sex scenes in this show are so well done, it’s none of that “OMG this was amazing” afterglow, where everyone looks somehow still spectacular and utterly satisfied. It’s the exact opposite, they’re lying there, confused, not all that sure if they did it right, a little repulsed even and unsure of what they should do or say next.
The scene that follows the car sex has them standing about 3 feet apart from each other at a Burger Kind trying to rationalize and explain what just happened. Which is when their relationship breaks, the cascading emotions of what just happened, what Marcus is still feeling about his loss and the rejection that Sasha feels from what he says when he’s upset breaks them apart. We then fast forward sixteen years and see that Sasha has become a very successful celebrity chef while Marcus is still living at home and seems stuck in the past.
Sasha has moved to New York while Marcus is still in San Francisco and the hook here is Sasha is opening a restaurant in Frisco and her assistant, Veronica, who grew up with both of them, came up with a small scheme to reunite them. What’s nice is the scheme is perfectly logical, Sasha will be staying in Frisco for two months so Veronica rents a house that needs a new AC, and Marcus and his dad run a small HVAC company, which is who Veronica hires to fix the AC.
When they all meet up again the scene is sheer “oh shit, this is embarrassing” perfection.
Now getting to point #2 — believable traumas. After Marcus’ loss he becomes emotionally stuck to the point that he pretty much refuses to try anything new in life and this is demonstrated in multiple ways, both visually and through interactions with other characters. He’s in the same room he was as a kid, he’s leading the same band which he refuses to let play at any new venues due to his fear of loss, and perhaps fear of success. He’s in a routine that rarely changes and he shows a massive amount of disdain for how he sees Sasha acting and dealing with her success. He’s happy for her that she is successful but he doesn’t like the fact that she has matured and changed in ways that he hasn’t.
That’s not to say that Sasha is issue free, due to her upbringing she has attachment issues, she is afraid to open up to people and tends to date people that are very shallow. Where the magic happens is watching the two of them interact, between the rapid fire comments, the pitch perfect comic pacing and the depth of the caring between them, even if they don’t want to admit it, the ending feels so genuine and earned. None of their interactions feel forced or somehow manufactured to put them in a unbelievable situation (well, mostly, the Keanu scene is, well, different but fun as hell) but even coming away from the Keanu scene what happens next makes perfect sense.
At the end of all of this, the “peace offering” in a way from Sasha drives the emotion away from romcom and more into overcoming trauma and healing as a family. What makes it even sweeter is that she planned it without knowing if she would ever see Marcus again, she does it in honor of his family and what they mean to her, and in doing so shows that it wasn’t just about dating him, but about what their friendship meant, and still means to her.
And that, dear readers, is what makes this movie stand out to me over other more standard type romcoms. That even though the movie has romance in it, the focus of it is actually family. Which is why if you haven’t seen it yet, go watch it asap. AND MAKE SURE YOU LISTEN TO THE END CREDIT SONG!!! SERIOUSLY! TRUST ME!
