Film Review: Shortcomings (2023)
Actor Randall Park’s directorial debut is a bold, bitter character study about racial identity and male fragility.
Film: Shortcomings. Year: 2023. Genre: Comedy/Drama. Rating: R. Director: Randall Park.
Shortcomings, the debut directorial feature from actor Randall Park, opens on a Crazy Rich Asians-style crowd-pleaser premiering at a local Asian American film festival. As the credits roll, the audience erupts in applause, giving a standing ovation to the filmmaker pushing representation forward for their community. It’s a celebratory scene for all in attendance but one Ben Tagawa (Justin H. Min), a bitter, aspiring filmmaker himself. Ben wears a chagrined stare like armour against exposure to such lowbrow cinema — deeming it unworthy as “a garish, mainstream rom-com that glorifies the capitalistic fantasy of vindication through wealth and materialism,” groundbreaking cultural portrayals aside. Okay, point taken.
For Ben, everything is too political. Over breakfast with best friend Alice (an effusively charming Sherry Cola), he laments how his long-term girlfriend Miko (Ally Maki) has become politically engaged, dismissing her passion for Asian American issues as a mere trend. When Miko confronts him, with proof, about a long-standing suspicion of a white girl fetish, Ben rebuffs any cultural or political implications about his preferring Western beauty standards. However, in the above diner scene, Alice derides Ben’s gawking at a typical yoga mat-carrying pale Californian. Miko soon abruptly leaves for New York City (Ben also hates NYC despite never spending much time there, surprise!) to pursue an internship, leaving Ben, now in relationship limbo, to reset his dating life and, obviously, hastily pursue his fantasy.
A troubling character study disguised as a growing pains comedy, Shortcomings demands the viewer to follow a profoundly unlikeable man-child whose listlessness, anger and refusal to change only isolate him further. It’s a bold choice for first-time director Park and writer Adrian Tomine, adapting his 2007 graphic novel, who steadily chart Ben’s downfall toward rock bottom. A liar, a hypocrite, a self-acknowledged asshole that can’t find joy in anything; it would be easy to abandon Ben if it were not for Min’s affective, wounded performance, seething with self-hatred, his mental state as fragile as a ceramic plate.
Ben’s outbursts only become more frequent as he interprets any change inflicted upon his social circle, relationship or job status as a betrayal. The film doesn’t excuse this toxic behaviour, as his emotional volatility leads to real consequences for his dating life and mental health. Specifically, a late-stage confrontation finds Ben blinded by jealous rage, launching the political connotations and racial stereotypes previously discarded as inauthentic at a hilariously over-the-top Timothy Simons, branding him a “rice king” — an inverted classifier of Ben’s sexual fixation.
Despite the sour solitude in his self-imposed bubble, Ben isn’t the only person he knows struggling to find their footing in adulthood. The supporting cast greatly buoys Shortcomings against the emotional rot sinking Ben’s life trajectory, with modest attention paid to the women in his life navigating similar problems of identity and race, specifically Alice, whose family’s traditional values clash with her sexuality. Alice, too, rubs up against the stereotypes used by society, or one’s own culture, to pigeonhole us, but unlike Ben, she weaponizes her defiance as a strength. Moreover, she doesn’t resign herself to hostile cynicism.
In keeping with the lead character’s discontent, Park’s debut ends ambiguously. Lacking a neat resolution, Shortcomings wonders where someone can go if they’ve hit rock bottom. The logical direction is up. But after a lifetime of punching down on yourself and others, the film is sensible enough to understand that it takes time and self-reflection to rebuild. Like Ben, the narrative ends in a hopeful mess, uncertain and stranded but ripe with feeling and heart.
