A year ago we had an Irish film of a similar name with Olivia Colman. This couldn’t be much different. Directorial debut by Adele Lim who scripted Crazy Rich Asians this has much the same mood and involves a road trip to China and Korea by 4 female friends. Audrey (Ashley Park) is a hotshot lawyer who was adopted by white parents from China as a child. Now, she is returning for the first time for business. Lolo (Sherry Cola) is her childhood friend accompanying her. They will meet up with Kat (Stephanie Hsu) who is a star actress now in China and the fourth and incongruous member of the group is Deadeye (Sabrina Wu). In the rather far-fetched script Audrey has to prove her Chinese heritage to win a contract so she sets off to find her birth mother.
On a train they end up nearly getting busted for drugs, get rescued in the wilderness by a basketball team they then proceed to bed, Audrey gets fired, they pretend to be a K-Pop band and finally Audrey finds family of sorts in Korea. A final scene back in the USA shows how they move on from all this a year later.
What works here? It’s a pacy movie full of jokes, which are not all funny but do raise a laugh on many occasions. The actresses are natural comedians and it is a joy to watch the way they act. Parks surprised me with her versatility and Cola was a star in Shortcomings. Their energy is also vital to help us believe all the implausible plot twists such as becoming a K-Pop band called Brown Tuesday.
You may not be so keen on the scatological references, the pussy numbers (Cardi B and other musical influences are found here) and some of the Asian jokes seem more like a clichéd stand-up comedy routine than anything else. And of course it is good to see a comedy propelled by Asian women showing it can stand up against the best.
3 stars plus
passionfilm 