Shortcomings

Randall Park's feature directorial debut, based on the graphic novel by Adrian Tomine, is a bitingly funny and insightful look at Asian-American romance and cultural challenges.

At the beginning of “Shortcomings,” acerbic wannabe filmmaker/Japanese-American Ben emerges from a screening at an Asian film festival not liking what he just saw. It’s one of those superficial flicks about upwardly mobile Asian-Americans overcoming cultural barriers in the U.S. to find wealth and happiness. Everybody else in the audience loved it.

“I know it’s a little glossy… but it’s ours!,” one enthusiast gushes.

Ben, played by Justin H. Min, argues with his girlfriend, Miko (Ally Maki) on the walk home to their place in Berkeley. He thinks Asian-Americans should make complex, challenging films rather than assimilating with bland American romcoms and the like. She acknowledges this type of filmmaking isn’t very ambitious, but audiences enjoy seeing themselves reflected onscreen.

Director Randall Park, making his feature film directorial debut, doesn’t come right out and blast movies like “Crazy Rich Asians,” but he might as well have. “Shortcomings,” adapted for the screen by Adrian Tomine from his own graphic novel, is both the middle finger and antidote to those other movies.

It’s a bitingly funny movie but also very observant and contains piercing insights on what it’s like to be a young Asian-American trying to find love and happiness in 2023 America.

Ben is our ‘70s Woody Allen-esque romantic antihero, both charming and deeply off-putting. He has a way of pushing people away with passive-aggressive insults while treating it all as a big joke, then feigning bewilderment when they actually get P.O.’d.

Miko isn’t really his most important relationship in the movie. It’s clear she and Ben are on the way out with each other and neither wants to admit it. Early on she accepts an internship with another Asian-American film fest in New York City and moves there.

His main friendship is with Alice (Sherry Cola), an equally acerbic Korean-American graduate student who still hasn’t told her conservative family she’s gay. She pops in and out of relationships with other women like changing shoes, relishing her status as a fabulous, independent woman who doesn’t need anybody. During one conversation Alice tells Ben he’s boring, and departs to go flirt with the cute waitress.

Ben tries to bide his time during his semi-breakup with Miko by dating some other women. One of the running themes is that he’s attracted to white women, especially blonde Barbie types, something all his friends josh him about. Meanwhile, Ben thinks any white guys attracted to “our women” are Asian festishists.

He works as the manager of the Berkeley Arts Cinema, a dilapidated, barely functioning theater for the kind of movies he likes. He begins a flirtation with Autumn (Tavi Gevinson), the new ticket seller, who also has some interesting nighttime activities as a performance artist.

Alice takes him to a party to meet girls, finally admitting that it’s a “gay thing,” though she declines to use that description. “Just because I’m a hypocrite doesn’t mean I’m wrong,” she says, just one of many zippy one-liners Alice gets. There Ben meets Sasha (Debby Ryan), who’s bisexual and a little more down to earth.

Of course, Ben being Ben, he has a way of elbowing everyone out of his life with his depressive moods and caustic humor. Except Alice — but then she decamps to the Big Apple, too, and events will lead Ben there so he can have his final denouement with Miko and figure stuff out about himself.

Both Min and Cola give star-making turns, their characters being bright, self-deluded, occasionally awful people who at least seem self-aware about it. Park shows a skilled hand as a storyteller, keeping the characterization at the front of the stage and letting what plot there is service the people rather than the other way around.

If this were one of those cheap Asian-American pop movies, Ben would stumble into the perfect girl, get his act together and write a screenplay that kick-starts his filmmaking career. But he’s the sort of guy who wants to be the next Eric Rohmer — look him up — so things aren’t going to work out that way.

“Shortcomings” is the kind of movie that makes you laugh and then leaves you wincing — not because of anything terrible, but because the un-glossy truth often hurts.