Carol Pennington

I was excited to see this movie. I adore Ali Wong and her standup comedy. I like Randall Park a lot. I'm a fan of 'Fresh Off The Boat' and I'm half Chinese. Believe me, I wanted to LOVE this movie. However, I noticed 40 minutes in, I was feeling unengaged and not caring very much whether the two lead characters ever got together. I appreciate what this movie appeared to be aiming for but I do not feel it was successful in its delivery. The film felt slow, dull and cliched. A lot of scenes felt stale and pointless. I expected to laugh a lot during this movie but I did not and the only time I felt genuinely amused was when Keanu Reeves showed up and that was because of the novelty of him playing a pretentious version of himself. I will try to watch this movie one more time to see if I feel differently and I hope I do! I still look forward to future offerings from Ali Wong and Randall Park but I am quite astonished at how much praise this movie is receiving and can't help wondering if we are simply just thrilled to have Asian representation on the big screen. I didn't feel there was genuine onscreen romantic chemistry between Wong and Park either. This movie left me feeling that perhaps Wong and Park could do with an education on screenwriting for feature films, not just television. As I say, I'll give it one more viewing to see if I'm more engaged second time around.