The manic pixie dream girl trope meets its male equivalent in ‘Shortcomings,’ Randall Park’s directorial debut

If you told Ben (Justin H. Min) to grow up, I imagine he'd respond with an unrelenting string of deeply personal insults kept locked and loaded in the back of his mind since the day he met you. Of course he's grown up. Why would you even suggest otherwise? He works in the film industry (which would be nothing without movie theater managers, no matter how low the audience turnout is lately). He watches films from the Criterion Collection (on DVD, presumably because they're more affordable than Blu-rays — God forbid 4K discs). He has his own apartment (that he rents from his girlfriend's dad). He even has a college education (at least in part — he walked away from academia a couple years shy of completion). To Ben, it doesn't get more grown-up than that. But what he doesn't understand is that there's a difference between growing up and maturing.

For people like Ben, there's a chasm that divides approaching 30 and behaving like it. More often than not, such arrested development can't be escaped until they hit rock bottom.

When we meet Ben at the start of Randall Park's feature directorial debut, Shortcomings, he's in freefall, even if he doesn't realize it yet. His long-term relationship with Miko (Ally Maki) is at a breaking point. Ticket sales have slowed to a crawl. Best friend Alice (Sherry Cola) is the only real constant in his life, and even she seems to be itching for some substantial change that isn't coming. Ben would rather things stay as they've always been: Wake up, work, watch a movie or two, sleep, repeat. When did everyone get so ambitious all of a sudden? And why does that feel so personal to Ben? With any luck, he can dig his heels in hard enough for the three of them and keep everybody where he wants them.

More than two decades after the birth of the mumblecore subgenre, the Late 20s Asshole Manchild is as common a trope in American independent cinema as the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. That's exactly what Ben is, to be clear: a Late 20s Asshole Manchild. Shortcomings is not beating these accusations, I'm afraid — no matter how fresh screenwriter Adrian Tomine's take on this particular archetype is.

Adapting a comic book series he penned between 2004 and 2007, Tomine adeptly updates his story of an Asian-American male living in the mid-aughts for the 2020s. Contemporary activities such as social media stalking and debating identity politics play an intrinsic role, and it all feels quite natural — a testament to both the authenticity of the source material and the skill of the writer.

The part of Ben might as well be on the opposite pole from Min's exceptional turn as the titular android in Kogonada's After Yang (2021), but he excels just the same. Viewers spend a lot of time with this guy, and on paper, he doesn't seem like the best company. Sarcastic, stalled, selfish, stunted, shameless ... it's hard work making the unlikable come off as tolerable (let alone actually likable), but Min is bravely up for the challenge.

Same goes for Cola, Maki, and supporting players Tavi Gevinson and Debby Ryan: four somewhat underdeveloped female foils that would threaten to teeter over into one-note territory under less-capable guidance from the talent. Each exists to personify a different path Ben could follow at this crossroads in his life, not so much to embody a three-dimensional lead. (A glaring shortcoming in a film that, to be fair, promises such flaws in the title.)

For what the film lacks in nuanced characterization, it more or less makes up for with a strong overall voice. Shortcomings wields a clever blend of intelligence and bitterness throughout, taking jabs at everything from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Crazy Rich Asians to white guys a little too into martial arts. There's a self-awareness to the whole thing, but it's never that showy, winking, Ryan Reynolds-y brand of meta humor better suited for a cell phone commercial. (You know the kind. So smug in its acknowledgment of the fact that you're watching an ad.) Rather, Shortcomings utilizes its perceptiveness to position the project within a larger conversation about Asian American filmmaking. Instead of patting itself on the back for simply existing, it takes a hard look in the mirror — recognizing how far Asian filmmakers have come in America, but addressing how far they've yet to go to reach representational parity.

The film is the directorial debut of Randall Park, and among this new generation of increasingly common actors-turned-directors (see also: Patrick Wilson, Jordan Peele, Olivia Wilde, Bradley Cooper, Greta Gerwig, Regina King, Sarah Polley, John Krasinski, Elizabeth Banks, et cetera), he has one of the most subtle approaches. This is not a weakness, to be clear. I never once had the feeling Shortcomings was doing too much — something that cannot be said for obnoxiously stylistic works from one or two of the aforementioned names. Instead of striving for distinguished auteur status, Park proves perfectly content disappearing into the director's chair and letting the actors and script do the heavy lifting. An admirable move, and one that nevertheless makes him a name worth looking out for on future credits. For a movie about a callow 20-something, Park's Shortcomings is remarkably grown.