After spending the last few years focusing more on streaming with The Boys, Invincible, and the Pam & Tommy miniseries, my favourite modern film studio is back on the big screen. Yes, Point Grey Pictures, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s production company, who I have come to adore for their consistently fun releases and unrivalled knack for matching licensed music to film. On top of their long-awaited return (by me, at least), it also comes in the form of something else I haven’t seen much of over the last few years: A proper American-R-rated raunchy comedy. Y’know, the kind I used to bitch about fairly often because they kept stopping the film dead just so the actors could riff off of each other without actually furthering the plot? Good times.
Okay, being a bit snarky there, but I admit that there’s not as much reason to be so here. This works really damn well in that mode, partly because the main cast are both incredibly likeable and play well off of each other, and partly because the specifics hit that sweet spot of being shocking but not desperate in the attempt to shock. From the drug highs, to the sex highs, to what is easily the most impressive yet painful-by-proxy tattoo I have ever seen, there’s no real lulls to be found here, and I was able to get into the film’s rhythm pretty much from the first word spoken.
It helps that there’s an underlying point to the raunchiness, and one that doesn't just feel like a pretentious merkin failing to make the naughty bits look better. Like with Lolo (Sherry Cola) and her explicit approach to art, it’s less about sex as comedy and more about just trying to embrace sexuality while not taking it too seriously. There’s a large-scale sex sequence that takes place near the middle, and along with being pretty funny as such things go, it also shows some healthy variety. With Lolo, we get straight sex. With Audrey (Ashley Park), we get a thruple. With Kat (Stephanie Hsu), we get a pretty inventive use of… I guess you could count it as a toy, that results in a possibly-unintentional Futurama reference. And with Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), we get some appreciated non-binary ace representation with a breakdance battle, because you don’t need to ride to get the joy.
Not that this is all about sex, though. What it’s primarily focused on is cultural stereotypes concerning Asians of all territories, Americans, the status of being White, and just familial backgrounds and bondings overall. Writers Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao (both Family Guy veterans) take the piss out of everyone and everything in attendance, from traditional Chinese family structures and expectations, to suffix-American diaspora and their own strained connections to the homeland, to pop culture like K-pop and melodramatic wuxia serials. And yeah, there’s quite a bit of poking at stereotypical Whiteness, including one of my personal favourite clichés with country-club-rich white men playing squash. But honestly, the part I laughed at the most was when Todd (Alexander Hodge) said that he taught someone how to fuck a spider because “it’s an Australian thing”. Amazingly accurate as far as the distance between how comfortable we are with the wildlife, and how uncomfortable the rest of the world is at just the mention of it.
And it’s through that self-deprecating instinct that the film’s bigger points to do with the connections we make with others, and the expectations we put on ourselves, strike a serious chord. Director Adele Lim, making her debut after writing for Crazy Rich Asians, Raya And The Last Dragon, and, surprisingly, the dub for the emotionally devastating third season of Digimon: Digital Monsters, brings all that experience together to deliver a lot of tangible reality in how the film is presented. It brings up the emphasis on the collective within Asian communities less as a reason to put them before all else, as I’ve noticed in other media, but rather as a counterargument to only caring and fixating on oneself. Whether it’s IRL friends, fellow fans you meet online, family you’ve known your whole life, or even family you only just learnt about, the bonds we make are important because they’re an extension of ourselves. Our true selves, because sharing what really makes us tick with other people, and them actually getting it, is how you know that they’re the real deal.
I had an absolute blast with this one. Really damn funny, quite moving when it aims for it, and at just over an hour and a half in run time, there’s a thankful lack of dead air. Hell, even when they do stop for line-a-rama, the lines still work in context. This will likely come across as missing the point, seeing as this is primarily about Asian-American cultures and I’m from the land of lamingtons and goon bags, but this is the kind of multicultural examination that I love seeing crop up in Australian cinema. And I love this for basically the same reason: It’s a healthy expression of one’s own cultural patchwork, and a showing of why being proud of who you are while also being able to have a laugh at yourself is a good and often necessary duality.
Also, this might have a new contender for the best Point Grey musical moment yet. I’m not even going to hint at what it is, but suffice to say, it’s glorious.
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