Shortcomings - Movie Review

The Movie: Shortcomings

The Director: Randall Park

The Cast: Justin H. Min, Sherry Cola, Ally Maki, Debby Ryan, Tavi Gevinson, Sonoya Mizuno, Jacob Batalon, Timothy Simons

The Story: A trio of young Bay Area urbanites--Ben Tanaka, Miko Hayashi, and Alice Kim--as they navigate a range of interpersonal relationships, traversing the country in search of the ideal connection.

The Review:

After watching how amazing Sherry Cola was in Joy Ride, I was excited to see her in what looked like a decidedly different type of movie from that crazy, well...joy ride of a film. Randall Park making his debut as a director also piqued my interest so I decided to give the movie a shot because why not. While the movie itself didn't do a whole lot for me, I really enjoyed Cola's performance, I think she's seriously an emerging talent within the Hollywood landscape after rising through the ranks of stand up comedians over the last several years.

The thing that killed this movie for me is that the lead character Ben, admirably played by Justin H. Min, just isnt interesting at all and in fact, Ben is quite an annoying ass hole. While this is mostly intentional, I thought his personality might be just the beginning of an arc that would slowly see him show more compassion and empathy and happiness yet there he was almost all the way to the end still being the same narrow minded person that you really don't want to root for in any way. Ben does get taught some valuable life lessons by the time the credits begin to roll although I'm doubtful they will have any sort of longevity for him which is just sad.

I don't know, maybe I just missed the point of this one and I'm sure there will be people that say the story wasn't meant for me. It happens and I'm ok with that so hopefully other people will see something in Ben and in the story that wasn't there for me. Ally Maki delivers a solid performance but she doesn't really have enough to do so I felt like she was kind of wasted. Again, the real star of the movie and the reason it's worth watching is for Sherry Cola as she keeps things bubbly and refreshing every time she's on screen. Yes, I had to throw those puns in. I've got nothing else here to roll with.

The Verdict:

Shortcomings falls short of what I was hoping the movie would be. A valiant debut effort by Randall Park and solid work from the cast just wasn't enough to keep me interested or invested in the characters or the story being told.