Media Type : DVD | Rating : 5.5 out of 10 | Watched on : June 07^th, 2004

Released : March 1^st, 2004 | New & Used DVD Price : $17.99 & $6.00

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I heard about this movie in March of this year in an Asian American Cultural Awareness exposition. I saw this movie again at BlockBuster and decided to get it, along with The Debut. The movie, itself casting Asian Americans for a purpose, presents 6 students going through a period in their life where they are trying to combine their daily lives with the cultural stereotype that is expected from them by the society. The director wanted to target this movie at everyone, specially Asian Americans, as a symbol of what a cultural stereotype can do to people, specially young students. We see the story of Ben Manibag (Parry Shen), an intelligent student who is under pressure from others to be a good A-grade student and to excel at everything including basketball and SAT scores, thus earning him the title of an “overachiever.” He, however, is not entirely happy with his situation and wishes to add a bit more spice to his life. That is when everything goes in different directions; he meets new people, starts doing drugs, small crimes to make more money, and finally the movie ends in a small surprising twist which left me wondering if I should change the dvd side to continue watching the movie. There are many signs of typical stereotypes within the movie that all the main characters in the movies pass through.

It is like the Asian-American version of Ocean’s Eleven, only this time, it is about cultural pressure at a high school and we have 6 people instead of eleven, with each person having their own personality [the boyfriend, the beauty, the overachiever, the mastermind, the clown, and the muscle]. We are shown the different stages Ben passes, from doing good in school to moving to basketball to thinking he is being used as a cultural stereotype icon to doing drugs to petty theft to the final ending [not for him, though] of the movie, where yet another stage for Ben starts, though with much awareness that he does not know what will happen next. All of these stages take time to be approached, but once they are on the horizon, they pass by faster than you can think of the fast forward button. Some of the characters are shown in a greater detail than others, which maybe an off-balance for some people. Many times, there are many things unfinished or unexplained, like a porno video situation where Ben realizes something, yet we do not know why the topic was not brought up again in the entire movie when the friend in question came into the spot light many times.

The movie falls short, in my opinion, in places and situations where the director could have gone in a bit deeper to show what he really wanted to show. Instead, there are many scenes where you get the feeling that the movie wants to quickly make you aware of a particular stereotype or an idea and then quickly move on to other things. The very last three minutes of the ending itself leave you a bit puzzled, as you would have imagined that the story is not finished yet, but the closing dialogue by Ben is supposed to end the story, which, in my opinion, was not sufficient enough to be an ending. There are , however, some very interesting elements in the movie which may again off-set these shortcomings, such as a scene where Ben and his friends beat the crap out of a guy of another group at a party and are portrayed as being big shots. However, within a few moments, you see a car driving up to their car, with real gangsters in the car with semiautomatic, ready to shoot Ben and his friends if they show any attitude. Of course, one of Ben’s friends is already throwing up, scared to death because of beating up another kid and thinking his own father is going to beat the crap out of him also. At that moment you find out the normal scared side of Ben and his friends, coming to a conclusion that they are not as bad as they want to be, and they cannot be, given their current situations and characters. Even though the movie has been criticized to be based on an actual murder, the director must have been proud to have this movie at least be the Official Selection at the Sundance Film Festival [I heard from an insider that the movie was aiming to bring in 4 million at least in overall sales in the opening weeks and couldn't, though it did come a bit close]. The director is still trying his hand at movies, and is doing a good job so far [4 movies under his belt, including this one and one probably coming out this year]. Even though this should have made more money, I think the already interesting story could have been told in a better way. Overall, it is a good watch to get an idea of how cultural stereotypes from all ends come to affect a person, and what results one could expect. This is something you can watch while waiting for a friend to go to another movie or while passing time, as you do not need much focus to understand what is going on and what the director is trying to portray in many different opening scenes in the movie.