Always Be My Maybe

After seeing Crazy Rich Asians, part of me worried that Hollywood would take the wrong lesson from its success.  I was afraid that instead of learning Asian leads are not a burden at the box office, they would focus on the much narrower idea that people are craving romantic comedies about Asian couples.  Always Be My Maybe makes me think I was right. Despite feeling like an also ran to a much better movie, Always Be My Maybe is still an OK film. It reminded me of A Lot Like Love.  It’s generally fun, it has its endearing moments, but it’s ultimately nothing special.

Where Always Be My Maybe shines is in the development of its main characters.  The movie begins by showing them as kids, establishing the tightness of their relationship as friends, and how the awkward years of high school prevented their feelings for each other from ever blossoming into something more.  On top of that, they are both given their share of youthful pain, with feelings of parental abandonment for one and personal tragedy for the other. These opening scenes really work and put you in their corners, emotionally, right away.  The strong character work continues as the movie progresses. Ali Wong’s character is enjoyable as the central figure of the piece, and I was quickly invested in her struggles: the challenges of being a celebrity chef, her toxic relationship with her manipulative agent/boyfriend, and her reemerging feelings for Randall Park’s character after their semi-orchestrated chance encounter.  Randall Park’s character, meanwhile, is a compelling look at someone drifting through life without plan or purpose, totally fitting for someone suffering from depression and still grieving a loss.

Where the movie falls apart somewhat is when you put the two of them together.  As their adult selves, I never really bought that they had all of the history that the brilliant opening of the film implied.  I never got that chemistry. This made big portions of the movie fall flat. The best scene in the movie is the double date, where Park brings his ditzy, hippie girlfriend and Wong brings Keanu Reeves.  There are tons of opportunities for comedy in this setup, like the pretentiousness of the setting, how out of place Park and his girlfriend dress and act, and especially Keanu Reeves’ scene stealing performance playing an asshole version of himself.  The following scene carries this foursome forward to a hotel room in order to create situations where the two main characters must confront how they feel about each other. Once we have moved from gags to emotional baggage, suddenly the same setup doesn’t work at all.  I think this contrast is emblematic of the movie’s main weakness: I’m not buying the two leads as childhood sweethearts.

The transition from the second to the third act was also a little strange.  Romantic comedies come in two flavors: A) ones where they keep getting in their own way until they figure out they like each other, and B) ones where they like each other, there’s a problem, they break up, then they fix the problem and get back together.  This movie tries to be both and is the worse for it. By the end of the second act the story is approaching the end of version A, only to pivot and end on version B. This is a particularly strange choice because of how it changes the focus of the story. Park’s character is the one who realizes he needs to change to fix their relationship, which suddenly puts him in the role of protagonist, while Wong’s character, who had been the protagonist, is sidelined to make room for Park’s transformation.  I also couldn’t help but notice that this part of the movie might as well have been lifted directly from Notting Hill, with its interest in the challenges of nobodies dating celebrities, complete with someone rushing to an event to give a speech in front of the press confessing love and commitment. I would have much rather they went with just version A, giving it more room to develop and breathe, with sufficient time for the side characters to be characters and for themes that were hinted at to be more fully realized: especially Wong and her changing relationship with food and family over the course of the movie.

Always Be My Maybe is a fun but flawed movie.  It has some really great ideas, but they aren’t given enough room on the page.  It has some solid acting, but not enough chemistry between its leads. It had the potential to be more than a cliche romantic comedy, but it needed to fix its final act.  Better than Employee of the Month, worse than When Harry Met Sally, pretty good by the current standard of Netflix originals.

Would Recommend: If you are unbothered by the cliches of romantic comedies as long as the fundamentals of the film are solid.

Would Not Recommend: If you need the sexual tension between your leads to be at Out of Sight levels of intensity.