92 min | R | August 4, 2023 | Sony Pictures Classics
Ben Tagawa runs a failing arthouse cinema in Berkeley and picks apart everyone in his life. His girlfriend leaves for New York and he takes it as permission to chase the white women he swears he never wanted. The movie knows he is the problem long before he does.
Ben Tagawa manages a failing arthouse cinema in Berkeley and treats everyone he loves as a target for his criticism. He picks at films, at strangers, at his girlfriend Miko, and at his own racial identity. When Miko leaves for an internship in New York, Ben treats the distance as license to pursue the white women he claims he never wanted. Randall Park’s film studies a man who mistakes his contempt for taste. Shortcomings is about the way a smart person uses cynicism to avoid ever risking anything real.
Justin H. Min plays Ben as funny and insufferable in the same breath. He delivers each cutting line with the confidence of someone who has never counted its cost. Sherry Cola plays Alice Lee, Ben’s lesbian best friend, with a looseness that exposes how rigid Ben has become. She gives the film its warmth and most of its honesty. Ally Maki plays Miko with a patience that curdles into clarity once she stops waiting for Ben to grow up. Debby Ryan and Sonoya Mizuno play the women Ben chases, and both make clear that Ben is the problem he keeps diagnosing in everyone else.
Randall Park directs his first feature with a restraint that suits the material. He lets scenes run in long takes and trusts the dialogue Adrian Tomine adapts from his own graphic novel. The camera stays close on faces during arguments and refuses to cut away from the discomfort. The film opens on a parody of a glossy Asian American blockbuster, then deflates that fantasy the moment Ben opens his mouth in the lobby. That contrast sets the terms for everything after it. The clean, unhurried framing keeps the comedy dry and the cruelty legible.
Shortcomings refuses to redeem its protagonist on schedule. Ben learns something, and the film is honest about how little and how late. The pleasure is in watching a man so certain of his own judgment lose every argument that matters. Park and Tomine build a comedy around someone who would rather be right than be happy. They have the discipline to let him stay that way.