Always Be My Maybe: No doubts here!

Always Be My Maybe (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for sexual candor, drug use and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.24.20

Much the way the Hallmark Channel has become (in)famous for its insufferably sweet Christmas movies, Netflix has been unleashing a steady supply of original romantic comedies.

When Marcus (Emerson Min) and Sasha (Miya Cech) treat themselves to a night on the
town, of course they have to participate in a cute photo booth session.

Many fall into the so-so category; some are positively dire. (I strongly caution against Love Wedding Repeat, which debuted a few weeks ago.)

Always Be My Maybe, on the other hand, is a cut above.

The premise and execution may be familiar, but the snarky script and sharp acting — with solid, character-rich performances even by minor players — makes this a thoroughly scrumptious experience. It’s a dream project by co-writers Ali Wong and Randall Park, both accomplished actors and comedians, who wanted to produce their own version of When Harry Met Sally…

With solid assistance from co-scripter Michael Golamco and director Nahnatchka Khan — a noteworthy feature film debut — Wong and Park succeeded.

Aside from the engaging core story, their film is laden with nonstop asides, retorts and one-liners — all delivered with impeccable comic timing — and droll bits of visual business, some so subtle that you’ll have to watch a second time, just to catch them all (a not-at-all painful experience). This may be a modest endeavor, but it’s quite entertaining.

It’s also a hilarious — and dead-on accurate — send-up of pretentious foodies, and the vacuous celebrity culture.

But that comes later. We meet Sasha and Marcus — initially played engagingly by Miya Cech and Emerson Min — as 12-year-old neighbors in a friendly San Francisco neighborhood. She’s a latchkey sole child of parents forever busy elsewhere: essentially an orphan. 

She therefore spends considerable time next door with the traditional family that Marcus is lucky enough to possess; he and parents Harry (James Saito) and Judy (Susan Park) dote on each other, and Sasha becomes a grateful surrogate daughter.

Khan and her scripters breeze through the next few years in montage, hitting all the usual “young love” cute points. Because, clearly, they’re meant for each other … although each is too nervous — shy, uncertain, whatever — to acknowledge or act upon the bond.

Until, at the verge of adulthood — now played by Wong and Park — they do.

As often is the case with childhood best friends, sex ruins everything.

Flash-forward to the present day. Sasha has become a world-famous celebrity chef engaged to equally famous restaurateur Brandon Choi (Daniel Dae Kim); they have just opened a posh Los Angeles establishment dubbed “Knives + Mercy,” with a menu catering to “non-denominational modern Vietnamese fusion.” Their clothes, apartment and attitude are ludicrously ostentatious and pompous; production designer Richard Toyon and costume designer Leesa Evans obviously had a lot of fun with the exaggeration.

(That said, Sasha’s endlessly affected glasses — each pair worse than the last — don’t do a thing for her. I couldn’t tell if that was deliberate.)

Marcus, at the other end of the success spectrum, still lives at home and partners with his father in a heating and A/C installation and service business. Marcus exercises his artistic side as lead singer and songwriter in a band dubbed Hello Peril, alongside friends Tony (Karan Soni), Quasar (Lyrics Born) and Ginger (Charlyne Yi). They’re popular in the neighborhood, but Marcus has long resisted Tony’s strong suggestion that they try for larger venues.

In a word, Marcus is stuck. (We know why, even if he doesn’t.)

Sasha returns to San Francisco to oversee the construction and opening of yet another chi-chi restaurant. Naturally, in the tradition of so many rom-coms, Marcus and his father wind up installing the heating and A/C in the lavish home she has just rented.

Just as naturally, after their 16-year separation, the reunion is prickly (at best).

We know where this is heading. Eventually. But to borrow some of the Zen philosophy that this film frequently mocks, the journey is far more meaningful than the destination. And this particular journey is delightful.

Wong nails the haughty, control-freak, limelight-loving aristocrat that Sasha has become, while at the same time allowing faint glimpses of the far kinder and gentler adolescent who once delighted in helping Marcus’ mother prepare a meal. Everything else about this adult Sasha is dismissive, condescending and just plain rude. (Yes, she checks her phone all the time.) One cannot imagine spending 15 minutes with her.

Park’s Marcus is laid-back and quietly contemptuous of poseurs and affectations; to him, a meal should be about enjoying food and having one’s appetite satisfied, not ogling mostly empty plates with portions that wouldn’t satisfy a sparrow. Park’s slow takes, double takes and sidelong glances are impeccably timed, and Marcus has plenty of excuses to use them, given how frequently Sasha says and does stuff that he simply cannot fathom.

And yet — this is important — Marcus is just as judgmental, and wrong, and occasionally rude, in his blunt assessments of Sasha’s behavior.

(Right: They’re still perfect for each other. But even further from recognizing as much.)

The supporting cast is solid, starting with Michelle Buteau’s very pregnant Veronica, Sasha’s best friend and capable personal assistant. Despite this subordinate working relationship, Veronica isn’t afraid to call Sasha out when necessary, which Buteau does with sassy aplomb.

Vivian Bang is a stitch as Marcus’ girlfriend Jenny, an Asian American whose litany of affectations includes dreadlocks. Her notion of culinary skill is chunks of Vienna sausage atop packaged noodles, smothered in conflicting sauces: a meal she insists on sharing with Sasha.

But the prize goes to Keanu Reeves, drop-dead hilarious as himself, in a send-up that nails, exploits, amplifies and shreds his on- and off-camera selves. He’s introduced during a $1,600 dinner with Sasha, Marcus and Jenny, at a minimalist, seriously absurd restaurant populated by unbearably trendy types wearing “thousand-dollar T-shirts that look like they were stolen off the homeless.”

This sequence should — I dearly hope — be the first nail in the can’t-happen-soon-enough coffin of such haute couture nonsense.

On a more serious note, Saito’s Harry is warm, perceptive and patient: absolutely the father we all wish for. His telling moment comes during a candid, carpe diem chat with Marcus; Saito nails it with a refreshing absence of flash.

In tiny sidebar roles, Casey Wilson is fun as the interior decorator who hopes to handle Sasha’s new San Francisco establishment; Karen Holness is nicely understated as a Diana Ross impersonator who catches Harry’s eye.

Editor Lee Haxall’s scene-shifting cross-wipes are a nice touch, and Tim Suhrstedt’s cinematography makes portions of San Francisco even more quaint and colorful than they already are.

This film’s nicest touch — clearly a careful attention to detail by Khan, Wong, Park and Golamco — is that these characters always feel next-door real, even when their behavior turns farcical, and their one-liners are too perfectly scripted. In short, we care about them.

And that’s the most important ingredient of a successful rom-com.