Shortcomings: Well titled

Shortcomings (2023) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity, sexual candor and brief nudity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

If this film’s depiction of millennial relationships reflects reality, I fear for the future of the human race.

 

They’ll never stop navel gazing long enough to procreate.

 

Ben (Justin H. Min) and best friend Alice (Sherry Cola) try to remain unobtrusive while
spying on a mutual acquaintance.

On the other hand, if director Randall Park’s modest little indie is intended to be a comedy, it’s more irritating than amusing.

Adrian Tomine’s script, adapted from his 2007 graphic novel of the same title, focuses on Ben (Justin H. Min), a Berkeley-based, thirtysomething Asian-American plagued by life and career uncertainty. He hopes to become a filmmaker, but that isn’t going anywhere; he earns spending money by managing the Berkeley Arts Cinema, an indie movie theater with more staff than patrons.

 

In a word, Ben is a jerk: self-absorbed, condescending and stridently arrogant.

 

He lives with longtime girlfriend Miko (Ally Maki) in a nice apartment funded by her parents; she works for a local Asian American film festival. They squabble a lot, in part because of his roving eye and obsession with blonde women (“white girls,” as Miko complains). Her annoyance is reasonable, but their arguments — about that, and a variety of nit-picky nothings — always devolve into second-guessing, defensive self-justification and needlessly philosophical asides.

 

Frankly, they’re both tiresome.

 

Ben fills much of his down time by watching Criterion Collection DVDs and hanging out with best friend Alice (Sherry Cola), a queer grad student who loves hooking up but seems unable to make a relationship last. Even so, she’s quite happy with her own self: at ease in a way that Ben couldn’t even imagine.

 

Alice also gets the film’s best lines, which Cola delivers with aplomb. My favorite: “Just because I’m a hypocrite, doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

 

Although clearly unhappy and dissatisfied, Ben seems incapable of change. It’s forced upon him abruptly, when Miko accepts an internship in New York. She practically vanishes overnight, while magnanimously allowing him to continue living in their apartment. (One wonders what her parents think of that.)

 

Suddenly “free,” Ben now is in a position to explore what he thinks he wants … starting with Autumn (Tavi Gevinson), the blonde recently hired to work at his movie theater. She’s a performance artist, although that latter word must be taken with a grain of salt; her notion of “art” is eye-rollingly outré.

 

Later to come: the bisexual Sasha (Debby Ryan), currently between relationships.

Toy Story 4: Shopworn

Toy Story 4 (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated G, despite some scary sequences
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.21.19

The familiar faces are as welcome as longtime friends; the new characters are both adorable and — in some cases — shiveringly disturbing; the dialog remains witty and funny; the incidental encounters are amusing, clever and well-paced; the voice talent is as sharp as ever.

Bo Peep, aware of the dangers awaiting those who unwisely venture into the antique
store's main aisles, carefully leads her friends — Buzz Lightyear, Woody, Bunny, Ducky
and (on her shoulder) Giggle McDimples — behind dusty cabinets, as they try to rescue
a captured comrade.

But the driving plotline for Toy Story 4 — arguably, the reason for the film’s existence — isn’t nearly as satisfying as those of its predecessors. It feels contrived, rather than organic. The whole remains less than the sum of its well-crafted parts.

One can’t help feeling that this is a case of Slinky Dog’s tail wagging the rest of its body: a film dictated more by crass commerce than artistic justification.

2010’s Toy Story 3 gave the franchise a warm sense of closure, with now-grown Andy passing his beloved plaything companions to preschool-age Bonnie. As we’ve constantly been reminded, a toy’s noblest endeavor is to bring comfort and enchantment to an imaginative child: a mission that cannot be accomplished if tucked into a box that gets stored in an attic, like Puff the Magic Dragon sadly slipping into his cave.

Toy Story 4 similarly concludes with a different sort of torch-passing, which — depending on one’s emotional involvement with these characters — will prompt tears, bewilderment, snorts of displeasure, or a feeling of outright betrayal.

Full disclosure: I don’t approve of what scripters Andrew Stanton and Stephany Folsom — working from a story by eight (!) credited writers, including John Lasseter and Rashida Jones — have wrought.

But that comes much later.

The film begins with a prologue dating back to Andy’s era, which explains why Bo Peep (voiced by Annie Potts) was MIA in Toy Story 3. She, her three sheep — Billy, Goat and Gruff — and matching lamp were tumbled into a box with other items to be donated elsewhere, much to the dismay of Woody (Tom Hanks). Turns out he’s long nurtured a crush for Bo Peep, likely to the surprise of those who figured he and feisty Jessie (Joan Cusack) were an unspoken item.

Back in the present day, Woody is enduring insult on top of injury, since little Bonnie prefers to pin his sheriff’s badge on Jessie. Woody, in turn, has been relegated to the back reaches of a closet laden with other neglected toys: among them Melephant Brooks (Mel Brooks), Carl Reineroceros (Carl Reiner) and Chairol Burnett (Carol Burnett).

That’s a cute bit of stunt casting, but their appearances are so brief, you’ll scarcely notice.