Chang Can Dunk: A worthy lay-up

Chang Can Dunk (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG, for mild profanity

Available via: Disney+

By Derrick Bang

Being a teenager was hard enough, back in the day. Foolishly rash or lamentable behavior was seen only by a gaggle of kids in the school corridor, or perhaps everybody in a single classroom.

 

In this social media era, the entire world becomes witness. How’s that for pressure?

 

Foolish, foolish boy: Bad enough that Chang (Bloom Li, foreground right) makes a rash
bet with school basketball nemesis Matt (Chase Liefeld) ... but he does it in front of
dozens of other kids, all of whom immediately turn the moment viral.

Writer/director Jingyi Shao makes an impressive feature debut with Chang Can Dunk, an engaging coming-of-maturity saga that focuses on the title character, sensitively played by Bloom Li. He’s a 16-year-old member of his high school marching band, who allows himself to be goaded into an impossible challenge.

Shao obviously remembers his own teen years; this saga of teenage angst, peer pressure, popularity and “fitting in” is equal parts motivating, aw-shucks endearing and wincingly embarrassing.

 

Band members have been branded high school nerds ever since their uniforms became de rigueur, and that hasn’t changed in the 21st century. Chang’s social circle therefore is quite small, limited primarily to best friend and fellow drummer Bo (Ben Wang).

 

The story begins on the first day of Chang’s sophomore year, which he has spent the entire summer envisioning will be far superior to the one before. He’s desperate to be liked, and considered cool; to that end, he has made himself over with a new haircut and wardrobe.

 

Bo, comfortable in his own skin, is puzzled by this transformation. He couldn’t care less if he’s viewed as a dork; he’s clearly playing the long game (and likely will wind up CEO of the company that employs some of his condescending school mates).

 

Besides which, and much to Chang’s disappointment, it quickly becomes obvious that he’s still viewed the same as before.

 

Matters are worsened when a new student, Kristy (Zoe Renee), joins the band’s drum unit. Chang’s crush is instantaneous, and the feeling initially seems mutual … until Kristy also is noticed and pursued by Matt (Chase Liefeld), the high school basketball star. Wanting to be admired for the same reason, Chang rashly bets that he can dunk a basketball by Homecoming, 11 weeks away.

 

Chang, it should be mentioned, is 5-foot-8.

 

Maze Runner — The Scorch Trials: A barren wasteland

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2015) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG-13, for profanity and relentless action violence
By Derrick Bang 

As was the case with last year’s opening entry in this big-screen franchise, this sequel looks great — the special effects are quite impressive — and the acting is solid.

But the storyline remains bonkers-stupid and utterly impenetrable. If last year’s cliff-hanging Maze Runner left us with far more questions than answers, this second installment doesn’t even try to make sense. It’s as if scripter T.S. Nowlin abandoned any effort to parse James Dasher’s complicated source novel, and chose instead to fabricate one superficial chase sequence after another.

Things seem mighty bad, folks ... then again, maybe our heroes should simply stop looking
over the next ridge. Try as he might, Thomas (Dylan O'Briend, second from left) can't stop
leading his friends ‚ from left, Minho (Ki Hong Lee), Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster),
Frypan (Dexter Darden) and Teresa (Kaya Scodelario) from one crisis to another.

When our primary protagonist Thomas insists, at one point, that he’s tired of running, I cheerfully agreed: I’m tired of watching him run.

Him and everybody else in this preposterous, kitchen-sink excuse for a sci-fi thriller.

We’d ordinarily be inclined to blame Dasher, since his book logically serves as the source material. But Nowlin’s screenplay bears scant resemblance to Dasher’s novel, perhaps because the filmmakers are trying to condense a five-book (thus far) series into a more compact trilogy. Which would have been a reasonable idea, if Nowlin had the slightest talent for narrative, plot structure or dialogue.

Yep: This is one of those movies with eye-rolling, melodramatically laughable one-liners, invariably delivered with utter sincerity. The cast isn’t at fault; everybody does their best ... but not even seasoned Shakespeareans could wring emotional honesty from these verbal clunkers.

Such dialogue also frequently anticipates moronic behavior. “They’re never gonna stop chasing us,” our heroes lament, having narrowly escaped a massive land- and air-based search party. So what do they do next? They take a long walk across a wholly exposed desert landscape, where — based on what happened just a few scenes earlier — they’d clearly be spotted and captured.

But no: Apparently the bad guys decided not to look that day.

On top of which — and this is Dasher’s fault — I still can’t get beyond his internal technological inconsistencies. Consider the engineering ingenuity and sheer brute manpower that would have been required to build, maintain and operate the massive maze that initially trapped our young heroes. Now ask yourself whether such structures could have been fabricated so quickly — because we now know there were numerous mazes — given the timeline of events as established via maddeningly brief flashbacks.

And, more crucially, to what purpose, precisely? Two films in, and we’ve still no clue as to the original maze’s intent.

On top of which, we’re once again forced to accept a truly dismal picture of human nature under stress: a degree of “civilized” behavior so barbaric, so abhorrent, that it frankly defies description. That’s not merely sad; it’s also loathsome.