Taglines: The only constant in life is (he won’t) change.
Shortcomings movie storyline. Ben, a struggling filmmaker, lives in Berkeley, California, with his girlfriend, Miko, who works for a local Asian American film festival. When he’s not managing an arthouse movie theater as his day job, Ben spends his time obsessing over unavailable blonde women, watching Criterion Collection DVDs, and eating in diners with his best friend Alice, a queer grad student with a serial dating habit. When Miko moves to New York for an internship, Ben is left to his own devices, and begins to explore what he thinks he might want.
Shortcomings is a 2023 American comedy-drama film directed and produced by Randall Park (in his feature directorial debut), from a screenplay by Adrian Tomine, based upon his comic of the same name. It stars Justin H. Min, Sherry Cola, Ally Maki, Debby Ryan, Tavi Gevinson, Sonoya Mizuno, Jacob Batalon and Timothy Simons.
It had its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2023. In March 2023, Sony Pictures Classics acquired distribution rights to the film. It was released on August 4, 2023. The film opened on 404 screens and grossed $300,949 ($744 per screen average) its opening weekend. On its second week, the film dropped a steep 72.3%, resulting in a total box office of $557,496.
Film Review for Shortcomings
Ben (Justin H. Min) is a spectacular dickhead. He’s tactless, arrogant, selfish and mean. And in Randall Park’s directorial debut Shortcomings, Ben is about to become the main character of a film where he finds out that not everything always necessarily revolves around him.
A somewhat pretentious Japanese-American cinephile who works at a small indie cinema on its last legs in San Francisco, Ben’s long-term relationship with his girlfriend Miko (Ally Maki) effectively collapses when she announces she is moving to New York City for a career-making internship.
At first looking at it as a golden opportunity which allows him to pursue his undisguised sexual interest in white women, he soon has second thoughts and with the help of his best friend Alice (Sherry Cola) he decides to see what of his old life can be salvageable – and questions if it is even worth saving.
Adapted from regular New Yorker illustrator Adrian Tomine’s 2007 graphic novel of the same name, that Tomine also wrote the screenplay comes as little surprise; Shortcomings is alive with a kind of intimacy and sense of familiarity that feels like it could have only come from someone with a long, deep connection with the material. And it is this feeling of closeness that perhaps justifies why Ben can be himself with us – his own, true, shitty self.
Beginning with an undisguised parody of Crazy Rich Asians to which Ben has an emphatically negative reaction, Shortcomings wears its discourse on its sleeve. But what it lacks in subtext it makes up for in pure, dazzling energy; Shortcomings brings raw ‘90s indie romcom vibes to a contemporary story about race and sexuality (think Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Any More meets the animated series Mission Hill through a queer Asian lens and you start to get the vibe).
As Ben’s lesbian best friend, Cola’s hilarious Alice almost steals the show, and the on-screen energy between her and Min is very much where the film gains its upbeat propulsive dynamic. But it is, of course, Ben’s story, and as an objectively awful person it’s no small accomplishment that we care so much to join him on his journey.
Shortcomings (2023)
Directed by: Randall Park
Starring: Justin H. Min, Sherry Cola, Ally Maki, Tavi Gevinson, Debby Ryan, Sonoya Mizuno, Jacob Batalon, Timothy Simons, Theo Iyer, Nikhaar Kishnani, Amy Pham, Sheldon Best, Mike Cabellon
Screenplay by: Adrian Tomine
Production Design by: Bill Boes
Cinematography by: Santiago Gonzalez
Film Editing by: Robert Nassau
Costume Design by: Ava Yuriko Hama
Set Decoration by: Walter Perez
Art Direction by: Sally SangHee Bae
Music by: Gene Back
MPAA Rating: R for language throughout, sexual material and brief nudity.
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Classics
Release Date: January 21, 2023 (Sundance), August 4, 2023 (United States)
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