Always Be My Maybe: A New Twist on a Classic

With the success of Crazy Rich Asians, Hollywood cottoned on to the fact that people are cool with watching Asian people fall in love. So the brilliant Ali Wong and Randall Park got together with screenwriter Michael Golamco and wrote Always Be My Maybe, a classic romcom with an Asian-American twist. It's a typical love story, but there's nothing typical about the characters involved.

Wong and Park play Sasha and Marcus, childhood best friends who grew up in San Francisco as next-door neighbors. They briefly got together as teenagers but circumstances intervened and their paths diverged. When they meet fifteen years later, Sasha is a famous celebrity chef (classic romcom occupation), while Marcus is still living with his dad and helping out in the family's HVAC repair business. He also performs in a local band, Hello Peril, which is your chance to watch an Asian man rap some hilarious songs. There may be a vast socioeconomic divide between them now, but they quickly fall back into their friendship, and eventually, something more.

There's no need to go into details - it's a short and sweet romantic comedy, you know how it will end. But how you get to that ending is what makes this movie so enjoyable. If you haven't heard already, there's a Keanu Reeves cameo, and believe me, you cannot predict what he gets up to. If you've seen Wong's brilliant Netflix specials, Baby Cobra and Hard-Knock Wife, you know what she brings to the table, but Sasha is a much more toned-down romcom-appropriate heroine than Wong's stand-up persona. Randall Park is the perfect match for her, and together, they bicker and banter with zippy screwball energy.

This movie is very Asian in a delightfully understated way. It's the little flourishes, like when Sasha takes her shoes off at the door when she comes home from school, or the joke about how on earth Marcus's Asian girlfriend is able to sport dreadlocks. Of course, like with Crazy Rich Asians, there are plenty of gratuitous shots of delicious food that will make your mouth water. But my favorite part of this movie is when it subverts stereotypes and just lets its characters be normal human beings who aren't behaving in the "typically Asian" way. For that, my absolute favorite character would be Marcus's dad, Harry, played by the marvelous James Saito. He is the most loving character in this movie, open with his feelings, supportive of his son, never shaming him, giving him the right advice when he needs it. We need to see more dads like this on screen, Asian or otherwise.

Always Be My Maybe is a perfect movie for a Netflix night in, and is yet another successful entry into the Asian American film canon. I had no idea Ali Wong could act, but I sure hope I see her on more shows or movies now, and I definitely want to see Randall Park play the charming leading man much more often. Also, let James Saito star in his own romcom, because I would watch the hell out of that. Netflix, get on it.