Netflix Nibbles: Definition Please & Old Enough!

Are you just blankly staring at your Netflix queue now that you've finished bingeing your way through Stranger Things? Well, I've got a great movie you could watch one afternoon or a Japanese TV show you could dole out to yourself in bite-size installments. Huzzah!

Definition Please: This movie was absolutely made for me. Written and directed by Sujata Day, she also stars as Monica Chowdhury, a Bengali-American woman who found brief fame as an eight-year-old when she won the Scripps National Spelling Bee, but has subsequently failed to live up to all that promise. Yeah, it will hit way too close to home for a lot of Indian-Americans who watch, but oh boy, it's such a funny and wonderful movie about family, identity, and finally doing what's right for you.

I would be hard-pressed to describe the tone of this film. It is very funny, but it also has a sub-plot on mental illness that gets very tense at times, and overall it exudes a slight melancholy. But then a scene will pop with this ridiculous Bengali song and Monica spelling out a word to describe a slow-motion moment she is currently experiencing (I was personally delighted when she called out one of my favorite words, callipygian) and you will chuckle. 

This movie is an incredibly well-realized story of what it's like to be a part of the South Asian diaspora in America. There is a whole scene that takes place in Patel Brothers that manages to feature an ode to Thums Up and every Indian family's love of mangos. There's a scene where Monica's mother is praying at the altar set up in her home, and when Monica shows up to pray, her mother asks if she has showered first. The soundtrack is a desi delight, and every reference feels like something that could only be relevant to those of us in the know. I have no idea how this film translates to a non-desi audience, but I found myself utterly charmed. It's the perfect watch for a lazy afternoon and you'll immediately text all your brown friends to watch it too. I know I did.

Old Enough!: You may have seen the SNL parody, but the show itself is a charm fest. Each episode is about ten minutes long and features a young Japanese child (and when I say young, I mean they are less than five-years-old, often two or three) running an errand for a parent. The errands are varied but usually involve doing some grocery shopping or retrieving/delivering some item that the parent "forgot" to bring to work with them that day. They are followed by camera people and seem blissfully unaware of them, except for the few times you get a kid who just starts pointing out all the cameras and the voiceover narrator gets nervous about how the gig is up. 

This show somehow manages to be both low stakes and extremely high stakes at the same time. These kids are so magical to watch - they are adulting hard core but also suddenly devolving into tears and confusion when things don't go to plan. There was one episode where a kid had bought some apples, but he was carrying so much stuff that he kept dropping the apples and they would roll down a hill. I'm 34, and if this happened to me, I would sit down in the middle of the road and cry, unlike this poor child who diligently kept running after his apples and retrieving them every time. 

This is such a fun show to watch when you need a quick distraction but be forewarned - you could get sucked in real quick. And also start contemplating buying some plane tickets to Japan. Seriously, you cannot go wrong so give it a whirl. And then join me on my quest for some onigiri and to eat all the Japanese food I can find.