Review: Didi

Image courtesy of Focus Features.

Sean Wang's debut feature, "Didi," follows most of the tried-and-true elements of the coming-of-age story, often leaning into the rambunctiousness and off-color behavior of teenage boys. But when the film's action centers its lens on the titular character's mother (Joan Chen), it becomes deeper and more meaningful.

Set in 2008 - a choice that is either random or a selection that means something to its director - the film follows Chris Wang (Isaac Wang), also known as "Wang Wang" to his friends or "Didi" to his mother, as he navigates the perils of young adulthood. His older sister, Vivian (Shirley Chen), is seen as an enemy until she eventually realizes how lonely he is and takes some compassion. 

Chen's mother figure is an aspiring artist who has more failures than successes and is seen by her son as clingy. Also living with the family is Nai Nai (Chang Li Hua), a grandmother who provides comic relief, but not so much for Didi's mother as she often reminds her that her son - that is, Chen's husband - is living in Taiwan to earn money for the family, while they live in California.

At school, Didi has a crush on a girl, Madi (Mahaela Park), who also seems to like him but slips in the occasionally racist remark - "you're pretty cute for an Asian boy." Didi's best friends are Farad (Raul Diad) and Jimmy (Aaron Chang), but their whole clique tries to pass themselves off with a white bro-ishness that teenage boys tend to adopt.

One of the film's running gags is how Didi tries to pass himself off as one thing or another, and then must rush to the internet for research - for example, he tells Madi that his favorite movie is the Mandy Moore weepy "A Walk to Remember" after seeing it listed on her Facebook page, and then is dismayed to learn it's a so-called "chick flick"; at another point, he pretends to be a skateboarder photographer to impress a group of older skaters and then has to find out the best angles for photographing the sport. Other lies passed off by Didi - he tells one group that he's only "half-Asian," which is a lie - merely come off as sad.

Some of the middle passages of the film - the obligatory drunken parties with older kids, the lying to impress girls or his friends, and the inevitably awkward moments that follow - tend to bog the picture down a little. But once the film begins to center on Didi's relationship with his mother, a woman who loves her children but is disappointed with her life's trajectory, it finds its footing. Chen, who has long been great, provides some lovely work here.

So, ultimately, "Didi" doesn't break much ground in terms of coming-of-age sagas, other than we now have a movie in which a young Chinese-American kid takes part in all the wild rites of passages that so many films of old depicting white teens have provided - in fact, there's a scene at a party when all the youths gather round a TV to watch "Superbad." But its more tender moments are the ones that count and that, ultimately, make it work.