Hey, I love Awkwafina! I love Sandra Oh! How bad could this be?
As a rule of thumb, never ask that question. Never. Never. Never. Whatever it is, it can always be worse than you anticipate. Obviously, I set the bar pretty high for Quiz Lady, but I still feel a little cheated. It’s not often you see Awkwafina and Sandra Oh both deliver unimpressive results. And yet, here we are.
Anne Yum (Awkwafina) and Jenny Yum (Oh) are sisters. Give that a minute to digest. Awkwafina (nee Nora Lum) is 35 and boasts immediate Chinese and Korean ancestry. Sandra Oh is 52, the daughter of Korean parents. I would have guessed these two were a mile away in both roots and age, but I’m wrong on the ancestry part. They are, indeed, a mile apart age-wise. Sure, you can have a sib 17 years older than you, but don’t pretend you’re of the same generation. That’s silly.
My guess is this film was written with different protagonists in mind. And then the casting director came in one day and yelled, “What if we could get Awkwafina and Sandra Oh both as the sisters?!” And while some pedant meekly offered, “It won’t work,” the director ignored that and overruled with “YES!! THAT’S WHAT I WANT!!” And a movie was cast without really considering the optics.
That’s more-or-less irrelevant. If I really want to, I guess I can pretend these are sisters, but I still have trouble pretending they have the same background. In the movie, Anne and Jenny grew up in the same broken home. Dad wasn’t around, mom was an addict of sorts. Jenny spent her days searching for adoration; Anne escaped into the world of a quiz show hosted by Will Ferrell.
Over years and years of TV time, Anne got really good at quiz stuff. Like savant-level good. Makes sense. My knowledge of random trivia is enhanced greatly from a childhood spent with Chuck Woolery and Wink Martindale. The game show became a substitute friend and crutch for Anne. Not unlike Rain Man, Anne developed a dependence on the ritual viewing while shutting out the rest of the world. Now an adult, Anne has a dead-end data processing job, no friends, and a posture only a broken Barbie doll would envy.
When mom disappears, owing $80k to the mob, Jenny comes back into Anne’s life. When that same mob steals Anne’s dog, Jenny has a great idea to parlay Anne’s trivia talent into a big payday.
This is an awfully long road to get Anne on the quiz show of her dreams. And in the meantime, Anne and Jenny are both characters I’d happily avoid. Sandra Oh plays Jenny as a myopic live-for-the-moment party girl. T
his portrayal would only go so far in a teen film, and as a fiftysomething, Jenny comes off as pathetic and desperate. Awkwafina decided to play Anne as a person who is dead inside and out. Not just disappointed, dead. With posture to match. I kept wanting to shake the movie violently, “SNAP OUT OF IT!” But it didn’t work.
The only things that do work here are Jason Schwartzman as the obnoxious returning champion and Ferrell as the understated (!!) game show host. And it takes over an hour to get to these two interacting with our heroes.
There might have been a good idea here in the premise, and I love the casting. But Quiz Lady is disappointing from start to the middle of Act III. I could nitpick for weeks about the game show’s format; it’s worse than Quidditch, but there’s not much point there. I was so desperate to get to the Awkwafina I love that I was willing to put up with more bullshit formatting than a powerpoint upgrade. I should mention here that the most poignant moment in the film involves the tale of a girl taking a crap in a suburban yard. Yup, that about sums it up for me: I showed up for Quiz Lady fun and got a backyard crap instead.
There once was a woman named Anne
Whose life was one giant pan
Yet a trivia whiz
She could ace any quiz
If only that were a reasonable life plan
Rated R, 99 Minutes
Director: Jessica Yu
Writer: Jen D’Angelo
Genre: Making people you like into people you don’t like
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People with low expectations
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: The disappointed
