My brother liked the girl next door; does that count? Hmmm. That’s not quite right. My brother dated the girl next door; I never got word as to whether he liked her or not. It doesn’t matter. Falling in love with the girl next door (although unknown to me) is pretty universal, and Always Be My Maybe explores this double heart emoji from the perspective of Asian-Americans growing up in San Francisco … and if you think TV & films are beyond the standard “Charmed” set of scenic San Francisco introductory stills, you’d be very, very wrong; as long as San Francisco films are made, there will be Golden Gate Bridge and Coit Tower screenwipes. I think it’s part of the city charter.
Sasha (Ali Wong) and Marcus (Randall Park) were neighbors growing up in what appeared to be the Richmond (or Outer Richmond) District of San Francisco. Kudos for that; Richmond doesn’t get much play, comparatively. This is one of those films in which we start with children and then impatiently vault a scene and a half later so the kids can to turn into Ali and Randall as “teens.” Both of them have long since evolved beyond passing for teens, but hey, a little braces here, a bad haircut there, throw in an immature tee or two and … they still don’t pass for teens. But their awkward backseat taking-this-friendship-to-the-next-level reactions darn near sold it. Well done.
There is, indeed, a level or adorable that goes with asking actors to play at characters whose romance lasts more than a decade. Awwwww, cute. It’s kinda like an Asian-American When Harry Met Sally.
The backseat encounter led to a relationship meltdown — as so many teen encounters do. So the film FFs beyond the braces, thank goodness, to the “present” where Sasha is a celebrity restaurateur while Marcus works with his father installing air conditioners. The film needed to be a little more deft here – it hints that there’s nothing necessarily wrong with Marcus’ employment while there’s nothing necessarily right with Sasha’s celebrity, but how it plays out puts the two at a severe mismatch; Always Be My Maybe becomes the Princess and the Pauper. While Sasha celebrity chefs her way about big cities, Marcus has little to offer but his glorified garage band “Hello Peril,” the focal point point for the best comedy in the film.
And there is comedy here: sporadic, uneven, and sadly missing when the cracks between this reunion begin to become chasms, but the film has great fun with the extras who tag along as potential partners for Marcus and Sasha, like Jenny (Vivian Bang), an Asian love interest with dreadlocks (?!) and Keanu Reeves.
At some point, the arts are going to whole-heartedly embrace and laud Keanu Reeves for the gifts he has bestowed upon us. I have been as great a critic as any, never taking Reeves seriously even though I still quote Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure at will. In Always Be My Maybe, Reeves (as Keanu Reeves, no less) shows up and makes such a great parodic ass of his own Hollywood persona that I can happily recommend this otherwise mediocre film for those ten minutes alone. Reeves to me will always be a puzzle, a man capable of making the awful of Replicas and the genius of John Wick 3 in the same year (together, they average to two stars!), but when he is on, he is on. There are few people with a greater natural feel for the camera and what ought to be on the other side of it; I hope he never retires.
Was I conscious about a cast that was predominantly Asian? No more so than the film itself, which is to say a lot … film in general will be better when we don’t even have to call attention to such things, right? In the end, I see this less as a casting/directing anomaly and more as a bit of a failed romance. Always Be My Maybe has a rather large problem in that for true love to succeed, one of these two will have subjugate themselves to the other. We don’t want Sasha to give up her globetrotting or her base in NYC, but we also don’t want Marcus to give up his band, which is the best part of who he is. What do you root for? Or should this film have taken a different tack and stretched the fabric of romantic frustration rather than the imaginary security blanket that is “Everything is gonna be just fine…?”
♪This film was cute babe
For most of act one
And with comic distracting
It would always be fun
Now we’re here in act three
And I just wanna fly
‘Cuz this movie ain’t fun, babe
Once Marcus started to cry
You’ll make it to finale
Sit hoping desperately
Boy, is Keanu coming back here?
And all I can say is “Maybe” ♫
Rated PG-13, 101 Minutes
Director: Nahnatchka Khan
Writer: Ali Wong, Randall Park, Michael Golamco
Genre: Not-sure-what-to-root-for romance
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Asian-Americans feeling distinctly underrepresented on film
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People hoping for another Crazy Rich Asians
♪ Parody Inspired by “Always Be My Baby”
