It’s a tribute to the quietly unflinching nature of his writing – and, at times, the understated role his artwork, absent in this live-action adaptation, plays in bringing that writing fully to life.
Tomine has updated the book’s pop culture references – basic film bros check Christopher Nolan rather than Fight Club porn appears on browser tabs, rather than DVDs – while keeping the episodic, conversational structure of his story almost completely intact. It’s also one of the few minor changes actor-turned-director Randall Park and cartoonist-turned-screenwriter Adrian Tomine have made in adapting Tomine’s graphic novel of the same name (originally published in 2007, after being serialized in Tomine’s seminal comic book Optic Nerve). It’s an early signal that Ben will not acquiesce to saying something nice and supportive when something more caustic or cranky enters his head. “It’s depressing to see a roomful of people lose their minds over a movie just because of representation or whatever,” he tells her, in a scene seemingly designed to make well-intentioned Sundance audiences squirm and bristle right along with Miko. Like the heroes of the film-within-the-film, Ben and Miko are Asian-American, but Ben doesn’t see himself in the glossy big-studio romance Miko has scored for her film festival programming.
Though the movie is unnamed, its closing scene, which doubles as the opening scene of Shortcomings, is patterned with hilarious clarity after Crazy Rich Asians. Min) to his girlfriend Miko (Ally Maki) as they leave a movie screening Miko has just organized, clarifying that he was looking in vain for a normal, flawed human being. “There wasn’t a real character in the whole thing,” grouses Ben (Justin H.
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