Dìdi
Real Art Ways
Hartford
Aug. 4, 2024
Dìdi tells the story of Chris Wang (played with earnest enthusiasm by Isaac Wang), known as Wang Wang to his friends, and the summer before his first year of high school.
Wang Wang likes a girl named Madi (Mahaela Park, who does alot with a little), has to choose between his old friends Fahad, Hardeep and “Soup” (Raul Dial, Tarnvir Kamboj and Aaron Chang who provide the laughs) and the new cool skater guys, and argues with his sister Vivian (Shirley Chen, underused) and his mother Chungsing (the awesome Joan Chen). All typical coming-of-age stuff.
Where Dìdi sets itself apart is that it doesn’t find any humor or light in the struggles of teenhood. Being a teenager is a difficult experience to say the least, but I don’t remember it being as joyless as Dìdi felt. Despite being described as a comedy, I found myself barely laughing as Wang Wang navigated his life. Teen movies are often drug-fueled sex comedies, and I’m not saying that Dìdi needed to be that. But the lack of laughs hurts the movie, because it renders Wang Wang’s sometimes bafflingly antisocial behavior as cruel instead of humorous, and makes him a character I really didn’t want to spend 90 minutes with.
I don’t usually compare movies, but Dìdi invites comparison to one of the greatest teen comedies of all time, Superbad, by including it in a scene where Wang Wang is watching the film with his friends. Superbad’s Seth, played by Jonah Hill, is a misogynistic bully who talks down to his friends and plans to get laid by liquoring up a bunch of girls at a party, which is flat-out wrong. He’s a bad person by any definition of the word.
He’s made likable, though, because he and the movie he’s in are funny. Superbad is a laugh-out-loud movie where the audience expects poor behavior in the service of comedy. So the audience has a tolerance for rude, boorish behavior. The audience also knows that Seth will eventually get his. It’s an age-old formula where liars and schemers get their comeuppance, often in some painfully physical way, and Seth is hit by cars on two separate occasions.
Wang Wang is just an asshole. At multiple points throughout the movie, he’s offered the opportunity to, if not necessarily do the right thing, at least be less of a jerk. He blocks Madi for having the audacity to simply try and talk to him. He shoves his mother out of the room when his skater friends visit to their disgust. And he lies nonstop. Constant, consistent lying for its own sake at times. He had the chance to come clean to Madi at the end of the film, and hit her with a bunch of lies. When the time comes to make up with his mother, she does all the apologizing, not him. This character doesn’t grow or change. And worst of all, we don’t get any chuckles out of it. No physical comedy, no bawdy laugh lines, none of the stuff that makes the awkwardness of teen movies bearable. Just self loathing, which is honestly boring to look at on screen.
And look, I’m not obtuse. This movie being released is important for its representation of the AAPI community. AAPI commentators and writers have often talked about the way that Hollywood completely ignores their stories and cultures. I get that; I often say that I’ll know that Black film has made it when one of our directors can get a budget for a movie as silly as Dude, Where’s My Car? So yes, it matters that this movie exists for AAPI audiences.
But I feel like audiences don’t simply deserve things. They deserve good things. I can see that Dìdi is important. It also falls short, at least to me, thanks to a genuinely unlikable main character. Those two things do not have to be mutually exclusive.
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Dìdi is playing at Real Art Ways, with a special panel discussion to be held during the Sept. 6 screening.
Jamil returns to the Claire Gallery for their latest exhibit.
