Myles Teller, Justin Chon, Skylar Astin and Sarah Wright. (John Johnson/Twenty One and Over Productions, Inc.)One of the time worn movie plots is that of the one night that changes everybody’s lives forever. Young audiences saw an Asian-American in the middle of this plot structure in 1984 with John Hughes’ Sixteen Candles. The movie’s portrayal of exchange student Long Duk Dong (Gedde Watanabe), complete with gong sound effects that play every time he appears, is one of the grossest cinematic stereotypes, and it’s a shock that this happened less than thirty years ago.
So when the makers of The Hangover place an Asian-American at the supporting center of raunchy comedy 21 and Over, the last thing moviegoers might expect is a redemption of the transgressions of 1984. And this isn’t what we get. But despite some painfully boring frat boy bacchanal, there is social commentary brewing underneath the film, despite the lack of any apparent redeeming social quality.
Justin Chon, who had a minor role in the Twilight movies, plays Jeff Chang, a pre-med student who turns 21 the day before a med school interview that may change his future. His best friends are effete brainiac Casey (Skylar Astin) and Falstaff-in-training Miller (Miles Teller). They show up to take Jeff Chang out for a celebratory beer, prying him from the watchful eyes of demanding father Dr. Chang (Lost‘s François Chau). Chang is the first-born son in a family that has seen five generations of doctors. He has to get a good night’s sleep and be ready for the interview the next morning. But the healing wisdom of the generations is quickly dispatched in a moment of projectile vomiting, shot in slow-motion Peckinpah-vision. Promises of a Soundgarden concert never materialize, and the trio quickly set off on a bender of smartly photographed but stupidly epic proportions.
For all that Justin Chon is subjected to, he’s third-billed, and spends much of the movie passed out, the voice of The Other muted except for the occasional brilliant line like, “My dick hurts!” Early in the film Miles tells Chang, “You haven’t been in the country very rong,” stressing that last syllable in mock-Engrish, and that line mysteriously got a huge laugh from the preview audience. It’s not funny but sad that Chang’s rich family heritage is so easily dismissed. For that very reason, the movie can be read as social commentary, the commercial extension of the Ai Weiwei exhibit According to What?
The Hirshhorn just closed its popular retrospective of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. The artist is known for cultural commentary on the shocking side, and I’m not just talking about his Gangnam Style video. One of Weiwei’s most provocative pieces is a self-portrait depicting the artist dropping a priceless Han Dynasty urn. Is this an act of auto-cultural vandalism, or something more? Weiwei also painted a valuable urn with the Coca-Cola logo. These iconoclastic pieces may seem like so much bad-boy posturing, but a couple of other works on view at the Hirshhorn put them into perspective. The artist formed sculptures made from the wood of dismantled Qing Dynasty temples and shaped them into a map of China. The nation, you see, destroys itself.
These testaments to cultural cannibalism are among the most powerfully somber pieces in the show, and combined with the destroyed and re-purposed urns reveal a seething anger at what a nation has done with its own history and traditions. It seems like a long way from Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn to 21 and Over, but is it? Weiwei lamented his nation’s product-placed self-destruction, and Dr. Chang laments what he sees as his son’s cultural destruction at the hands of a pair of ugly Americans who drop the urn of Jeff Chang’s future and shatter it to pieces. Characters always refer to Jeff Chang by his full name, which never lets you forget his heritage.
Justin Chon (John Johnson/Twenty One and Over Productions, Inc.)One of the degradations visited upon Jeff Chang seems to directly refer to one of Weiwei’s more revealing works. In the middle of his passed out bacchanal a couple of stoners strip Jeff Chang and glue a teddy bear to his penis, simulating a miniature furry fellater. Is it just a coincidence that this resembles Ai Weiwei’s self-portrait (NSFW) with a “grass mud horse”. It’s the perfect art reference for a raunch comedy: in Mandarin, “grass mud horse” is a play on words that mean “fuck your mother. ”
Conscious social commentary or not, 21 and Over is a lousy movie, but I can defend it on two counts. Cinematographer Terry Stacey makes it look better than it has to, with graceful crane shots and little of the handheld, frenetically edited camerawork that so many mainstream movies traffic in. And for about five minutes, the unfunny raunchiness and drinking games get pushed aside for one or two scenes of friendship and concern about the future that that genuinely works. That leaves nearly ninety minutes of pain.
Chinese audiences will see a different 21 and Over. Alternate opening and closing scenes frame the story as that of a young man who leaves his homeland, is nearly destroyed by American influences, and returns to China a better and more loyal citizen. The movie is credited to writer-directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, but can we be that sure it’s not an Ai Weiwei performance piece?
—
21 and Over
Written and directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore.
With Skylar Astin, Myles Teller, Justin Chon, and Sarah Wright
Rated R for crude and sexual content, pervasive language, some graphic nudity, drugs and drinking, and oh the humanity.
Running time 93 minutes
Opens today at a theater near you.
