Note: The writer of this review watched Boogie on a digital screener from home. Before making the decision to see it—or any other film—in a movie theater, please consider the health risks involved. Here’s an interview on the matter with scientific experts.
The character of Alfred “Boogie” Chin, played by Taylor Takahashi in writer-director Eddie Huang’s Boogie, should be familiar to anyone who’s ever seen an underdog sports movie. Boogie is the kind of prickly hotshot who could lead a team to a championship, if they could only check their ego and get with the coach’s program. Typically, the Boogies of the world get it together in their picture’s third act, often after the audience finds out about their complicated home lives and big dreams for the future. They’re essential to the film’s worst-to-first narrative arc. But they’re rarely who the story’s about.
It’s easy to see why Huang would be drawn to someone like Boogie, since he himself has long had a reputation as a feisty phenom. Huang’s had success as a lawyer, a fashion designer, a restaurateur, a TV host, and a memoirist; the last of those gigs led to a sitcom, Fresh Off The Boat, loosely based on his childhood. All the while, he’s been outspoken, opinionated, and even combative, standing up for his artistic vision, his family’s Taiwanese immigrant roots, and his love of hip-hop. In Boogie—Huang’s feature-directing debut—the hero has a few things in common with his creator. He, too, is uncommonly gifted, loves Black culture, and pushes back against authority figures, including his own parents, who are also Taiwanese immigrants.
Boogie’s specialty is basketball. He’s talented enough to have been recruited by an elite New York private school, in need of a star for its hapless team. He’s hoping to take advantage of this exposure to get a scholarship to a top-ranked university, which will then launch him to an NBA career and make him and his hard-working mom and dad rich. There are problems with the plan, though. Boogie lacks the grades to attract the level of school he needs. He clashes with his coach (Domenick Lombardozzi), who wants him to be more of a team player. And his agent (Mike Moh) is pushing him to sign a lucrative contract to play pro ball in China, which may end his NBA dreams prematurely.
These are all realistic complications, common to a lot of promising young athletes. And Huang is clearly aiming for a movie that feels real, with naturalistic performances and lots of New York location footage. But by playing in this lower key, Huang sacrifices a lot of energy. Boogie starts at a plodding pace and never picks up much momentum, even as it builds to that staple of any sports melodrama: the Big Game.
It doesn’t help that Boogie’s script hits so many predictable beats—including said big game, which pits Boogie against one of the city’s hottest players, Monk (Bashar Jackson), right when the hero is juggling multiple crises. He has several dull fights with his parents about their expectations for him. His romance with a classmate, Eleanor (Taylour Paige), is threatened by his irrational jealousy of her ex-boyfriend. His best friend, Richie (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), is mad at him for even thinking about skipping the game and abandoning his teammates, just when they need him most. All these clichéd conflicts come to a head at roughly the same time, just before tipoff.
Boogie does have some assets. The cast is very good, including the up-and-coming Paige and the late Jackson (a.k.a. the rapper Pop Smoke, who was murdered last year). And there are moments throughout that show some originality, including a charmingly fumbling sex scene between the virgin Boogie and the only slightly more experienced Eleanor, and a scene where Boogie’s father waxes rhapsodic about a 1989 French Open tennis match between Ivan Lendl and the Chinese American Michael Chang, talking about what Chang meant to his generation.
But too much of this film feels either generic or under-thought—from the high school English class where the kids discuss The Catcher In The Rye in the most perfunctory ways imaginable, to the ongoing tension over whether Boogie can get a decent scholarship offer. The elements that have to do with Boogie’s background or his own personal passions are few and far between. And even though the plot’s pretty thin, its scattered pieces rarely line up in a way that becomes taut enough to pull the audience along.
Worst of all, for most of the movie’s 90-minute running time, Boogie is a fairly passive character, to whom life just sort of happens, without him making many clear and confident choices to improve his own lot. In basketball terms, it’s not just that Boogie’s a star player who never passes the ball. He also rarely shoots. He mostly just stands in one place, listlessly dribbling.
29 Comments
Just once I’d like to see a scene where young people are discussing Catcher in the Rye and they’re all saying the most shallow and obvious things imaginable about it, and the teacher is like “I can’t deal with listening to yet another class of high school students think they’re profound” and the main character at the end is like “Yeah, I didn’t learn anything from Catcher in the Rye, that book makes no sense to me” and the teacher just gives up and goes home and drinks.If it’s not obvious, I hated Catcher in the Rye.
It’s commentary like this that can lead a writer to become a recluse.
Salinger knows what he did.In all seriousness, I’d probably appreciate TCITR a lot more now than I did when I read it in high school, though I don’t know if I’d enjoy it much more. I found Holden to be an incredibly unappealing character I didn’t want to spend time with. I kept finding myself thinking, “Who the hell acts like this?” If Holden was someone I knew in real life, I’d keep far away.
Everyone says The Great Gatsby is the Great American Novel, I found it really boring for a story about a guy who threw great parties; to each their own.
Just wondering, did you read Gatsby in high school or later on? In my experience, that can really affect one’s response to a text. I thought Mrs. Dalloway was boring as shit in high school but as an adult I realized what a deep and rich book it is.The one I’ve never understood the appeal of is Lord of the Flies. It’s not boring, but it’s really, really obvious. The text itself is barely subtler than all the essays about it.
I read it in high school as with Lord of the Flies. I probably would like them more now as an adult, but if Leo’s take as Jay Gatsby didn’t send me to the library, it will probably remain off my reading list.
Yeah. What was so fucking great about the guy?
Yeah, I didn’t like Gatsby either. But again, I read it in high school. I’d probably appreciate it more (and understand it better now), but… it’s not really a genre I like anyway, and I think whatever Gatsby has to say about the human condition can probably also be found in more recent books that I would enjoy reading more.
What I really enjoyed in high school was In Cold Blood. The Catcher in the Rye, A Separate Peace, Gatsy, etc., all paled in comparison. Even as a dumb teenager, I was really engrossed. Murderin’ and all.
Catch-22 was my jam in high school. I don’t think any of the other things they made us read ever seemed like anything but a chore to me. I also read a ton of stuff outside of what they made us read, mostly SF (and I went on a bit of a Tom Clancy kick for a while).
Pride and Prejudice and Huck Finn are so much fun!Things Fall Apart is…less fun, but just as great
I read both of those in my youth and didn’t enjoy either one, but I reread Pride and Prejudice last year* and enjoyed it a lot more. I have a lot of trouble mentally parsing the grammatical structures of old-fashioned language, so even though I’m an extremely fast reader, it takes a lot of time and effort to get through books like that. (Don’t even get me started on Shakespeare, which inevitably takes me so much effort to parse that I can’t get any enjoyment out of it.)
*and then watched the 1980 BBC adaptation (because it was free on Amazon Prime, unlike the 1995 one), and then also rewatched the 2005 movie (also because free)
1995 is the ONLY adaptation!Thank God UKI Netflix has it, haha.Have you ever read Their Eyes Were Watching God?
No, but I can tell from the description it’s probably not my cup of tea. Novels about contemporary people doing contemporary things, without some kind of genre approach, I rarely ever enjoy. (And yes, I’ve read enough of them to know.)For example: People struggling with their hopes and dreams in modern-day New York? Nah. Add werewolves, or change the date to 2150, or relocate it to Ganymede, and I’m all over it.
In fairness…the book is about the fundamental emptiness of those parties, haha.
Have you seen the South Park episode about it?
Unless it was in seasons 1-3, no. (If it was in seasons 1-3, maybe yes, but I definitely don’t remember it.)
even the pedophilic implication???
It’s comments like this that make me want to shoot John Lennon!
…an email about how much we miss him!
And how he’s going to be my murder victim…… In my latest production of Lizzie Borden!
Holden suuuuuucks.I’d rather grab a pint with Stradlater.
“And his agent (Mike Moh) is pushing him to sign a lucrative contract to play pro ball in China, which may end his NBA dreams prematurely.”Why does a high school basketball player have an agent? And wouldn’t that make him ineligible to play in high school or college?
Having worked in the sports management industry many, many moons ago, I can tell you it isn’t all that uncommon if you are considered to be a potential top tier player.
Also contracts overseas for those players, not that uncommon either.
Wow. A middle aged white guy from Arkansas can’t relate to a movie about inner city minorities?
Big surprise.
Guess what, when you don’t have white privledge life does just happen, it comes fast and hard. The only non-violent approach is to let the waves crash over you.
I’m surprised there’s never been an adaptation of the book Foul, the Connie Hawkins story. It was a compelling read certainly. Connie was by all accounts a superstar as a teenager but got caught up in the 1961 point shaving scandal and lost about 6 of his prime years, despite the fact that he never shaved a single point (he never even played in a collegiate game). The early parts of the book, describing his youth in Bed-Stuy in the late 50s, are also memorable, and I read the book almost 30 years ago.
shame, but expected. happy to hear pop smoke is good, but also obviously sad about it.
I enjoy Eddie Huang’s other work, so I had high hopes when this project was announced. I’ll probably still watch it to support the community, but definitely had to reset my expectations after watching the trailer. Oooof.