Shortcomings (2023)

‘Shortcomings’ is a middling indie romantic comedy with a few insights into race, culture and love. Actor Randall Park makes his directorial debut with this comedy starring Justin H. Min, Sherry Cola, Ally Maki and Tavi Gevinson.

This is essentially the story of Ben (Justin H. Min), a struggling filmmaker, who lives in Berkeley, California, with his girlfriend, Miko (Ally Maki), who works for a local Asian American film festival. When he’s not managing a struggling arthouse movie theater as his day job, Ben spends his time obsessing over unavailable blonde women, watching Criterion Collection DVDs, and eating in diners with his best friend Alice (Sherry Cola), a queer grad student with a serial dating habit. When Miko moves to New York for an internship, Ben is left to his own devices, and begins to explore what he thinks he might want –– mostly relationships with other women in his orbit. Alice, meanwhile, ends up moving to New York herself after an incident at school.