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Better Luck Tomorrow

2003, Movie, R, 101 mins

Better Luck Tomorrow: Review

BETTER LUCK TOMORROW
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Director/co-writer Justin Lin (SHOPPING FOR FANGS) has a lot of fun turning tired, racist stereotypes on their heads — his Asian-American high-school kids may look like typical college-bound honor students, but their extracurricular activities include drugs, breaking and entering, and, ultimately, a brutal murder — but his stylish exercise in defying expectations never really moves past its amusing premise. In an affluent gated community in sunny southern California, 16-year-old Ben Manibang (Parry Shan) and his high-strung best friend, Virgil (Jason Tobin), are sunbathing at a friend's house when they hear the unmistakable bleat of a pager. After checking their own beepers, Ben and Virgil realize that the sound is coming from underground — from the body they helped bury under the bright green sod the night before. Flashback to four months earlier: In addition to studying for the SATs, playing varsity basketball and volunteering at the local hospital, Ben helps Virgil and his bad-ass cousin, Han (Sun Kan), scam Costco stores. Ben also makes a little money on the side providing the answers to stolen tests for Daric (Roger Fan), the captain of the academic decathlon team whose self-confidence verges on the Nietzschean: "People like you and me can make our own rules," he tells Ben. To prepare his team for the national finals in Las Vegas, Daric pumps his decathletes full of tequila and coke, but the drugs are making Virgil jumpy. When a white jock makes a racist crack at a house party, Daric pulls a gun and Virgil nearly beats the guy death. The next day at school, Ben finds that he and his unlikely posse have earned themselves a reputation, and offers for bigger and better jobs soon pour in. The only thing typical about Ben's life at this point is his crush on Stephanie Vandergosh (Karin Anna Cheung), his lab partner. Stephanie, unfortunately, already has a boyfriend: wealthy private-school kid Steve Choe (John Cho), who soon approaches Ben with a dangerous proposition of his own. Lim's premise is a great idea for a short film, but while he makes several serious points about racial profiling and tokenism, there's not enough story here for a full-length feature. The end result is a series of stylish vignettes, some entertaining and all variations on essentially the same theme. Nowhere is this lack of forward momentum more apparent than at the finale, which fizzles when it should pop. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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