Always Be My Maybe (2019)

Always Be My Maybe
Directed by: Nahnatchka Khan
Written by: Michael Golamco, Randall Park, Ali Wong
Starring: Ali Wong, Randall Park
Run time: 101 minutes
4 stars ✨

“Always Be My Maybe” is a romcom currently streaming on Netflix. It’s also another rom com starring two wonderful Asian leads.

I mention this because the success of last year’s “Crazy Rich Asians” continued to prove audiences’ thirst for diversity and this charming little rom com has less to prove so it’s able to live comfortably on the talents of its stars.

“Always Be My Maybe” stars Randall Park and Ali Wong as Marcus Kim and Sasha Tran, two best friends growing up in San Francisco in the 90s. Marcus and Sasha are childhood friends and at the age of eighteen lose their virginities to each other in the back of his car, things become awkward, they fight and after seeing Sasha storm out of a Burger King we flash forward to 2019. Sasha is now a celebrity chef living in Los Angeles while Marcus has stayed behind in San Francisco working for his dad and playing with his band in between.

Park and Wong are both comedy gold and having written the script themselves, they are able to play to their strengths while portraying characters so unlike them. Park is most known for playing the patriarch in ABC’s “Fresh Off The Boat” while Wong is most known for her stand up specials on Netflix. Both of them know comedy and have great chemistry with each so you root for their characters to make it.

It’s also wonderful to see the two characters live their lives truthfully. Park’s character is Korean and Wong’s is Vietnamese. The characters are not stereotypes, they just are. It continues to be refreshing to see characters of color experience life truthfully as opposed to stereotypical ones. Keanu Reeves makes an appearance as a caricature of himself and he is hilarious. Everything works. 

The main storyline comes from the will they/won’t they tension coming from Marcus and Sasha. The ending did feel a tad rushed, though. The pacing of the film overall was fine, but the ending was resolved a little too easily. You can probably guess the ending, this is a rom com after all! So in spite of the resolution, you are happy with the end results and there is nothing wrong with that.