The Three-Star Motel

Jeffrey Chyau and Samantha Futerman. Photo courtesy of themotel-film.com. Credit: Tom Legoff.

Flipping through the reviews of Michael Kang's "The Motel," APA notes how the film passed with critics, but the critics failed the film.

By Brian Hu

Michael Kang's The Motel was labeled a standout at Sundance 2005, where it snagged the prestigious Humanitas Prize. It toured the festival circuit, playing at the Hawaii International Film Festival and representing the U.S. at Pusan. Not surprisingly, it was the main course at many Asian American film festivals, opening the Chicago Asian American Showcase, the DC APA Film Festival, the Vancouver Asian Film Festival, and the Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival. It even picked up a few laurels along the way: The Motel was named best narrative feature at three of the country's most important Asian American film festivals: the VC Filmfest, the San Diego Asian Film Festival, and the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival.

Palm Pictures and ImaginAsian's acquisition of The Motel for domestic distribution was seen as a major victory in the Asian American community. Asianamericanfilm.com used five exclamation points to announce the acquisition and congratulate the filmmakers. Blogger Angry Asian Man called the co-presentation by the two distributors an “optimistic” move and even hosted a special edition Q/A with director Michael Kang in time for the film's June 2006 release. Finally there's another Asian American film to find mainstream audiences.

Then the reviews came in from outside Asian American circles. Very few (like Michael Atkinson's review for the Village Voice) were negative but while the Rotten Tomatoes rating was high (an impressive 84%), the majority of praise was lukewarm. The Motel became a quintessential 3-star film: well done, but nothing we haven't seen before. Some reviewers make this qualification explicit. Frank Scheck of the Hollywood Reporter writes, “While The Motel ultimately adds up to little more than a character-driven vignette, it is a particularly well-observed one.” Here's Jay Carr of AM New York: “It's a small jewel, not one with the hard glitter of a diamond, but rather suggesting the soft glow of a semi-precious stone.” And Tim Grierson of the LA Weekly: “even if writer-director Michael Kang doesn't exactly break new ground, he imbues his debut with a quiet, compelling inertia that mimics puberty's rudderless drift, its burgeoning desire for something, anything, to change.”

For those in the Asian American community expecting a cinematic milestone in Asian American filmmaking, this uninspired praise is more than a little disconcerting. Could it be that our best films are only semi-precious stones, or as the Washington Post put it, “a totally respectable $12 bottle of wine”? Hardly. Looking more carefully at these reviews, it's clear that mainstream or semi-indie print critics are evaluating the film based on categories and conventions they understand, which is a perfectly understandable (and honest) way to assess a film's merits. Pretty much all of these reviews, from those listed above to Sam Adams's review in the Los Angeles Times label the film a “coming-of-age story,” a genre that already elicits certain expectations. By those standards, The Motel is a successful, by-the-books example and the reviews give Michael Kang kudos for precisely that. Similarly, the Village Voice review chews out the film because critic Michael Atkinson happens to be sick of the genre.

Unfortunately the mass uniformity of this critical approach suggests that there's no other way to discuss the film. Is this film only a coming-of-age story and nothing else? The latest wave in Asian American filmmaking and criticism has been to laud films like The Motel and Georgia Lee's Red Doors for de-emphasizing their characters' ethnicities and allowing them to simply be Americans. But that doesn't mean the critical reading should be devoid of an awareness of ethnicity. The film isn't nothing more than a coming-of-age story; it's an Asian American reworking of a coming-of-age story that happens to not feel Asian American. And that itself is an accomplishment because it visualizes and narrativizes new kinds of characters in American cinema, as well as in its Asian American subset. How Michael Kang lucidly integrates these characters into our expectations of the coming-of-age story is what makes it an empowering experience.

Ed Gonzalez's well-intentioned 3-star review of TheMotel in Slant Magazine is further proof of how far off mainstream critical culture is from this perspective, even when the reviewer tries to be a little more open-minded. Whereas most reviewers choose to take a de-ethnicized genre approach, Gonzalez writes: “There's some kind of insult to take from the way some descriptions of the film have tried to downplay its ethnic essence. Race is very much a part of this film, complicating Ernest's crawlspace between youth and maturity.” While I agree with much of that statement, what bothers me, and what becomes the review's downfall is the “ethnic essence” angle. Most reviewers categorize the film as a “coming-of-age story,” yet Gonzalez's review's “ethnic essence” proves as limiting as the former categorization. Gonzalez talks about what it's like to be a geek and a minority, and what it's like to have a tough fraternal buddy like Sung Kang who's the same race as you. I do feel these are all components of the film, yet its necessary to step out and see how Michael Kang is playing around with these very “Asian American” characteristics in a new way. For example, does the 13 year-old Ernest become enchanted by Sung Kang's character because he's also Asian American? Or because Kang is a loony drunkard, which Gonzalez fails to mention. By sticking to the Asian American brotherhood perspective, one loses sight of the fact that we've never seen an Asian American, charismatic, sexual boozehound in a movie before.

Another explanation for the “disappointing” praise of the film is that critics are either unwilling or are denied an opportunity to go deeper into their subjects. Print space is valuable, so why waste it on a film that nobody's heard of? But how nuanced or comprehensive can a critic be when the review is only 250 words long? That's the word count of the LA Weekly review for The Motel, which contrasts depressingly against that same week's review of Miami Vice (758 words). The same story persists in other publications: The Los Angeles Times (337 words versus 874), The New York Times (566 words versus 1356). The review of The Motel in the New York Post is a measly 190 words (I couldn't find their Miami Vice article online). If plot summary itself is 150-250 words, you could imagine how much space is left for analysis and contextualization.

Naturally, length rarely means quality, especially in film criticism, but there's a reason (aside from her stylish callousness) that Pauline Kael's giant review-essays were so engaging and influential. There's definitely a good defense of short capsule reviews: sometimes a film simply doesn't have the substance to warrant a full-on examination. Then again, as is the case of The Motel, some films are only superficially small, yet the conventions and economics of mainstream print criticism means these films will stay minor despite the intentions of the filmmakers.

The internet seems the best alternative, especially since even the so-called “alternative” print press is failing to give voice to “alternative” cinema. One of the best reviews of The Motel is in the pages of the online site Salon, where the critic doesn't contextualize the film within Asian American cinema, but at least discusses it within a longer essay on new films to provide a useful point of reference. Also valuable are the great online interviews with Michael Kang, for example Angry Asian Man's, as well as filmmaker Greg Pak's, which is viewable on his blog. But interviews typically only go so far in terms of analysis. If informed film critics don't take control of commentary, then films like The Motel trying to poke into the mainstream will be bristled back into obscurity.

The official site for The Motel:

http://www.themotel-film.com/

The Three-Star Motel

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