Review of Always Be My Maybe (2019) by Hnestlyonthesly — 07 Oct 2019

Always Be My Maybe is maybe the first Netflix movie I haven’t regretted watching. Randall Park and Ali Wong are an unlikely pairing that probably had a lot of choices they turned down to be in a straight to streaming film as their first breakout roles as the lead actors in a romcom.

First off, is the title of this film supposed to be anything more than a pun on the song? Because, no one says this phrase, expresses this idea, or hears this song until the end credit scene. And before we depart from this quibble, what does it mean to be someone’s “maybe”? Why ask someone to be your maybe always? Does the adverb modify the word “be” or “my” or “maybe”? It seems from its positioning like the emphasis is “be,” as in “to be or not to be,” but isn’t the essence of “maybe” a state between two definite outcomes? So is it the pun not on the song title, but rather on the concept of friends who are suspended in a perpetual flirtation without ever seeing it through to its end state, in which case, what kind of ask is that? Always be available but only for me and I fear the commitment of settling (down) with/for you? To some extent the film does try to show Wong and Park’s years-long flirtation in their teens after the funeral for Park’s mother and again in the Uber on the way home from that weird party in the hotel room with Keanu Reeves. Their awkward attempts at expressing their attraction for one another give the audience something to root for and the forces of work and inertia keep them separated. “Maybe” feels too present for these two lovebirds. There’s an element of fear about leaving behind the undiscovered shore, losing something they have both never had and had once. So maybe a better phrase is “what if”?

Wong and Park’s chemistry is fine, but I run into the same issue of the unbelievable blind spot of male fantasy-fulfillment: why is Wong interested in this complete loser from her hometown she hasn’t spoken to in years because of how emotionally distance he was after the death of her mother figure? Not only did he fail to prove himself worthy then, but for all the time that he continued to fail for years after. As Friend puts it, “Isn’t that the movie about the guy who doesn’t get over his mother’s death for YEARS?” Which I get. The extent of his unwillingness to adapt and heal from his traumatizing, generic loss is a bit cartoonish. The film floats by on the charm of these two comedians and a surprisingly saucy cameo by none other than Keanu Reeves. That scene sort of took viewers by surprise and made this a cult film over night in the midst of Keanu-mania with the wise release of John Wick 3 just a few weeks ago.

For all the lip service to the city of San Francisco, there aren’t that many scenes in iconic locations of the city. Wong mentions “the museum with the albino alligator” at one point, as a nod to the Academy of Sciences, but a lot of their interactions occur in 1) a fake SF restaurant, 2) an ancient car, 3) a Burger King, 4) a hotel room, 5) New York. For the most part, it just feels like a cookie-cutter story that’s reaching for the feeling of authenticity by mentioning the place that it’s set without really reflecting on the place where it’s set: a trap that a lot of movies that default to New York/Manhattan fall into (for exceptions, look at movies like Blindspotting and Sorry to Bother You, which both commented on Oakland).

But my major takeaway is mostly just that the stakes are incredibly low. The winter sequence, if one really exists, could be missed if you’re busy cooking dinner while this is on in the background. Two childhood friends who hooked up once and then haven’t spoken for a decade meet not-so-serendipitously in their hometown and lean on the nostalgia of their youth to hookup again and then after a night of emotionally intense stuff, they separate until they realize that they have been stuck in a bit of a professional/personal rut for a few years. Their Big Fight happens after dating for a single day. At the end of their three or four line fight, they drop the “I love you” bomb Romeo and Juliet style.

Sometimes, I’m led to believe, it’s nice to watch a film where you can turn your brain off and not worry too hard about whether it’s better to be alone or with your life-long, starcrossed soulmate, so maybe we should just rest happy that we’re able to chalk one up to better representation even in our **** romcom genre. As Brother’s girlfriend put it, we could literally fast-forward just to see Keanu and turn this off. Then again, it was her second viewing.