Always Be My Maybe stars Ali Wong and Randall Park as Sasha and Marcus, respectively, two childhood friends who were once close but driven apart due to a brief romantic encounter between the two of them. They reunite years later in a chance meeting when Marcus is hired to fix the air conditioning in a new temporary home Sasha - now a celebrity chef - is residing in. Both are dating different people now and are seemingly happy, while trying to mask the fact that they are truly unhappy.
It’s a fairly standard set up, though much of what makes this movie work is the charms of both Wong and Park. While their characters aren’t much different than the protagonists of countless other romantic comedies, both of them have a great energy in their delivery that makes them very likable. And they’re given a great set up so that the audience can easily connect with them right off the bat. The opening scenes that follow Marcus and Sasha’s initial friendship bloom, from their childhood years to their young adult years, firmly established both their personalities and relationship without relying on heavy exposition, making them immediately engaging to watch.
And this allowed for the scene in which their friendship get torn apart to be something easily heartbreaking to watch despite hitting the audience with such heavy material so early on. Since both are such clearly defined characters within the first few opening minutes, the audience can almost immediately invest in their journey. And the rest of the movie is very interesting to watch, mainly for just how well Wong and Park handle the material, and elevate some of the more standard elements of the story.
Both Park and Wong have a lot of background in comedy, and there are plenty of times where the two are able to exercise their talents to some wonderfully funny results, especially in their exchanges with some of the supporting characters. Park can often come off as a sad-sack. However, rather than playing it to manipulate the audience into giving him sympathy, he uses his likable charm to play that up as a straight man to his incredibly well-meaning, but comically overbearing father, played by James Saito.
Wong, a successful stand-up comedian, also gets to showcase some of her quick-witted energy throughout the movie, with some of her exchanges being the film’s funnier moments. This is most prevalent in her scenes alongside Michelle Buteau as Sasha’s co-worker and best friend Veronica. The two have such a rapid-fire energy, complete with riffing on one another, that is not only just funny, but gives them the feel of real best friends. Their scenes together are some of the film’s highlights, with the only shame being that they couldn’t get even more time in together.
Though while the two leads are able to make familiar elements of the story more interesting, it’s still hard to ignore just how often this plays up certain tropes of the romantic comedy genre, which ultimately become the film’s biggest problem. And it’s very much to the point where it didn’t even really need to. The movie often creates conflict for the sake of creating conflict, causing it to drag out at various points, and making it lose some momentum at various points.
Despite only running at 100 minutes, it’s questionable if it even needed to run for that long, and it probably would have benefited at running for about 80-85 minutes. There are a fair amount of moments that don’t feel like they add much to the movie. This would have been fine had they been entertaining in their own right. However, these wind up being some of the film’s more serious parts that seem like they were placed in simply to just give characters some arbitrary obstacles.
The biggest issue comes in the form of Daniel Dae Kim, who makes an extended appearance as Sasha’s fiancee Brandon, whom she breaks up with in the first act. The movie devotes a decent amount of screen time to his character, who’s more of a stereotypical jerk than anyone with a fun or unique personality. Kim is a fine actor and he plays the part well. But the arc involving his initial engagement with Sasha is covered in multiple extended scenes that go on for longer than they needed to, and the only relevant thing that stems from this whole subplot is Sasha moving back to her childhood home where she ends up seeing Marcus again for the first time in years. This set up could have come a bit quicker, especially given how Kim has no bearing on the rest of the story.
The film also has one other big expendable character, which is Jenny, Marcus’ new girlfriend. She’s more of a surprise reveal midway through the movie, which is jarring considering the amount of screen time devoted to Marcus in the present day by the time she is seen. She’s meant to be some big comic relief, but is more of a stereotypical annoying girlfriend who clearly doesn’t belong with the protagonist, never really getting in moments that are actually funny. While the whole point of her character is that she’s someone who clearly doesn’t belong with Marcus, it’s a trope that’s been seen in countless other movies, and there’s nothing done with her character to make her standout. And like Brandon, she’s quickly discarded and ultimately has little bearing on the rest of the movie.
Jenny has only one relevant scene in the entire movie, which paves way for what is easily the film’s biggest standout moment: Keanu Reeves. In a brilliant extended cameo as himself, Reeves absolutely crushes it. In what’s supposed to be a parody of the high upper-class lifestyle, Reeves plays a pretentious, insulting, condescending jerk, who at the same time, seems almost oblivious to just how arrogant he really is. He goes boldly over-the-top for this performance, complete with an introduction that contains loud, grandiose intro music that will immediately cause whoever watches it to burst into laughter. While this is not Reeves’ first comedy, he hasn’t been in anything in a while that really gets to showcase his comedic skills, and it’s easy to forget just how funny he can be.
Always Be My Maybe has plenty of likable elements about it. Most of the cast, most notably Park, Wong, and Reeves, all have such a natural charm about them, that they’re almost instantly engaging to watch, with both Wong and Park being easy to root for. And the film has its fair share of funny moments. However, it tends to get bogged down in a story that looks to create conflict for the sake of creating conflict rather than really doing much to add to the main story. It relies on standard romantic comedy tropes along with focusing on expendable characters who add ultimately no bearing to the plot, yet get multiple scenes devoted to them. The movie has a fair amount of solid moments, but for every one of those moments, there’s something unnecessary thrown in there that makes it lose a bit of steam. While the positives ultimately outweigh the negatives, it is an overall uneven experience.
Recommendation: Proceed With Caution
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