It feels slightly strange when you acknowledge that coming-of-age movies have long-surpassed your own age of adolescent personal discovery. With Sundance indie Didi, we’ve now brought that time frame up to 2008, where we follow the 13-year-old Chris (Izac Wang), a first-generation Taiwanese-American kid trying to flirt with his junior high crush, get better at skateboarding, edit YouTube videos that people might actually want to see, and perhaps make some new friends during the summer before high school begins. This is one of those movies that lives or dies by its slice-of-life details and sense of authenticity. Writer/director Sean Wang does an excellent job placing the audience in the position of his biographical avatar, Chris. We feel his discomfort trying to navigate the different cultural expectations of home life and school life, the perils of trying to step outside your comfort zone and be rewarded rather than embarrassed. This is compounded by Chris having to endure and brush aside the stereotypes his peers project onto him for being Asian-American. The problem with the movie is that our main character is kind of a twit. He’s so harsh and unfair to his long-suffering mother (Lust, Caution‘s Joan Chen) that his own friends eventually complain about his rude behavior. In a moment of awkward discomfort, he calls his friend’s crush “a whore,” and then describes how he and his friend messed around with the corpse of a squirrel once. He also pees in his older sister’s lotion bottle. The whole “befriending cool skateboarders” storyline goes nowhere, nor does it open up some deeper understanding of our character and his wants, talents, or capabilities. Didi’s real distinct angle could have been growing up in the Internet age, and there it too feels lacking. It all feels a little like we’re spending too much time with the wrong family member. The put-upon mother would have been an even more intriguing person to explore, especially as she yearns to be an artist, deals with her bratty kids, an overbearing mother-in-law living with them without a kind word to say, and a husband half the world away busy working. Getting stuck with the angsty kid feels disappointing.

Nate’s Grade: B-