Thread by @originalspin

Okay folks, the social media embargo has been lifted, and I can finally tell you how👏much👏of👏a👏thoroughly👏life👏changing👏moment it was to watch Randall Park, @aliwong & @michaelgolamco’s absolutely brilliant, absolutely hilarious new romcom #AlwaysBeMyMaybe. 🤯🤩🥳

#APAHM

#AlwaysBeMyMaybe needs to be spoken of in the same sentence as MASTER OF NONE, FRESH OFF THE BOAT, CRAZY RICH ASIANS, TO ALL THE BOYS I'VE LOVED BEFORE, SEARCHING and WARRIOR as game-shifters for Asian Americans in pop culture.

Only in some key ways, it's even more important.

That's because #AlwaysBeMyMaybe doesn't just *reinhabit* a genre in which historically we, as Asian Americans, have been erased, as FOTB, CRA, To All the Boys and Searching all did.

It fundamentally challenges and reinterprets it.
If you will, it reverse-colonizes it.

#AlwaysBeMyMaybe is a romcom, a coming-of-age movie, a buddy film. But it's also an unrelentingly, overwhelmingly Asian American film at its core & code. It's what an exceptional Asian American indie would look like if it had its pick of A-list actors and a major studio budget.

#AlwaysBeMyMaybe is EXACTLY the romcom a group of brilliantly talented and surpassingly funny Asian American Studies majors would make, if they met in college in an Asian American sketch troupe and vowed someday they'd all be famous enough to make a jaw-droppingly awesome movie.

There are deep-cut Asian American cameos and Easter eggs throughout #AlwaysBeMyMaybe — including and especially in the soundtrack, which does for APA hiphop what CRA did for Sino-pop. But it's a good thing it's on Netflix because you'll want to go back and catch 'em all.

Also: While Crazy Rich Asians made romcoms safe for beautiful Asians, #AlwaysBeMyMaybe does the same for everyone else. Quirky, oddball, self-deprecating Asians of a certain age—I say this from a first-person POV—will finally see themselves as love objects and yes, sex symbols.

That's not to say #AlwaysBeMyMaybe doesn't have more traditional hunks in it. Like this guy:

And of course, this guy. Every #AlwaysBeMyMaybe scene Keanu Reeves is in is a delight, but there is one extended one in particular that will go down as one of the most exceptionally funny scenes in all of cinematic/televised history.

I'm not kidding. It is top 100, all time.

But the last thing that makes #AlwaysBeMyMaybe so special is it was purpose-built, hand-crafted, organically grown to be an Asian American product—behind the scenes, front of the camera and across every beat.

Almost everyone onscreen is Asian. Same for the creators and crew.

Did we, in this day and age, need final proof that we Asian Americans can roll our own fucking works of genius? DID WE? I'd like to think that we didn't.

But #AlwaysBeMyMaybe gives it, then drops the mic on the way out.

Everyone will see on May 31. Everyone should.
<Send Tweet>