The
Motel stars Jeffrey Chyau as Ernest
Chin, a put-upon 13-year-old who lives at a rundown motel with his mother and
little sister. Forced to contend with his uncommonly cruel mother and
neighborhood bullies, It's clear right off the bat that Ernest is living a
desperate, miserable existence. He finds solace in an off-the-wall tenant named
Sam (Sung Kang), who teaches the boy how to cut loose and stand up for himself. The Motel moves at an extremely
deliberate pace that eventually becomes oppressive; writer/director Michael
Kang focuses entirely on Ernest's exploits, presumably in an effort to turn the
character into a sympathetic figure. But because Ernest never quite becomes
anything more than a misanthropic grouser, there's virtually no way for the
viewer to actually care about what happens to him throughout the film's running
time. Chyau's flat, lifeless performance certainly doesn't help, although he
comes off as a master thespian when compared with Jade Wu (who plays Ernest's
shrill, hateful mother). Only Sung Kang delivers what can reasonably be called
an effective performance, as the actor infuses The Motel with sporadic bursts of energy (brief as they may
be). While there's no denying that filmmaker Michael Kang possesses a fair
amount of talent, this certainly isn't an appropriate vehicle with which to
judge his abilities.
Check in to 'Motel' for an hour or two
By Bob Strauss, Film Critic
Article Last Updated: 07/27/2006
04:15:10 PM PDT
A tart little first feature from Michael
Kang, "The Motel" does the old coming-of-age story with freshness and
well-detailed believability.
And no, the film's distinctiveness is not due to the
fact that it's about a Chinese-American boy, nor that it takes place at a motor
court frequented by drunks and prostitutes. Those things add flavoring, of
course, but it's Kang's understanding of human nature — not particularly
profound, but true and sharp as a perfectly drawn arrow — that makes this
unpretentious production sing.
Jeffrey Chyau is flawlessly convincing as 13-year-old
Ernest Chin, an overweight, budding writer who hates his angry, all-business
mom Ahma (Jade Wu), his cute but annoying little sister Katie (Alexis Kapp
Chang) and most of the losers who check into the brickfront inn. They're either
underclass families at their last stop before homelessness or hookers and their
johns (Mrs. Chin offers hourly rates — and knocks on doors with a baseball bat
when time's up).
The one good thing about his horrific job cleaning up
after the transients depart is that they sometimes leave intriguing artifacts —
still-smokable butts, uneaten takeout delights, Asian porn. Ernest shares these
treasures with
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the slightly older waitress Christine
("Memoirs of a Geisha's" Samantha Futerman), whose family runs the
Chinese restaurant in his woodsy, highway-out-of-town neighborhood.
Ernest is, of course, in love with Christine, unsure
about her feelings toward him and terrified of learning their true extent. When
Sam (Sung Kang, from "Better Luck Tomorrow"), a self-destructive
young Korean-American man, barrels into the motel for an extended
babes-and-booze bender, Ernest is curious and repulsed in equal measure. But
Sam needs a friend and Ernest longs for a father figure, no matter how
inappropriate. Sam teaches the kid some grown-up things, sets cautionary
examples and offers a lot of bad advice.
Everybody at "The Motel" is pretty
screwed-up, but even the worst of them tend to have a redeeming quality or two.
That, perhaps, is the most important lesson Ernest learns, though all the stuff
about girls is certainly more dramatic and traumatic. I don't know what
director Kang's early adolescence was like, but he's either analyzed it
astutely or has total recall of its discomforts.
Either
way, "The Motel" may be the truest teen dramedy of the year.
