White on Rice
Dir: David Boyle
Rating: 2.0/5.0
Variance Films
83 Minutes
Let's think about the status of Asian actors in Hollywood. If you're a famous actor in your native country, your Hollywood debut might have you playing a villain. A bum rap, but still a major role- consider Takeshi Kitano or Jet Li. If you're Asian-American, expect to play "Asian Med Student" and "Scientist #2" and maybe one day some forward-thinking television series decides to cast you as an actual character and people will know who you are, like Daniel Dae Kim or James Kyson Lee.
Looking at IMDB, most of the principal cast of White on Rice fits into the latter. There aren't enough films about the Asian-American experience, so it's special when one comes along (what was the last one, The Motel?). Unfortunately, White on Rice, despite the somewhat inflammatory title, is not directly about the Asian experience. It's a bit limiting to expect a film to court big racial issues just because of its cast, but that title just has too many connotations.
It's better that White on Rice not address racial issues, considering that director David Boyle, according to an interview, discovered Japanese people whilst doing a Mormon missionary expedition in Australia. This led to his debut film, Big Dreams Little Tokyo, in which he stars as a dude who wants desperately to be a Japanese businessman. Thankfully, in White on Rice Boyle and co-writer Joel Clark tell a story that could have featured any group of actors. Hiroshi Watanabe plays Jimmy (short for Hajime, the Japanese word for "beginning"), a 40-year-old who just moved back to the US from Japan after his wife left him. So now he works an office job and lives with his patient sister Aiko (Japanese pop star Nae), her way-too-old-for-her husband Tak (Mio Takata), and their precocious-yet-aloof 10-year-old son Bob (Justin Kwong).
The script for White on Rice is not good. It's a pseudo-episodic affair that at first exclusively follows Jimmy's attempts to find a new mate before deciding that Jimmy's status as a freeloader is the plot of the movie and a late-in-the-game subplot in which Jimmy's love interest Ramona (Lynn Chen) dating Jimmy's coworker (the aforementioned James Kyson Lee) seems a bit superfluous -- yep, that's about three premises in one movie. While Boyle and Clark give every character (except Aiko) something to do in addition to reacting to Jimmy -- Tak wants to do something nice for his wife, Bob's being completely neglected by everyone -- there's never any real threat or drama until a weird, tone-deaf episode where Tak slips and falls on a knife and Jimmy, Bob and a white guy in a karate gi (who I don't think was in the film before this point) have to rush him to the hospital. For the most part, everyone's nice to one another and put up with Jimmy with a smile.
However, the cast is likable and the jokes, while not always funny, are well-natured enough to keep me from stopping my DVD screener and just making up half of my review. Hiroshi Watanabe is particularly engrossing as the inexplicable Jimmy, who seems completely lacking in anything resembling social skill. Justin Kwong also proves a treat as Bob -- a gifted boy with the uncanny ability to find the nearest piano and play appropriate background music for a scene. Considerately, only once does he say something precociously intelligent for a kid.
A better title for White on Rice would be something cute like Beginning Jimmy. See? I give you pseudo-assonance and a secret pun and you give me nothing.
by Danny Djeljosevic
