White on Rice (2009)

I came across a trailer for White on Rice (2009) back around the year it was opening. The premises and indie-ness of the film intrigued me and I had it on a list of movies I wanted to watch at some point in time. Cut to the present, and I'm in a Dramatic Writing class where I've decided to write a play somewhere along the lines of themes expressed by David Henry Hwang and other Asian American writers. During a brainstorm session of trying to pinpoint exactly what story I wanted to write, I remembered the name of this film and looked it up. I was pleasantly surprised to see White on Rice's IMDB page had a link to a full version of the movie (except with Hulu ads, but eh, I'll take what I can get). So I watched it to see if I could glean anything from it.

Before I get into any of my personal speculations on its themes, I thought the movie overall was quite charming. 40 year old Jimmy is in something of a rut in his life. He sleeps in the top bunk of his nephew's bed while living off of his sister Aiko's oblivious generosity and testing the patience of her husband, Tak. Jimmy's just a little out of touch with his life ever since his wife left him, so he thinks that if he could just get re-married all his problems would be solved. But when Tak's niece comes to live with the family, Jimmy gets a huge crush on her, and all of his intentions to win her affection go seriously wrong.

It's a comedy, for sure. The writing is rather crisp, and the comedic timing on the actors' parts hits the mark for most of the film. It was also nice to see that while the bulk of the story's conflict rests on Jimmy, the film also shows some of Tak's struggles as well, which was a nice juxtaposition. And on a more fanboy-ish note, James Kyson Lee, who played Ando on the tv series Heroes, has a supporting role in the filme too. Wee!

Now I really like the indie-ness of the movie, I really do. It's quaint and delightful in all the right places. My question is, why did Dave Boyle, who wrote and directed the film, decide to go with a Japanese-American family as as the main players? I feel the story could've been told exactly the same, but just replace all the Asian characters with White ones. With the exception of Bobby, Jimmy's nephew and Aiko and Tak's son, being the model child for all over-achieving Asian-American children, everything else in the context of the story could easily be done with White characters. Does making the family and supporting characters Asian give the movie a more interesting appeal versus had it been written with a White family and dominantly white supporting cast? I really don't know. But it does appear that Mr. Boyle has a thing for working with Asian Americans as I've checked that his previous works do feature Asian American artists.

I'm not complaining, really. I'm just rather curious as to why this choice was made because going into the film I really thought it'd play more on Asian American themes. Themes I might've been able to take inspiration from and use in my own work, obviously. Ahem. Roight then.