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Motel, The
Palm Pictures / ImaginAsian Pictures

Motel, The reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 70 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
6.9 out of 10
based on 16 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 17 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Jeffrey Chyau, Sung Kang, Jade Wu, Samantha Futerman, Stephen Chen, Alexis Chang, Jackson Budinger, and Conor J. White

Thirteen-year-old Ernest Chin lives and works at a sleazy hourly-rate motel on a strip of desolate suburban bi-way. Misunderstood by his family and blindly careening into puberty, Ernest befriends Sam Kim, a self-destructive yet charismatic Korean American man who has checked in. Sam teaches the fatherless boy all the rites of manhood. (Palm Pictures)


GENRE(S): Comedy  |  Drama  
WRITTEN BY: Michael Kang  
DIRECTED BY: Michael Kang  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: January 30, 2007 
Theatrical: June 28, 2006 
RUNNING TIME: 76 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

2005 Humanitas Prize

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

88
TV Guide Ken Fox
Kang's marvelously assured feature debut is a subtle adaptation of Ed Lin's acclaimed novel "Waylaid."
Read Full Review
83
The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Like the best independent films, The Motel realizes that life is made up of minor pleasures and tiny epiphanies, not sweeping character arcs or big dramatic moments.
Read Full Review
80
Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
There were half a dozen occasions, maybe more, when I roared out loud with laughter. This just may be a filmmaker with great things in him; this one's pretty damn good.
Read Full Review
80
The New York Times Stephen Holden
Michael Kang's small, perfectly observed portrait of Ernest Chin (Jeffrey Chyau), a Chinese-American boy who lives and works in a dingy downscale motel operated by his mother, captures the glum desperation of inhabiting the biological limbo of early adolescence.
Read Full Review
75
New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
Unlike so many indie films, Michael Kang's gently empathetic debut embraces eccentricity without drowning in its own hip irony.
Read Full Review
75
New York Post V.A. Musetto
Michael Kang makes an impressive feature directorial debut with The Motel. But the person to keep an eye on is Jeffrey Chyau, a student at the Bronx High School of Science, who is a delight in the lead role.
Read Full Review
75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
It's Kang's first feature and it suffers from rocky moments and an unsure eye, but his sense of detail is rich with prickly contradictions and he resists tidying up the story.
Read Full Review
75
San Francisco Chronicle G. Allen Johnson
Pleasant and surprisingly hard-edged coming-of-age indie film.
Read Full Review
75
Boston Globe Ty Burr
Kang balances the uproariously comic with the profoundly sad, and the two tones amplify each other with subtlety.
Read Full Review
70
The Hollywood Reporter Frank Scheck
Indie coming-of-age dramas are not exactly an endangered species, but Michael Kang's debut drama is an admirably intelligent and modest example of the genre.
Read Full Review
70
LA Weekly Tim Grierson
By not romanticizing its despairing yet humanistic outlook, The Motel presents a moment-by-moment emotional recap of almost anyone's formative years while simultaneously issuing a stinging reminder on the impossibility of fully outgrowing adolescence's uncertain searching.
Read Full Review
70
Los Angeles Times Sam Adams
A well-worn coming-of-age tale enlivened by pungent detail and a sharp visual sense.
Read Full Review
70
Film Threat Eric Campos
The backdrop of this seedy motel is just the perfect place to illustrate the awkward times of early teen life.
Read Full Review
70
Variety Joe Leydon
The Motel offers a fresh take on characters and conventions, and compels interest with shrewd, sympathy-inspiring storytelling.
Read Full Review
60
Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall
There's little originality in the joy rides, first kisses, and clashes with bullies, yet this 2005 debut feature by writer-director Michael Kang captures the small triumphs of a boy becoming a man.
Read Full Review
40
Village Voice Michael Atkinson
The Motel, Michael Kang's modest Sundance applause reaper, doesn't deserve to be shotgunned for the sins of 30 other movies. But the underwhelming syncopation of make-nice clichés is too familiar.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 6.9 (out of 10) based on 17 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Chad S. gave it a7:
What "The Motel" has in common with a seemingly disparate film like Justin Lin's "Better Luck Tomorrow" is that the universality of people begets a common ground that preordains genre as largely being colorblind. This little gem is more of a coming-of-age film than it's an Asian-American one, but make no mistake, "The Motel" is a quietly important indie that knowingly acknowledges, then eschews the stereotypes which hinder Asian-American characters from being real people. "The Motel" opens at a Chinese restaurant, but interestingly, we never go inside it. This occupational staple of the "Oriental" is where the protagonist's dream girl(Christine, as played by Samantha Futerman) works. We follow Ernest(Jeffrey Chyau) to his family business, and it's not a Chinese laundry service. Like the characters in "Better Luck Tomorrow", there's more to Ernest and Christine than being mere bookworms. The boy is interested in porn. The girl likes to drink and smoke. It's brilliant how these polluting influences prevent "The Motel" from being too sweet, too easy to love. This film smartly shows how pornography retards the relationships between men and women. Even though the rocky relations between mother and son ends in mutual atonement, predictably mawkish, replete with tears; and too much time is devoted to Ernest's mentorship with a Korean motel-guest(Sung Kang), "The Motel" is most definitely worth checking out. Or is that checking in?

Joe K. gave it a10:
Great first feature! Not for the type of audience that needs everything spelled out. Lots of stuff going on in there. I've seen it a couple times now and I keep finding new layers. Definitely worth seeing at least once.

Ken G. gave it a4:
Flat, kind of drab movie, and there are problems with 2 of the main characters. The kid is simply too nerdy and wimpy to be likable, and the male guest who takes him under his wing is seriously underwritten. Plus, it is never clear why this guest becomes so interested in the kid.

[Anonymous] gave it a4:
starts out decent and evenntually falls out flat with a bad plot and a dull screen presence.

sister tycoon gave it an8:
Excellent acting and directon by robert wooosie. Go see it. I loved it. Could have been better but its really fun.

Robin Hood gave it a6:
Kinda Dull and Boring but a good enough plot to be watchable.

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