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Generally favorable reviews - based on 16 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 17 Ratings

  • Summary: 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) Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 14 out of 16
  2. Negative: 0 out of 16
  1. Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    88
    Kang's marvelously assured feature debut is a subtle adaptation of Ed Lin's acclaimed novel "Waylaid."
  2. 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.
  3. 80
    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.
  4. 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.

See all 16 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 6
  2. Negative: 0 out of 6
  1. JoeK.
    10
    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. Expand
  2. sistertycoon
    8
    Excellent acting and directon by robert wooosie. Go see it. I loved it. Could have been better but its really fun.
  3. ChadS.
    7
    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? Expand
  4. KenG.
    4
    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. Expand

See all 6 User Reviews

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