‘American Born Chinese’ Review: We’re All Walt’s Children
When it came out 17 years ago, Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel “American Born Chinese” was singular in several ways: for its focus on everyday Asian American characters; for the way it used Chinese mythology to amplify and deepen its story of immigrant anomie and identity; and for the collagelike, stop-and-start manner in which it told the story. It was, perhaps, more worthy than exciting, but both its novelty and its seriousness made it stand out.
The eight-episode Disney+ series “American Born Chinese,” very loosely based on Yang’s book, premieres on Wednesday in, if not a different world, then in a very different pop-culture environment. Its Asianness is notable but not novel; two members of its cast, Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan, won Oscars in March (and a third, Stephanie Hsu, was nominated) for “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the latest landmark in the Asian or Asian-themed film-music-television wave. That the list of writers and directors for “American Born Chinese” is almost entirely Asian is, in 2023, an expectation rather than a surprise.
All of which is a long way of getting to the point that while “American Born Chinese” offers a number of things you could expect — a textured depiction of first- and second-generation immigrant suburban life, a flashy incorporation of characters from the classic Chinese novel “Journey to the West,” a critique of Hollywood’s history of racist depictions of Asians — those things no longer define, or delimit, the experience of watching it or thinking about it. The operative word here isn’t American or Chinese but Disney. And the fusion that matters the most isn’t the one between East and West but the entirely commercial one between high school dramedy and martial-arts-inflected superhero action.
So the somewhat disappointing report is that after 17 years, “American Born Chinese” is an entirely typical half-hour teenage comic-drama-supernatural adventure series. On the good side, the family at its core — the teenager Jin Wang (Ben Wang) and his parents, Christine and Simon (Yeo Yann Yann and Chin Han) — are sensitively drawn and given excellent performances, and the naturalistic parts of the story that focus on their home life and Jin’s struggles at school often have humor and a quiet but sure emotional pull.
Source: The New York Times
