Joy Ride director Adele Lim is defending her R-rated comedy against a poorly-received tweet by a film reviewer who claims the film is against white men.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jackson Murphy, a film critic for Albany, NY’s 99.5 The River, wrote on Twitter that he felt Joy Ride was “embarrassing” and “incredibly unpleasant.”
“Like most modern adult ‘comedies’ it’s raunchy simply to be raunchy, forgetting there has to be humor attached and there’s none of that,” he continued. “Objectifies men, targets white people. All shock value, ‘look at me’ attitude.”
Lim, who has screenplay credits on influential Asian-American films such as Disney‘s Raya and the Last Dragon and Warner Bros.’ Crazy Rich Asians, wrote a rebuttal on Twitter, writing, “Imma need ‘Objectifies men, targets white people’ on a tshirt.”
Imma need “Objectifies men, targets white people” on a tshirt https://t.co/5oEggiF2Og
— Adele Lim (@adeleBlim) July 5, 2023
As she told The Hollywood Reporter in a recent interview, Lim talked about how much pressure is placed on Joy Ride as the first of its kind in comedic films.
“It’s the first time that we are putting four Asian faces in the middle of an R-rated comedy,” she said. “If you fuck up–if a project with a queer lead, a Black lead or an Asian lead fails–the industry’s knee-jerk reaction is to blame it on the otherness. You don’t want that fear to paralyze you and keep you from creating from a place of joy.”
Instagram account Very Asian has recounted several of Murphy’s reviews of films starring Asian casts and written by Asian writers, including critical and fan favorites Past Lives and Everything Everywhere All At Once. The tweets from Murphy’s past reviews show a pattern of devaluing films about pan-Asian experiences.
When writing about Past Lives, Murphy wrote, “I like #PastLives thought I wanted to love it. Relatively slow pace works, performances are respectable and a couple of key sections dig deep. But the dialogue is too on the nose, the themes get a little muddled and I have issues with the story structure and the first & final scenes.”
When writing about Everything Everywhere All At Once, Murphy wrote the film was “messy” with “[o]verblown action, editing and attempts at satire.”
“Most of all I figured out the (simple) core themes and goals very early on: reconnection, growing up, life paths. From a story standpoint no surprises,” he wrote.
