Title: Didi
Year Released: 2024
Screenwriter: Sean Wang
Director: Sean Wang
Network Found On: Currently available for purchase on most streaming outlets.
Rating: R
Main Actors: Izaac Wang, Joan Chen, Shirley Chen, Chang Li Hua
Plot Summary: This movie takes place over the summer of 2008 in Fremont, CA. 13-year-old Chris lives with his mother, his sister (Vivian) and his grandmother. Chris’ father works and lives in Taiwan. Chris has a typical, antagonistic relationship with Vivian, and his mother has the same type of antagonistic relationship with her mother-in-law. Chris hangs out with his friends Fahad and Soup, and they make silly YouTube videos. Chris starts flirting with his crush Madi, starting on MySpace, and moving to Facebook (as this movie takes place in the early days of the social media transition from MySpace to Facebook). All is going well with Madi until Chris gets nervous when she is about to kiss him, and they grow distant, and he eventually blocks her. Chris’ friends grow distant as well as they start to become interested in girls. Chris feels inadequate as he keeps getting compared to one of his mother’s friends’ children, and eventually he blows up at his mom and runs away from home. When he returns, he reconciles with his mother as she tells him stories about how Vivian ran away at 14-years-old. She reassures Chris that, although she dreamt of being a famous painter, he makes her incredibly happy, and she is immensely proud of the man he is becoming.
Quality of the media: This movie is excellent, both the writing and the cinematography. It won the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Taking place in 2008, the director added all those little touches that someone who remembers 2008 would say “oh yeah, I remember that!” There is a mix of subtitles (for when the characters are speaking Chinese) as well as English spoken in the movie. This movie was simply all around a great movie!
Opinion: I cannot recommend this movie more! For someone like myself that grew up in the East Bay, 20 miles north of where this movie was filmed, everything in the movie is so familiar. In one scene Chris and Fahad are playing miniature golf at Golfland with some girls from school, and I was thinking to myself “hey I did that when I was that age, at that exact same miniature golf course!” The story that Wang tells in this movie was a very relatable one for me – the struggle of a boy going from junior high school to high school, trying to figure out who he is, who is friends are, starting to become interested in girls, feeling pressure to succeed, knocking heads with siblings and parents – it all resonated with me. And the end of the movie is touching and it is clear that everything is going to work out okay for Chris and his mom.
Library Program: Even though this is an R-rated movie, this could be a good movie for an outdoor family movie night during the summer. Common Sense Media rates this movie as “age 14+”, so I think pointing parents towards that information could clear up any concerns about this being rated R. There is some drug use (marijuana) and drinking, but these days kids and teens can see that on network television. This is an exceptionally good movie, and I think the message it imparts would be a valuable one to all families who see it.
Komentáře