Reunion

Reunion is a comedic story about Guy Park (Jake Choi), a lonely Asian American man who works as a mortitian who is about to lose his family business. He gets an invitation to a twentieth high school reunion for the class of 2005 and he decides to go for a myriad of reasons that still make no sense to me, due to various inconsistencies in the story. I assume this resulted from a combination of rewrites and killing darlings, because overall the writing & direction of John W. Kim was on point. At the reunion, Guy is forcefully mistaken for an alumni who just so happens to be a billionaire and he simply goes along with it which results in the other alumni being performative & overly nice to him because they all want access to his assumed wallet. There is a style vs substance disconnect which causes both to suffer for it. At some points the movie begins to hit a flow and the sociopolitical commentary starts to hit but it is interrupted by post production choices in editing and music. Almost as if they needed more time but were racing a deadline. The cinematography was beautiful, the lighting was spectacular, and the sound design was overwhelmingly inconsistent. The entire supporting cast is great with some notable standouts; Madeline Zima as Molly was delightfully charming, Frantz Latten's performance as Brad was nuanced & believable, Helena Mattsson as Angela "Bliss" Baskin was shamelessly perfect, and Kelli Garner's Lena was played with a tenderness that helped carry the story. Despite any critiques of the film, Jake Choi's performance outshines all the flaws and maintains an engaging presence throughout the movie. I hope to see him in more films in the future. Hopefully we will see more films from John W. Kim as well, there's incredible potential there.