Hey, sometimes I am in the room and my wife puts on a movie and I am just compelled to not leave due to laziness... But then it turns out to not be too bad a thing thats on! I ponder and will assume Netflix did this to whet any appetites of those having just seen Crazy Rich Asians (which Netflix originally bid on to produce) and wanting more Asian-led rom coms.
More than that, it's shot with what look like (to get oddly technical) good prime lenses so that it doesnt have that sort of cheap look that TV or even other direct-to-Netflix movies have sometimes. I feel bad this didnt get a chance to be seen in theaters, but on the other hand this may get seen by a lot more people than if it were only in theaters a couple of weeks and then brushed to DVD.
This doesnt mean it is without some of the conventions of the genre (I guess they try to get around the "Gay Best Friend" by not making him exactly a "best" one - also, a token, which we haven't seeb un a while I guess). It also has the most non- "ill kill you!" -reveal reveal in a long time. But the main characters have great chemistry and it doesn't feel forced for a moment - or, at the least, I like seeing these two figuring things out as young people sort of stumbling into romance.
And Lana Condor having a star-making turn here aside (she's pretty, but her acting is subtle enough to make this premise not seem too ridiculous), there's a guy here, the other male lead who I forget his name now, who seems to be the high school clone (in voice especially) of Mark Ruffalo.
