Didi review: A brilliantly observed drama, WRITES Brian Viner

Didi (15, 94 minutes)

Verdict: Brilliantly observed drama

Judgement:

With summer holidays just around the corner and some parents looking forward to the endless, arid landscape of the Gobi Desert, there’s a big hooray for the country’s cinemas, which at least offer a few oases of entertainment.

This week’s top pick is Didi, a funny, poignant and haunting coming-of-age drama that will appeal not only to older teens, but also to many adults who can still vividly remember the torments of those years: stains, crushes, awkward dates, peer pressure, hateful older siblings, you name it.

What’s more, Sean Wang’s partly autobiographical film — a hugely impressive debut — will resonate even more with anyone whose teenage years were complicated by immigrant parents, well-meaning single mothers, or headstrong live-in grandmothers. Thirteen-year-old Chris (impeccably played by Izaac Wang) is saddled with all three.

It’s 2008. Chris (“Didi” to his lovers, “Wang Wang” to his buddies) lives in Fremont, California, with his Taiwanese mother Chungsing (the wonderful Joan Chen), big sister Vivian (Shirley Chen), and paternal grandmother Nai Nai (Chang Li Hua, the director’s real-life grandmother). Chris’s father is far away in Taiwan and sends money home, though his absence is deeply resented by Chungsing and a source of ongoing conflict between her and her elderly mother-in-law.

The household is indeed conflicted, with Chungsing watching proudly but uneasily as her all-California children adjust; and Chris and Vivian often watching screaming loggerheads. But with all three women in the house, Chris’s relationships evolve. It’s very tenderly written and acted.

Outside of the home, his life is equally fraught. He has a crush on his classmate Madi, with exciting but unnerving hints that she might be receptive. “You’re cute for an Asian,” she says, and he likes to take that as encouragement rather than condescension or just plain racism.

As for his male friendships, they come and go as Chris navigates the burgeoning minefield of social media. At school, he stands up to bullies, but that gets him into trouble. At the local mall, he befriends some cool older kids, skateboarding dudes, who invite him to be their official videographer. He’s flattered and excited, but as in other areas of his life, his eagerness to fit in trips him up. It’s not long before his skateboarding adventure comes to an end.

Some of this is sad, some of it is hilarious. But it’s all completely believable, hugely engaging, and the director very cleverly avoids wrapping things up with pat resolutions, rejecting all the usual trajectories of rites-of-passage films.

Better yet, he keeps it to just over an hour and a half, which isn’t great in the context of the school holidays, a time-consuming affair that could fill an afternoon, but it amounts to the kind of concise and compelling storytelling that some filmmakers far more experienced than Wang no longer consider valid, unfortunately.

Harold and the Purple Crayon (PG, 92 min.)

Pronunciation: Delete the original

Judgement:

An option for much younger children, Harold And The Purple Crayon is based on the book of the same name, which my own children loved when they were little. Unfortunately, Carlos Saldanha’s film makes little attempt to recreate the spirit of it.

Crockett Johnson’s charming 1955 fairy tale was about a little boy who created a magical nighttime world with his purple crayon and returned home safely by drawing a window around the moon.

The ending always elicited a satisfied, sleepy sigh from our kids, so 20 years later I’m embarrassed to tell them that in the film, Harold (Zachary Levi) is a crazy, grown man who befriends a boy named Mel (Benjamin Bottani) while he’s running wild with his crayon in the real world.

It’s fun in places, with faint echoes of the 1970s TV series Mork & Mindy . Zooey Deschanel, as Mel’s widowed mother Terri, might have been cast for her resemblance to Pam Dawber, who played Mindy all those years ago. Jemaine Clement is a hoot as scheming librarian Gary, who has his eye on Terri.

But all that could not assuage my simmering indignation, so far is the story from Crockett’s original.

Kensuke’s Kingdom (PG, 85 min.)

Verdict: Weirdly retro

Judgement:

Kensuke’s Kingdom is another film adaptation, an animated version of a novel by author Michael Morpurgo.

Our hero is a young boy named Michael (voiced by Aaron MacGregor) who is swept overboard while sailing around the world with his parents (Sally Hawkins and Cillian Murphy). He and the family dog ​​Stella wash up on a remote island in the Pacific, where an elderly Japanese war veteran (Ken Watanabe) watches over him.

Featuring a top-notch voice cast and a script by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Kensuke’s Kingdom promises more than it delivers.

The film is full of charm, but the line-art animation is disturbingly retro and strangely reminiscent of another 70s classic: Scooby-Doo. All films are in theaters now.

Mary celebrates 60 supercalifragilistic years!

This month marks the 60th anniversary of the release of one of the most delightful children’s films of all time, the glorious Mary Poppins. A few years ago, at the Venice Film Festival, I had the privilege of hearing the mighty Dame Julie Andrews talk about it.

She had no trouble. The 1964 film won her an Oscar for Best Actress. It was a cheerful set, thanks in no small part to her co-star Dick Van Dyke, who as Bert the chimney sweep may have mangled his Cockney vowels but spread cheer wherever he went.

Karen Dotrice, who played Jane Banks, tells happy stories about how Van Dyke became like a father figure to her and has similar fond memories of Walt Disney.

On their free weekends, Disney flew her, her mother and sisters in his private jet (named ‘Mickey Mouse One’) to his beautiful ranch in Palm Springs. But because young Dotrice was afraid of flying, he had it decorated like the interior of a candy store.

It’s nice to know that Mary Poppins was as much fun to make as it was to watch.

That said, the 2013 film Saving Mr Banks, as much as I enjoyed it, ultimately softened the hard edges of the wonderful Mary Poppins author PL Travers, played by Emma Thompson.

Richard Sherman, one half of the film’s brilliant songwriting team along with his brother Bob, went to his grave earlier this summer remembering Travers as “a walking icicle.”

Mary Poppins is now playing in select theaters and available to stream on Disney+.