It is hard to know quite what to make of Boogie, which is the debut film of polymath Eddie Huang (TV’s Fresh Off the Boat). While it can’t be said to contain supremely nuanced scenes, or especially original filmmaking, neither of these absences are necessarily problems. It is both a coming-of-age story and a sports drama, from the point of view of a marginalized young man and is geared, I think, toward teens. It could potentially do very well with this perhaps more forgiving audience. Were it not for some fatal mistakes in the its conception, it would be easier to drop objections. 

Alfred Chin (Taylor Takahashi), who goes by the nickname “Boogie,” is the teenage son of struggling Chinese American parents in Flushing, Queens, and he is a basketball prodigy. He carries himself with pride, he has a quick temper, and he stifles his emotional life. His parents (Perry Yung and Pamelyn Chee) are bitter, often angry at one another, always pressed for money, and have conflicting ideas about their son. His father dreams of Boogie entering the NBA, his mother is more concerned with him potentially securing a scholarship, and they frequently come to blows.

Nevertheless, Boogie has moved to a new high school where he easily outplays everyone on the basketball team, for one simple reason: it puts him in line to play against Monk (the late Pop Smoke), an exciting young player, which could draw the attention of those who could further his dreams. Like most sports films, the action leads up to the big game in which these two come to blows. 

The major theme is the not-so-subtle racism toward Asian Americans, especially in the world of basketball. However, the film also deals more generally with Boogie’s growing up, with the many strains on his family and his desire to find a place for himself in a world. The treatment of these matters is usually quite obvious. There is, for instance, a conversation about The Catcher in the Rye in Boogie’s English class about whether Holden Caulfield, as a privileged white teenager, is worth sympathy, which seems like it could have been lifted from a Twitter feed. Whenever the film’s themes surface in the dialogue, they fall into the same category. But, for a younger audience, that might not be such a bad thing, and the film is both well acted and well paced. 

The action does not really contain surprises, and much of it is not believable, like in many high-stakes sports movies (the to-die-for offers from prominent sports teams). Yet where the movie really falters is in its treatment of Boogie’s romance with Eleanor (Taylour Paige). Boogie first approaches her in the gym, where he has obviously been watching her (and she’s noticed). He makes a comment, a blatant example of sexual harassment, that struck me as an insurmountable mistake, one that I cannot easily imagine any man redeeming himself from. Eleanor walks away from him in anger, and is very unfriendly toward him whenever she encounters him until, somehow, he woos her. While she chides him for his overconfidence and tries to get him to think more about others, his early blunder is still treated as a more or less harmless side effect of his ego. Human psychology is complex, people do not always behave as you expect, but this oversight comes across as a major flaw in Huang’s writing. 

In addition, Eleanor’s role is largely as a foil to Boogie, though when we first meet her, she has very much a will of her own. Yet, as the story goes on, she more and more assumes the role of a listener as Boogie divulges thematic material through the dialogue, and if she speaks about herself, it is also to clearly state the film’s themes. It is a testament to Paige’s ability as an actor that she suggests the presence of a real person when so much of her material is second rate. 

If the movie did not contain a drastic misstep, I might have thought it would be a good film for younger audiences, especially those who are looking for representation. As it stands, it is a hard film to recommend to anyone, which is a shame.