Sake-Bomb

Sebastian (Eugene Kim) is the proprietor of FOBMotherfucker.com, a video blog featuring his thoughtful if angry videos on racial stereotypes and American culture. He's also the biggest hater himself, so when his cousin Naoto (Gaku Hamada) arrives from Japan looking for a long-lost love, Sebastian bristles. His girlfriend has just dumped him, he's unemployed, and he has to drive his FOB—fresh off the boat—cousin from L.A. to points far north. Sake-Bomb is unabashedly a montage-ridden buddy/road flick, and an irreverent and honest one at that. "Asians are bad at sports. Wrong!" Sebastian shouts into his camera with the same fed-up tone he takes with everyone. "We're good at sports—just not the ones we didn't invent." For all of Sebastian's understandable rage, though, he has the emotional maturity of a wastoid about 12 credits deep at the U of Bro, and the film glosses over all the meaningful scenes with weepy music. Most of the time, though, it goes for laughs at any expense. After an opening sequence showing Naoto carefully making top-grade sake, his boss asks him, "Did you have a boner this morning?" While it's refreshing for a film to ask a question any half-sober viewer could answer, Sake-Bomb fizzles because it's incapable of asking anything deeper.

Critic's Grade: C+

SEE IT: Sake-Bomb plays at the Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Sunday and Thursday, 9 pm Monday-Tuesday and 10 pm Wednesday, Jan. 26-30.

WWeek 2015