The kids these days use the word “cringe” to describe anything uncomfortable or someone’s detestable behavior… and Asian Persuasion is full of both. An amalgam of Cyrano de Bergerac and every break-up/make-up movie, Asian Persuasion uses overtired Hollywood clichés to tell its story, but its own voice gets buried under implausible, overly exaggerated scenarios. It also espouses ugly masculinity in its lead character, who uses people as his puppets for his own ends.
The goal for this lead, Mickey (Dante Basco), is to get his now ex-wife Avery (KC Concepcion) to get married quickly so he can avoid paying alimony that he can’t afford with his income from owning a “shitty coffee shop in Brooklyn.” Right away, we see someone needing to avoid responsibility so much that he’s willing to create a fake dating profile for Avery and manipulate the mark that swipes right into earpiece-directed dates with her. He gets his friend Caspian (Kevin Kreider) to help him out, and when timid milquetoast Lee gets suckered into Mickey’s machinations, Mickey gets more than he bargained for – both in guiding Lee through successful dates with Avery and realizing that he doesn’t want to let Avery go.
Mike Ang’s script portrays women as one-dimensional, just there to be the object of desire or edgy BFFs, while the men get all the funny lines and loudly overcompensate for how ineffective and inconsequential they are. Caspian starts out a little more reserved and cool as the film’s voice of reason, but that only goes so far after seeing him volunteer his girlfriend Helene (Geneva Carr) as a test date – especially seeing how she has a wooden leg that gets put into jeopardy at least twice. Lee is pretty much afraid of his own shadow and can’t talk to women, but even after walking away from Mickey after getting somewhat catfished into a meeting with him, he agrees on the prospect of love happening between him and Avery.
But Mickey… whoof. He’s the most despicable of the bunch, walking away from a marriage he’s given up on and his dreams of running a Michelin-starred restaurant without so much as a whimper. Seen in the prologue signing divorce papers as if he can’t be bothered with it at all, he devises this silly plan to help himself, not his ex-wife or their daughter Sam (Scarlett Sher), who divides her time and love equally between the two. Mickey’s a boy who never grew up, but the Lost Boys in Neverland, this ain’t. (See Steven Spielberg’s 1991 Peter Pan story, Hook, which featured Dante Basco.) He’s entrenched himself with like-minded employees and friends, so is it any wonder that when Lee starts gaining actual romantic ground with Avery, Mickey starts wanting her back?
Asian Persuasion wants us to hope for the best for a man who doesn’t deserve it. Mickey is loud, arrogant, and controlling – I mean, for Pete’s sake, he’s telling Lee what to say to and order for Avery through an earpiece on their dates. Avery doesn’t have a chance to get to know the real Lee; with their differences in personality, she’d probably never even give him the time of day. But with Mickey feeding him corny line after corny line through their comms, the disgust for his character starts to pile on thick. It’s to Basco’s credit that he fashions such a wholly reprehensible character in Mickey, and you almost start to enjoy every setback Mickey has because he’s not a good guy. He doesn’t think of anyone but himself, and even when he tries to do something for someone else, it’s still his motivations and designs at the center, not a genuine act of selflessness. So when the big redemptive moment comes, do you think he’s earned it?
In form, Asian Persuasion feels like a stage play more than a film, with each actor seemingly waiting to speak rather than reacting naturally. Not one actor is at ease in this movie, save for Geneva Carr, who elevates Helene from a one-note character into someone believable and whole. It feels like not enough room has been given to anyone else to stretch and be at home with their scene opposites instead of just reciting lines. There are several stretches in which KC Concepcion and Paolo Montalban attempt to have some kind of chemistry, but it comes off more stilted and awkward. This might work, considering they’re not really supposed to be together in the first place, but it’s even more mismatched because Concepcion makes Avery look like she’s trying way too hard to make something happen, while Montalban’s Lee just kind of has this grimace on his face the entire time that’s supposed to be passing as a smile.
I had trouble sitting through this one because of how this film rides on manipulative, alpha male-type puffery. When we were twenty minutes in, I paused the movie, and in a conversation with my wife, I predicted how this movie would go; I was right about everything, down to the “big grand gesture that brings everyone back together.” I almost didn’t catch it because thirty minutes before the ending, I paused the screener and debated whether or not I should continue or even write this review. For what’s supposed to be a romantic comedy, Asian Persuasion is neither romantic nor funny. Mickey’s actions and words are not cute; they’re the kind of near-psychotic, stalkerish thing that would cause you to go no-contact with them. This wasn’t my cup of tea, regardless of my own Filipino ancestry and understanding the culture; this is a movie that would’ve sat well next to Swingers and other male-fronted comedies of the mid- to late-1990s. But this is the 2020s, and seeing men treating women like playthings as Asian Persuasion does is the definition of “cringe.”
