Mostly a little shrewder about stereotypes than your typical slacker comedy, deriving its edge from Yu and Tsai's mining of the cultural specificity of Asian-America for laughs

| Aug 8, 2009

Charming despite requisite training sequences and a cartoonishly evil opponent.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 18, 2008

Ping Pong Playa falters on formula only occasionally, but otherwise remains a consistently agreeable romp that strikes just the right chord of ironic sentimentally.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 12, 2008

There is nothing charming about this man, nothing that makes him loveable, and if he was even slightly worthy of my sympathies and my understanding I certainly didn't see it watching this.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 12, 2008

There's no resisting the movie's antic affability or its irreverence, even with Chris's unavoidable progression toward the mature appreciation of his roots.

| Sep 11, 2008

The movie doesn't take its broad, jokey premise terribly far, but it manages to sustain a goofy-sweet comic energy and offers sly observations about assimilation, sibling rivalry and the art of competitive maternal bragging.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 5, 2008

A decidedly lightweight amusement, the first comedy from documentary filmmaker Jessica Yu is the sort of movie that works best if you keep your expectations low.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 5, 2008

A mostly amusing, appealing family comedy about going from pretender to contender, in life as well as pingpong.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 5, 2008

Interest in Playa lies in the fact that director Jessica Yu is a documentarian with a daring taste in subjects. Yet in her first non-doc feature, she plays it safe; even the championship showdown feels polite.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Sep 5, 2008

There's a deeper, touching acknowledgment of braggadocio as persona, how the commodified dissent of hip-hop lends itself to masking insecurities.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 5, 2008

Aside from the casting and the location shooting, there's not much to distinguish Ping Pong Playa from Ladybugs or The Mighty Ducks.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Sep 4, 2008

The setup has been trotted out a million times before, and the movie's novel SoCal Chinese-American milieu only partially excuses the familiarity.

| Original Score: 2/6 | Sep 4, 2008

A winning comedy that entertainingly elevates a low-profile sport.

Full Review | Sep 3, 2008

A good, clean, fun comedy that uses a table tennis championship to crack inside jokes about Los Angeles' Chinese-American community.

Full Review | Sep 3, 2008

This thin premise can't sustain a feature, and the racial and gay jokes are jarring, but the child actors are cute.

| Sep 3, 2008

[W]hen the characters are this charming and the dialogue is this smart, you won't mind watching a little white ball clonk its way from paddle to tabletop and back again.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 2, 2008

Jessica Yu's film, a 180-degree tonal shift from her previous Protagonist, diligently retreads Adam Sandler and Napoleon Dynamite territory.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 2, 2008