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A gentle, light, kid friendly comedy about a Chinese-American hoopster turned ping pong pro, Playa is a charming but considerable digression from director Jessica Yu's previous works.
All Critics (33) | Top Critics (14) | Fresh (21) | Rotten (12) | DVD (2)
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
Charming despite requisite training sequences and a cartoonishly evil opponent.
Ping Pong Playa falters on formula only occasionally, but otherwise remains a consistently agreeable romp that strikes just the right chord of ironic sentimentally.
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.
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.
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.
One way to break down cultural walls is assimilation, and that's where Ping Pong Playa has its dubious triumph: it's just about as generic as the next 'loser makes good by coaching kids' comedy...[Blu-ray]
An endless stream of near-misses.
Ace documentarian Jessica Yu's fictional feature debut ... is mostly funny and often cute, but it suffers a bit in comparison to the very similar Foot Fist Way ...
Overall the movie was enjoyable but not amazing.
Gently pokes fun at model minority and athletic stereotypes, but gets repetitive and wears thin before the engaging plot finally kicks into gear.
If you go into Ping Pong Playa' expecting a light, predictable comedy, it would be hard to come out unsatisfied.
"People always think that, you know, Chinese people are only good at math, martial arts, and mu shu pork, you know? But basketball, hey, that was really my thing back in the day, you know what I'm saying? I used to play on the JV squad." Ping Pong Playa is about Christopher "C-Dub" Wang. He's an underachieving, lazy young adult who has no ambitions. He spends his time playing video games, reading comic books, and making up excuses about why he's not in the NBA. Obviously it's genetic, he is Chinese and says that we are all short. He starts teaching a ping pong class and ultimately ends up competing in a ping pong competition in order to keep his families ping pong business thriving. Honestly I expected to find Ping Pong Playa horrible. It's anything but horrible though. Jimmy Tsai as C-Dub was great. The ping pong scenes were really well done. The movie was very funny and had a lot to say about different stereotypes, such as Chinese people can't drive. Ping Pong Playa turned out to be a cool little movie. Hey, it beats Balls of Fury.
Super Reviewer
Totally ridiculous and very well done : )
Stupid, but made me laugh. I ended up liking it...
Funny asian dude... Makes you laugh hard out ha ha ha
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