Keanu Reeves makes 'Always be My Maybe' a Sure Thing

FINALLY, AN ASIAN-American movie that you can savour without choking on the painfully self-absorbed pathos of second-generation immigrants torn between upholding cultural traditions and assimilating into the society they grew up in.

In the refreshingly breezy Always Be My Maybe, Sasha Tran (Ali Wong) and Marcus Kim (Randall Park) are self-absorbed, yes, but not any more than your average 30-somethings looking for love in all the wrong restaurants. That's what makes it so enjoyable because this is a romantic comedy first, and Asian a far, matter-offact, second.

Here's how it plays out. Sasha and Marcus are childhood best friends - she's a latchkey kid whose immigrant parents are too busy with their convenience store totake care of her; he's the Korean kid next door who welcomes her with his mother's kimchi jjigae and dorky friendship. They grow up, they have sex - which ends badly - she goes off to college and they lose touch for the next 15 years. Then Sasha comes back to San Francisco as a celebrity chef opening a new restaurant and bumps into Marcus - an underachiever who helps his widowed father with his air conditioning repair business when he's not rapping with his struggling group Hello Peril, a riff on Yellow Peril.