“Love in Taipei” is a cute, wholesome, and fun movie geared for teens and tweens. Unfortunately, it is also predictable and at times heavy-handed with the message it’s trying to convey about self-discovery and following your dreams despite parental expectations. If you can overlook the by-the-numbers beats, which are common in many perfectly acceptable movies, the movie can delight and satisfy.
Based on the New York Times best-selling YA novel “Loveboat, Taipei” by Abigail Hing Wen, the movie follows Ever Wong (Ashley Liao) after her parents send her to a cultural immersion program in Taipei, Taiwan, for the summer. What her parents believe to be a resume-building camp is, in fact, a no-rules “Loveboat” where students sneak out and go clubbing at night. Love triangle warning: Ever is attracted to both the preppy overachiever Rick Woo (Ross Butler) and the brooding artist Xavier Yeh (Nico Hiraga), all while torn between what her parents expect and pursuing her secret passion for dance.
Mochi spoke to the novel’s author Wen — also an executive producer of the film — about diversity and representation on screen, the challenges of adapting a book into a movie, and wearing sweaters in Taipei.
Making Room for All Stories
I’m a firm believer that Asian stories do not have to be traumatic, shocking, or award-winning in order to exist. In this sense, this movie does its job. “Love in Taipei” is a perfectly fine, breezy, reasonably entertaining, summer, coming-of-age movie. It’s enjoyable, the people are beautiful, and the overall message is all about finding your own way.
“There are infinite stories in our community,” Wen tells me, saying she hopes her cast will go on to be discovered into other non-ethnic specific roles in Hollywood, “and we should have all of them. No one story should have to bear the burden of representing all of Asian America — which was the burden of…
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