Poor Poor Wang Wang - A Review of Didi

If you've ever felt like an outsider, this film is for you.

(I know that's 98% of you.)

If you've ever felt like an outsider, this film is for you. (I know that's 98% of you.)

Is this movie sad or happy. I’ll let you decide.

I feel very lucky today. I got to go and see a movie that I wasn't sure I'd be able to. The movie was Didi. It's about a boy called Wang Wang and what his life was in 2008. The director, Sean Wang, had a brief segment before the movie where he explains what he was looking to accomplish. Wang wanted to make a very specific movie that everyone could connect to. He mentioned the film Stand By Me where a bunch of kids leave home together to find a dead body they heard about, and get into it with Kiefer Sutherland and his gang… or something Regardless, with Didi, the director accomplished his goal with flying colors.

I gurgled up so many old memories while watching this Asian kid make it through life. I remembered times I thought my parents were unfair, the times I broke up with my friends and vice versa, the times girls I liked broke my heart. A whole gamut of personal triumphs and terrible failures come with the territory. This film is both gorgeous and horrible. It will make you spit up your backlogged memories when you see it.

What's Didi about, exactly?

Didi is the story of a Taiwanese kid living a lower middle class life with his mother, his sister, and his grandmother. His father isn't around and doesn't seem to call or make plans. He's basically a non-father, so it's Wang Wang’s mother who shares space with the rest of his family. In Chinese, “didi” means "little brother" and is a term of endearment when used by one's parents. When I was growing up, everyone called me Mike-Mike. Maybe that's what made me so excited to see this film. DiDi. Mike-Mike. We're basically the same kid.

Wang Wang likes to film things. He has a camera and goes out with his very 2008 friends and finds very stupid things to do with them. The movie never captures how he got that camera, but in my mind, I could see Wang Wang begging his mother to get him one with her working extra hours to make it happen. Wang Wang and his friends blow up mailboxes, use words we don't use anymore to describe each other and are slowly getting addicted to discovering life through social media. It was harder to do and wasn't considered a disease back then.

Wang Wang spends most of his time on the 2008 version of apps. Classic YouTube, My Space, old school Facebook when you could see what your friends were doing, and without constant advertisements. Can you remember what it was like back then? Can you remember the world before "enshittification" and monopolies changed everything? I can, but don't worry tech companies. Those memories are fading quickly.

Wang Wang feels like an outsider. He is friends with kids who steal his phone to talk to girls on his behalf. He doesn't say much until he gets angry. He's trapped in the body of a pubescent boy who wants to be cool. Didi is a film about memories and decisions. Good ones and mortifying ones. You never know what this young outsider will do, but you want him to win. You want him to figure things out. You want him to talk to people. You want him to admit what he feels and fix his problems. You just... never know if he will. I think that's what makes this movie worth watching.

I remember being the kid who was afraid of new people. I remember ruining relationships with friends and women. I remember feeling like an outsider and believing I was an unloveable mess of a person. As much as this movie is about young Wang Wang, it is a movie about us. Those of us who grew up in the internet generation. Those of us who would pitch a fit if we weren't into a "so-called" friend's My Space top 8. Those of us who would use Facebook updates to guide our dealings. Those of us who knew we were going to disappoint our parents.

We were all born with a legacy to live up to, but many of us don't do what we need to get there. That hurts. However, we're also the ones who can live lives filled with discovery and passion. It doesn't always last, but nothing ever does.

Should I Go See Didi

Absolutely.

Especially if you are a part of this internet generation. I'm a little older than my 25-year-old brother, but I'd love for him to take the time and watch a film like this. It might not hit him in the same way it hits me, but it will hit him all the same. If there were any worthy watches for our generations, Didi should be on the list.

So congratulations to Sean Wang, the writer, and director, Joan Chen who is Wang Wang's mother, and Issac Wang who played Wang Wang. They and the rest of the team made an amazing movie that harkens back to what the world used to be and how the world used to feel. That's where the success of Didi is. It makes you feel things, which is what we want movies to do.