Tubi is often like playing Russian roulette, but there’s more than one bullet in the chamber. The chances are not in your favor. It has offered filmmakers a huge opportunity to get their films onto a platform, but also it becomes like hunting for the Ark of the Covenant. So, when Tubi goes out of their way to brand something a Tubi original, i expect them to roll out the red carpet. break from your normal fast channel strategy, and perhaps seek a sponsor who is comfortable with running an ad at the beginning. Ad supported versions of the services sometimes do this with product they don’t want interrupted. it would be nice for Tubi to make their “original” feel like King for a day. It also would be nice if they included audio description.

Sadly, they did not, which is why this review is less about the film, and more about the experience of trying to watch it as a blind viewer. I went in with at least optimistic tendencies due to the casting of Lana Condor and Ross Butler, who were being billed as the leads in this romantic comedy. What you actually get is a mess of a film to follow. Four stories, which really are not connected in any way, are told against the backdrop of Seattle. So while there is a fourth of the film dedicated to the budding love between Condor and Butler in a way that is slightly reminiscent of Before Sunrise, if those two had social media, we also get a young high school couple in love despite disapproval from an uncle, a couple in a will they/won’t they on the set of a film, and a couple struggling to recover from a miscarriage.

Not knowing this was structured like this, and then having forced commercial breaks killing momentum, made for a rather unfortunate experience. I say unfortunate, because this cast is stacked with Asian American talent and dropping during their history month. We rarely get films like this with full casts of Asian talent, not just in a film, but in a romantic dramady, where the stories and themes are universal, and their culture isn’t exploited in a way that suggests they can only be represented if they bring along their stereotypes.

I want to like this movie, and it seems at least likely decent, but it was like a test of patience and fortitude to try and follow this without audio descriptionn. If I appeared in this, I’d still tell blind and low vision audiences to stay away. it desperately needs audio description to help the stories, which really do not intersect, have some semblance of coherence. As it stands, I’m more confused than not, and I’d rather have waited for my accessibility needs to be met. I may not be the target audience, and see myself in this representation, but blind and low vision Asian American and Pacific Islander audiences deserve films that represent them, and also are accessible.

Rotten: 5.1/10