Screens/Movies

Quiz Lady
Where: Disney+
What: Movie, 100 mins.
When: Now
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Rating: NNN (out of 5)
Why you should watch: A lighthearted and enjoyable sister comedy that will warm your heart.

THERE’S NOTHING LIKE the disappearance of your mother to bring your estranged family back together. In Quiz Lady, directed by Jessica Yu and written by Jen D’Angelo, sisters Anne (Awkwafina) and Jenny (Sandra Oh) reunite for the ridiculous road trip of a lifetime to save Anne’s beloved pet pug and pay off their mother’s gambling debt.

When the retirement home calls Anne to inform her of her mother’s disappearance, her older sister Jenny also arrives in confusion. Straight-laced Anne is tired of her mother’s and sister’s constant shenanigans and dependence on her financial stability but begrudgingly takes care of her family. Anne’s two interests in life are her pet pug and the quiz show Can’t Stop the Quiz, hosted by Terry McTeer (Will Ferrell), which are both suddenly threatened by the arrival of her sister.

Unbeknownst to Anne, Jenny submits her sister as a contestant on the quiz show. While Anne initially refuses due to her anxiety and dislike for the quiz show’s improv portion, she eventually accepts in order to win enough money to pay off their mother’s gambling debt when the loan sharks take her dog hostage.

As Anne, Awkwafina plays the straight man to Sandra Oh’s rowdy caricature of a washed-up older sister. The best scenes are when they can really riff off one another’s contrasting personalities, like when Jenny watches Anne accidentally get too high during the quiz show audition and when Anne puts her trust in her sister and chooses her to play charades during the game show.

The stakes are pretty low in this straight-to-streaming movie, which is part of its appeal. It’s unserious and predictable in plot, but that’s what makes it easy to watch. The jokes kind of rummage around the shallow end of the young Asian-American experience, and while they attempt to reject the common stereotype of a complacent Asian woman, the movie never really goes far enough with its ridiculousness.

Take, for instance, Joy Ride directed by Adele Lim, which came out earlier in the year. It’s hard not to draw a comparison to it when it’s also a modern depiction of a group of Asian women on a raucous road trip that leads to relationship-building and girl power. It feels like Quiz Lady is attempting to recreate that spontaneous and absurd energy but keep it as family-friendly as possible, despite its R rating (due to its depiction of drug use).

There’s enough in the plot to be somewhat relatable to Asian-American kids who grew up in the Western world, but it feels oversimplified for the wider audience. Overall, it still succeeds as a feel-good sister comedy, but there’s not a lot of impact.