Slanted is a movie mish mesh mix em up. A little Mean Girls here. A little Substance there. With just a touch of Carrie thrown in. Amy Wang’s movie exists to honor the past, and like the Australian Chinese immigrant she was, put her own new spin on them. Good ballsy, start calling your movie Slanted.
Because the star of the movie is teenager Joan Huang (Shirley Chen), a Chinese immigrant brought to the US by parents Roger (Fang Du) and Sofia (Vivian Wu). Surrounded by Carl’s Jr. like ads and a hallway of gorgeous blond haired blue eyed prom queens since she was 5, Joan believes in her bones this is what she has to be to become a true American, even using the Ethnos app (nice), turning on the blond/blue filter when she takes pictures. Joan sees her big chance when her school’s Regina George Olivia (Amelie Zilber) has to leave school to shoot a TV show, leaving the race for prom queen WIDE open.
Amy Wang is going after everyone and everything in US culture. When your target is the entire country, that means the best route is pure blunt, Leo DiCaprio finger pointing critiques. Stores are named Bibles & Ammo. Or straight up copying the plastics with Olivia and her 2 sycophants Greta (Sarah Kopkin) and Cat (Callie McClincy), eating lunch salads like robots in unison. The broader or familiar the target to us, the less impactful the critiques are. When Amy gets specific is where Slanted gets really fun. This is the first movie to really take on what modern racism looks like: Olivia and one of Roger’s employers Harmony (Elaine Hendrix) encapsulate it perfectly, guising allyship but really using it to bolster their own standing in society. Arguably one of Wang’s best targets is immigrants themselves, some specific ones (Bobby Jindal for example, or more recently Marco Rubio/Ted Cruz) so desperate to be American that they betray anything and anyone they love to conform and be accepted into the current power structure. But the biggest joys revolve around Ethnos, and their CEO Willie Singer (R. Keith Harris). Everything about the app is wonderfully pitched, openly mocking new racists talking points like “I just want equality for everyone” and “I don’t want to be scared anymore”, using sympathetic tones to hide the rot underneath. As Joan Huang decides she’s gonna become Jo Hunt (Mckenna Grace), Wang saves the best laugh for the nitrous induced dream sequence, with a song so effing funny my whole theater burst into extended uproarious laughter at how icky and hella funny Wang sets it up.
Similar broad strokes apply to the emotional beats of Slanted; whereever the story spends most time gets the most rewards. Olivia and the mean girls have a couple payoffs, but they’re more ideas than characters that Joan idealizes. Not enough time is spent with Joan and her best friend Brindha (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) to establish their friendship, so when Joan becomes Jo, the big sequence where Jo has to choose old vs. new life hits, but doesn’t quite hit as hard as I was hoping. The best stuff is Joan with her mom & dad. The best emotional moments come from Roger and Sofia, who are angry and crestfallen with their daughter’s choices. Fang Du is especially good, getting two really potent moments, one good and one bad, with his daughter trying to understand her, and she understand him.
Slanted isn’t a bad effort. But like it’s main character, it’s gotta commit. If this movie went full on Mean Girls and full on Substance, that prom would have REALLY been a Carrie like fiasco, of psychotic proportions. Imagine Lindsay Lohan shapeshifting giving her speech in front of the school? We should’ve seen something like that!