“It was suburbia. We had nothing better to do,” laments Ben, the central character of Justin Lin's BETTER LUCK TOMORROW. “Our straight A's were our alibis,” he continues, “our passports to freedom. Going to a study group would get us out of the house until four in the morning. As long as our grades were there, we were trusted.”

Oh, the woes of exemplifying the model minority. Well, lemme tell you something, Ben, your story takes place in Orange County. You don't even know what boring is! Not until you've tried being a teenager in my hometown of Redlands, affectionately referred to as “Deadlands.” And I'm afraid the shocking murder of Kelly Bullwinkle at the hands of two of her Redlands East Valley High School classmates last year only proves that the plot twist near the end of BETTER LUCK TOMORROW is not nearly as outlandish or unnecessary as some critics have complained.

The plot is simple. Four Asian American high school boys start a cheat-sheet racket.  Business is booming, and they soon branch out into guns and drugs, all while maintaining their grade point averages and winning the Academic Decathlon. Now, some may disagree with me, but what I like about BETTER LUCK TOMORROW is that even though much has been made of its portrayal of the model minority, the race card is not shoved down our throats. It's addressed, but it isn't the only thing this film is about.

The pressures that weigh so heavily on our four boys would apply to almost all of my overachieving Advanced Placement high school classmates. Even with the buffer of time I've been out of high school, this was a painful film to watch. All those AP classes, SAT worries, after school sports, applications, cramming every single second of your life into college entry. And for what? Some kids thrive on it, but if anything, all that frenzied activity probably only served to stunt my growth. Add to that a suffocating suburban atmosphere and some guns, and you've got, well, BETTER LUCK TOMORROW.

The acting in this film is quite good. Parry Shen is irresistible as overachieving Ben. And Roger Fan is fantastic as Leader of the Pack, reminding me quite a lot of my own high school newspaper editor who also loved to fuck with everyone's heads. 

The only problem I have with BETTER LUCK TOMORROW is the ending, and I'm still wrestling with it. It doesn't resolve anything, not that it necessarily should. It really is only a slice of life in that we don't know what will happen. But without the cartoonish exaggeration that benefited a film like HEATHERS, the unevenness between the ending of this film and its earlier comedic elements is unsettling – especially in light of true stories like the aforementioned Redlands murder. The moral ambiguity with which we're left doesn't sit well with me, although I think that's just the way Lin wants it.