SFIAAFF: Ping Pong Playa

Here's the crazy thing we learned about the movie Ping Pong Playa from the film's website. Jimmy Tsai who plays the buffoonish Chinese-American version of the arrested development suburban guy who appropriates all the sensibilities of an urban, b-ball playing, smack-talking homeboy, with the aplomb of a career comedian, is actually a mild-mannered movie production accountant for Better Luck Tomorrow director Justin Lin's company in real life. Director Jessica Yu first encountered Tsai's alter-ego "C-dub" when he was promoting his sportswear business at a movie screening and a script was born.

Screening an SFIAAFF film at 9:30 pm on a Monday night is a challenging way to start any movie but when we saw a grown man joyfully kicking the butts of, essentially a pack of sixth graders on the basketball court, well, let's just say he had us at "holla!"

After the jump: hilarious oversensitivity to perceived racial slights, a hard-working model minority member, and.... a golden cock? Ha ha ha ha ha!

Still from Ping Pong Playa. SFist Mihi, contributing.

C-dub is the black sheep second son of a ping pong playing family. When his doctor/ping-pong-champ brother injures his wrist, it's up to C-dub to redeem himself, his family's business and basically all Chinese people in the quest for the ping pong trophy—the Golden Cock. (Why is the trophy called the golden cock you ask? We have no idea!) Add some nerdy adorable kids and some overly sensitive hilarious Asian-American political outrage by goofy C-dub, and we were giggling all the way home.

On the film website, director Yu writes that Tsai took a "whatever it takes" attitude about starring in his first movie. "He dedicated himself to months of ping pong training, vacuuming the office and designing props and other tasks, while still handling payroll and writing up cost reports. Model minority behavior in action!"

Ping Pong Playa will be released at the end of the summer and the promoters threw out ping pong balls and a few pairs of those obscenely short shorts the players wear before the movie started so we would remember to tell all our friends about the movie.

If you can't wait until the end of the summer to see it, you can still catch Ping Pong Playa on Saturday, March 22 at the Camera in San Jose.