Love in Taipei (2023) 2023 / A breezy and likable all-Asian romcom that unfortunately just runs out of story to tell

This is a textbook example of a film with all the right ingredients and the right attitude, but ultimately no game plan for what to do with its material. The first half of Love in Taipei does a good job of setting an inviting tone: a confident cast, attractive locations and production design, and dynamic direction that helps make this expensive summer school program feel more like an adventure. But once the pieces are in place and certain romantic connections are established, the film almost instantly loses its charisma and any sense of a plot. Conflict is introduced then painted over within the span of minutes, and the characters undergoing completely unearned growth without doing much of anything. Even the film’s backdrop of the differences between children of the diaspora and those who remain rooted in traditional Taiwanese culture is reduced to hollow window dressing.