The story at the heart of writer-director Tom Huang’s Dealing with Dad (2022) is a cliché: The Americanized grown children of Asian immigrants come to terms with the poor emotional parenting of their father. The real twist isn’t in the premise of the Taiwanese father (Dana Lee) having depression, but rather, what if he actually doesn’t have a heart of gold?
Ally Maki plays middle sister Margaret, filling the archetypal role of high-strung type-A East Asian woman previously held by Constance Wu. Amidst the daily whirlwind of texts dealing with work, family, and her son’s (Caleb Mantuano) school — and watching her texting while walking reminds us how texts eat up more time than phone calls — she gets one mentioning her dad’s “condition.” How strange, as he was his usual verbally abusive self just five months ago at Thanksgiving, when he called the dressed-up Margaret a “Bangkok whore” (presented in flashback, as edited by Kurt Nishimura).
