Two Asian girls in a hair and nail salon are seated as they get pedicures from a pair of Asian workers. I’m already bored. The two girls make fun of the workers, text their friends, are bitchy to each other, and are generally rude to the staff and everyone around them. The acting is horrible. The two girls go back and forth at each other in an almost ‘valley girl’ type talk which is a little strange because, thus far, the entire cast is Asian. It feels like work to even listen to the dialogue. I’m already dreading the next 80 minutes of the film when the opening credits begin to roll. That’s my cue. Convinced that any time not watching this film is time saved, I try and utilize the few minutes I have in any way I can think. I look at a clock on the wall to gauge when this movie will be done and then leaf through an old issue of Maxim raising my head every few seconds to take a fleeting look at the opening credits. That’s when I saw it in the credits:  “Special Guest Appearance by Sir Mix-A-Lot.” What the fuck?! I had to rewind to make sure my eyes hadn’t deceived me. There it was again.
 

What the hell was Sir Mix-A-Lot, ass obsessed 80’s/90’s rapper, doing in this bad independent film? At least now I had something to look forward to. The film follows a Vietnamese family in their struggle for unity. A hypochondriac mother, who is recently divorced from her womanizing ex-husband, is convinced that finding a good Vietnamese boy to marry her oldest Americanized daughter will help to unify her family. She does this by persuading her daughter to order a mail order husband from Vietnam, just to ‘try it out.’ Not a very convincing argument for marriage?

I didn’t think so either, but somehow it was enough. The FOB-ulous from the film title stands for Fresh Off the Boat, referring to the mail order husband, Dung, who despite his propensity for the English language, has to learn to deal with American life and a potentially bitchy bride.  Maybe I’ve grown accustom to professional actors, witty dialogue and an absorbing storyline but I found this low budget film a waste of my time. Also, where was Sir Mix-A-Lot? Like I said, the dialogue was horrible. The two girls from the beginning of the film, Thuy and Van, turn out to be older teenage sisters, the oldest of which (Thuy) is the guinea pig for marriage. The director, Richard Cranor, goes to great lengths to prove to the audience how assimilated these girls are to Western society by their speech and interactions with other characters. The girls get into an argument with two rivals in the mall and the dialogue is peppered with phrases like ‘oh no you didn’t,’ ‘you want some of this,’ and ‘oh hell no.’ We get it; they’re American. Do people even talk like that anymore? The group of guys in the film that Dung befriends are even worse. They talk about boobs and cars, which I’ll admit are topics guys have a tendency to discuss, but they do so in a way that makes me want to hit them, not join in. Again I begin to think with a bit more angst: Where the hell is Sir Mix-A-Lot?

The acting was just as forced as the dialogue. Whenever the two girls had a problem with one of their parents, they rolled their eyes and sighed in such an exaggerated way that I almost thought that they were trying to be sarcastic in their irritation. The role of the womanizing father doesn’t ring true either. There is just no way that such an enormous tool bag could ever get any women, let alone numerous ones. It was now 12:30 p.m. and the movie was nearly complete. I was tired, bored, and frustrated with the, as of yet, unsolved Sir Mix-A-Lot mystery. One of the daughters was getting married and he still hadn’t shown up. I had all but lost hope.

Then he came. At the reception hall at the wedding, Sir Mix-A-Lot strolls in for no apparent reason after hearing Thuy mention free food. He invites himself, takes a plate of food and cracks a few jokes that were pretty funny. I still don’t know why he had anything to do with this movie, but he was by far the best part of Simply FOBulous.