‘Extremely Unique Dynamic’ is a charming meta-comedy

It begins with convincing, early 2000s taped footage of adorable pre-teen best friends Danny (Jason Sun) and Ryan (Lucus Lius) playing around with a Handycam and generally having fun, before we skip forward through the lives of both characters through the videos they continued to make throughout the years, including their attempts to get famous with rap videos about Asian guys who love tacos (early YouTube was the Wild West). For the rest of the runtime, wannabe movie stars Danny and Ryan are played by the film's actual writer-directors, Ivan Leung and Harrison Xu respectively. As the footage moves from grainy, lo-fi video tape to modern HD, we finally join the duo in the present, in Los Angeles, as they practice eating destructively spicy chicken wings in case they're ever guests on Hot Ones.

Introducing us to both leads in this way, before we know anything about them, paints a familiar picture of the world in which they were raised—wherein finding yourself (and your path in life) had all these uncharted new avenues, thanks to the Internet and social media. The fact that neither one has made it big is a great place to start, so when they begin discussing what kind of movie to make (about a movie, about a movie, etc.), it comes from a character-driven place. It also comes from a nostalgic one, since Ryan is about to move from L.A. to Alberta, Canada, leaving Danny to struggle on his own. It's their last weekend together, and the film is a commemoration of sorts (Xu moving away was also the impetus for Extremely Unique Dynamic itself).

From top, Ivan Leung and Harrison Xu.

Extremely Unique Dynamic

Granted, the film's meta-comedy wears thin quickly—even at an hour and seven minutes, it feels rather long—because there are only so many ways one can wink at the camera in Deadpool-esque fashion without it feeling passé (Deadpool himself can barely do it). Cinema has been in its postmodern era for quite some time. For a generation raised on Pulp Fiction and TVtropes.org, this can be something of a crutch, and the leading duo quickly runs through the various cultural expectations of them as Asian American actors, from living up to stoner classics like Harold and Kumar, to existing in the shadow of Crazy Rich Asians and Fresh off the Boat. However, as they continue to argue about their approach (while making references galore), the characters' unspoken creative and personal tensions begin to set Extremely Unique Dynamic apart from all these aforementioned touchstones.

In the process of trying to breeze through a creative project, their respective shortcomings start to become the movie's heart and soul (the real movie's, that is). The boisterous, bro-y Ryan thinks about art mostly in marketing terms, while the more soft-spoken and effeminate Danny has no way to ground his artistic ambitions in the real, and the tangible—two disparate perspectives on filmmaking that slowly but surely exacerbate other underlying issues between them. The film may not break new ground in terms of postmodern deconstruction, but it is, in a way, post contemporary, given its hyper-awareness of the granular ways in which identity and personal struggle (from Asian American cinema to queer discourse) become gradually subsumed by the culture industrial complex.

In that vein, a simple question with a complicated answer rears its head: How do you stay authentic when you're trying your hardest to stand apart? Danny and Ryan are struggling actors, and they're struggling to make a movie about people struggling to make a movie (ad infinitum), a refraction of identity that screams "failure" back at them in a commanding, condescending voice. The film may have a simple, straightforward aesthetic given its shoestring budget, but its comic mise en abyme verges on existentially terrifying, and turns failure into an infinite, Sisyphean loop.

"Extremely Unique Dynamic" is a meta stoner comedy film about its own making.

Extremely Unique Dynamic

It's hard to say if this was intentional—the film certainly doesn't tackle this notion head on—but when it diverges from this path, it does so via surprisingly intimate drama about fear, loss, and nostalgia. It may not look like much (it plays, at times, like an overlong, over-lit Portlandia sketch), but even when its mounting meta-absurdities run dry, the heart and soul at its center remain imminently relatable. It's as much a movie about two friends afraid to lose one another as it is about them finding themselves, and each other, in the process.