My Review of "Chang Can Dunk"

Chang Can Dunk is Disney Plus's latest exclusive feature length movie to be released in 2023. It has all the elements that intrigued me to watch. First of all it's a sports movie and I'm a sucker for sports movies. I thought it was a little out of the ordinary with an Asian male lead for such a movie. This had me wondering how they're going to implement this element to the story. It's a family friendly movie so of course I know I can't hold this movie to extreme standards either.

The movie starts off with a little montage of sorts to explain the dynamic fascination with the dunk in basketball. It's a move that gets all the young fans interested in players and the sport in general. We then cut to the introduction of our main protagonist, Chang. He loves the sport of basketball but is realistic to the fact that he can never excel at it. He's 5 foot 8 and has a bit of a chip on his shoulders because of his feelings of inadequacy.

It so happens to be the first day of school and Chang has tried to rebrand himself over the summer to become a cooler version of himself. He's convinced he's going to make this year his year. Upon his first day we get introduced to his best friend, his arch nemesis and a new girl he wants to impress.

This movie kind of does a few swerves on us as viewers when it comes to his love interest. We start thinking that this movie is a cookie cutter sports movie with the female support character as the trophy. I assure you it's more than that. In fact the first half of the movie felt like it could have been the whole movie by itself. There are aspects of me that wishes that first half of the movie was it and the end credits just rolls.

Fortunately this movie gets a little deeper and goes into some interesting internal conflicts with Chang and his family life. Being of Asian descent myself I found that some of these conflicts actually felt pretty genuine and well done. I wasn't really expecting that with this Disney family movie. They don't usually go into this type of territory and it was nice to see.

Though with the addition of this added storyline there are a few glitches that could have been remedied. There simply was a lot of stuff added to this movie that could have took more time to develop. At times it felt like this story needed some breathing space. If they were given that time some of the character development and payouts would have been much more satisfying. Then again it wouldn't be a movie it would be more of a TV series. I understood why they didn't go with the TV series because this movie was already a gamble. They wanted to test the waters to see if it was profitable first.

A little bit of an annoyance was Disney's obsession with Red Pandas. You already made an animated movie of an Asian girl turning into a red panda not too long ago. Why would you make this Asian boy's basketball moniker be red panda as well? It was a little bit on the nose and maybe it was a reference to the other movie but it was a little odd.

Overall, there's a few wishy washy scenes that stumble in the very beginning but this movie ultimately hit me in the right spots when it needed to. I had a great time and my expectations were all fulfilled while watching this movie. Sure there's a lot to nitpick about this movie but for what it is, they did a good job. That's why I have to give this movie a 6.5 out of 10. I hope they continue to gamble on some of these premises. Thanks for taking the risk with this one.