In 2008, during the last month of summer before high school begins, an impressionable 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy learns what his family can’t teach him: how to skate, how to flirt, and how to love his mom. A film by Sean Wang, starring Izaac Wang, Shirley Chen, Chang Li Hua, Raul Dial, Aaron Chang, Mahaela Park, Chiron Cilia Denk, Montay Boseman, Sunil Mukherjee Maurillo, Alaysia Simmons, Alysha Syed, Georgie August, and Joan Chen.

In the summer of 2008, a young boy named Chris Wang (Izaac Wang) lives in Fremont, California, with his estranged sister Vivian (Shirley Chen), their loving mother Chungsing (Joan Chen), and her demanding mother-in-law, Nai Nai (Zhang Li Hua).

Vivian is a housewife with dreams of becoming an artist. While raising her children and taking care of Nai Nai, she paints in her spare time, hoping to win the National Art Competition, all while her husband works in Taiwan to support the family financially.

Chris and Vivian are always at each other’s throats, both of them being too stubborn and competitive to back down. During dinner one night, their heated argument reaches a boiling point, prompting Nai Nai to lash out at Chungsing, blaming her right then and there for failing to raise her children with proper manners.

Chris and his best friends, Fahad (Raul Dial) and Soup (Aaron Chang), have been spending their time making silly YouTube videos that nobody watches.

YouTube was launched in February 2005 by three former PayPal employees – Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. The first video uploaded to YouTube was titled “Me at the Zoo” and was posted by co-founder Jawed Karim on 23 April 2005. Approximately, 65,000 new videos were being uploaded daily by the end of 2005, with 100 million video views. Youtube was acquired by Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion. By 2008, YouTube had 13 hours of video uploaded every minute and hundreds of millions of daily views, solidified its place as a major player in online video sharing. As of early 2024, YouTube boasts over 2.7 billion monthly users who collectively watch more than one billion hours of video daily.

One day, Fahad messages Chris on AOL Instant Messenger to ask if he’s coming to a party at Hardeep’s house. He mentions that Chris’s crush Madi (Mahaela Park), will be there, but Chris tries to play it cool, acting like he doesn’t care whether she shows up or not.

AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) was a pioneering instant messaging platform launched by AOL in May 1997. It allowed users to communicate in real-time through text messages, utilizing features like the “Buddy List” to track online friends’ statuses. AIM quickly became a cultural phenomenon, particularly among teens and young adults, reaching over 100 million registered users by 2001. It played a significant role in shaping online communication, introducing concepts like away messages and emoticons, which are now commonplace in modern messaging apps. Despite its early success, AIM’s popularity declined in the 2010s due to the rise of mobile messaging, social media platforms, and other instant messaging services. AOL announced the discontinuation of AIM on 6 October 2017, with the service officially shutting down on 15 December 2017.

Later, he checks out Madi’s MySpace page to look at her photos, discovers that her favorite singer is Hayley Williams, and sees that her relationship status is still single.

MySpace was one of the first and most popular social networking sites, launched in 2003. It allowed users to create customizable profiles, connect with friends, share music, and express themselves creatively. MySpace quickly gained traction, reaching over 5 million users within a year and becoming the most visited social networking site in the world by 2005. MySpace helped launch the careers of many artists and played a crucial role in the growth of various tech companies. Although it was acquired by Specific Media in 2011 and shifted its focus to music, it struggled to compete with Facebook and saw a decline in users. Today, MySpace exists as a diminished platform mainly serving as an archive, with no new content published since 2022.

At the party, Chris asks Soup to give him a call in a minute as he walks inside the house and positions himself next to Madi. His plan is to impress her with his recently changed ringtone, “Hellogoodbye’s Touchdown Turnaround (Don’t Give Up On Me)”, which matches the song on Madi’s MySpace page. However, the plan miserably fails as Madi’s friend calls her, and she leaves the room before Chris’s phone rings.

“Touchdown Turnaround (Don’t Give Up on Me)” is a song by an American pop rock band Hellogoodbye formed in 2001 in Huntington Beach, California, by singer Forrest Kline and keyboardist Jesse Kurvink. The song was released in 2006 as part of their debut album Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs! The song received significant attention, contributing to Hellogoodbye’s rise in the pop-rock genre during the mid-2000s.

Chris is relentless and tries again. This time, he intentionally knocks on a door, knowing that Madi is inside, but pretends he mistook the door for the restroom. His plan works: Madi notices Chris wearing a Paramore’a Riot! t-shirt and tells him that she loves Hayley Williams.

Hayley Williams is an American singer and songwriter. She is the lead vocalist and only constant member of the rock band Paramore, which she co-founded in 2004. By 2008, the band had released two successful albums, All We Know Is Falling (2005) and Riot! (2007). Paramore’s 2007 album “Riot!” was a breakthrough for the band, featuring hit singles like Misery Business, Hallelujah, and crushcrushcrush.

Madi then invites him to hang out inside, where she’s making a birthday video clip with her friend Georgia (Georgie August). While they’re talking, Chris’s phone suddenly rings, and Madi can’t help but comment on his good taste in music. She even suggests he add her on Facebook.

But things take an unexpected turn as Chris and Madi’s relationship is built on a lie – he’s been pretending to like all the same music and movies she does, using the information he gathered from her social media profiles. In reality, he couldn’t care less about any of it. Now that the truth is starting to come out, Chris is torn between his fear and his pride, which makes him think he’s too badass to admit he’s been faking it this whole time.

Written and directed by Taiwanese American filmmaker Sean Wang in his directorial debut, DÌDI is a compelling coming-of-age film that centers around an Asian boy who keeps making bad decisions and acts like he’s too cool to fix his mistakes.

Izaac Wang is wonderful as Chris Wang; he is so convincing in the role that I genuinely dislike his character, which brilliantly encapsulates arrogance, ingratitude, and inconsideration.

Joan Chen gives a phenomenal performance as a woman who gave up her dream of pursuing an artistic career to become a housewife and a caring mother. Her portrayal is subtle yet incredibly powerful — an Oscar-worthy performance.

DÌDI is undoubtedly one of the best films of 2024. It tells a story that makes you feel like you’ve seen it hundreds of times before, but never quite as remarkably impressive as this one.

DÌDI premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on 19 January 2024. It was theatrically released in the United States on 26 July.