Apparently I never had a unique experience in my entire life. This was such a nice trip back to the childhood.

Blocking someone instead of expressing your true feelings perfectly captures the essence of this movie. Every moment felt authentic. It begins with a nostalgic MSM-YouTube vibe and plenty of teenage voice cracks. Watching Dìdi just being himself can be tough at times. But learning to handle emotions is important. Will I watch Dìdi again? Probably not. But should you see it? Definitely. I hope all my homies wins the silent battles they don’t tell me about.

Solid coming of age story that has a lot to say about family, friendship, figuring out who you are, who you want to be and what's important to you. Also an ode to mothers, I should have watched this with my mother it sure makes me want to go give her a hug right now. The storyline with his sister hit pretty hard too. The time period feels almost nostalgic to me (I was a little younger at the time) nice touch with the flip phones and early Facebook. I liked the techno drama bits with all the web pages, made me think of *Searching* and the vocabulary is true to the period. Izaac Wang and Joan Chen absolutely nailed it, very layered and emotional performances and great chemistry. It's a good-looking movie all around but it's nothing out of the ordinary, could have used more creativity. Some unexpected laughs like that fish who started talking out of nowhere, it's so silly but it fits in the movie so great mix of tones. I cried in those final few minutes and perfect ending. So relatable on every level, we all went through this.

Didi perfectly captures the feeling of being on the cusp of high school during 2008. It matches up with when I was entering high school, and I was impressed at how much Sean Wang was able to capture, whether it was the technology at the time, the slang, or my own personal experiences of growing up as a second-generation immigrant with social anxiety. The movie begins with a very lighthearted tone with plenty of humor, but it becomes a lot more somber as it goes along. Even though it is centered around the autobiographical story of the director via the main character Chris, it also manages to explore the relationships between other members of his family in the background. In particular, I thought Joan Chen as his mother did a fantastic job, and I found her character to be my favorite. It's a sweet movie that just plops the viewer down into this summer as it unfolds. Whether Sean Wang is showing the way his characters use the computer or the old-school filming of skateboarding, he is effortlessly able to capture the experience visually even if it isn't the flashiest cinematography. I just wish the movie gave us a bit more with the ending because it felt a bit abrupt.

It feels like this movie is trying way too hard to catch a moment in history, but it isn’t working for me.