Metacritic reviews

Lin energizes the grungy palette with stylistic zing, a hopped-up pace and understated humor. His cast carves out vivid characters and the open-ended aftermath takes stock of the moral scarring without moralizing.

It has the virtue of Lin's tangy wit but it also suffers from the vice of a director who, torn between personal vision and wide public reach, tends to smother his ideas under a veneer of cool.

An exhilarating ride.

Although this movie shows Lin's promising moviemaking sensibilities, its point of view feels coldly amoral and dismissive.

A film that merges cocaine, Ivy League, college applications, the Asian American experience, dark comedy and high school drama while maintaining a personal tone and likable lead characters is just too impressive to knock.

Like his characters, Lin may be an overachiever and the strain of trying to do too much shows. He merges genres the way Ben juggles extracurricular activities.

Though it doesn't fully transcend its small budget (the lighting is dingy), the story feels rooted in something more solid than prefab posturing.

Follows a consistently predictable arc. In some sequences, you can tell not just what's going to happen next, but what shot is coming next. And the movie's weird mixture of moralism and affectlessness cancel each other out.

The film lacks a single emotionally authentic moment.

The end result is a series of stylish vignettes, some entertaining and all variations on essentially the same theme.