Big Picture Big Sound

The Film

With Ping Pong Playa, documentary filmmakers Jessica Lu and Jimmy Tsai make their first foray into the world of fiction with this kid-friendly comedy about Chinese-American Chris "C-Dub" Wang (Tsai) who has delusions of one day playing basketball in the NBA. Blaming his faulty B-ball skills on genetics, Chris is a suburban slacker with an urban attitude who rails against society's stereotypes of Asian people.

In an ironic and comedic twist, when Chris' mother injures her wrists in a fender-bender, Chris must take over teaching her ping-pong class to group of adolescents at the Chinese school.  Challenged by his deeply traditional Asian father and needing to help out his family who are hard pressed to make their mortgage payments, Chris enters the annual ping-pong tournament -- the most stereotypical Asian sport of them all -- taking his injured older brother's place.

Ping Pong Playa is filled with fun moments, laughs, and just the right amount of character resolve.  It's a truly modern, multi-cultural parable that never feels too preachy -- one that the family can enjoy. It's refreshing to see Asian-American filmmakers exploring the idiosyncrasies of the culture through their own eyes and with their own voice on the big screen. Jessica Yu and Jimmy Tsai prove themselves quite worthy filmmakers outside of the world of documentaries and commercial production on this first production.

Ping Pong Playa is not a perfect film by any means, but as a film meant to appeal to kids it avoids most of the pitfalls of films that usually fall into that genre. The pandering to the lowest common denominator of unintelligent humor is thankfully missing from Playa. There are, course, some moments of predictability, which are to be expected in a film such as this, but mostly Ping Pong moves along at a joyful tempo and by the time it's all over, you're actually glad you watched it, unlike most "family-friendly" movies, which leave you wishing you had your 90-minutes (and $12) back.

The Picture

Due to the nature of the production, Ping Pong Playa's 1.85:1 AVC/MPEG-4 1080p/24 Blu-ray transfer will not dazzle most with its appearance. Contrast is hot, its film stock is grainy and often background details are soft. However, the encoding doesn't show any artifacts and flesh tones are quite natural. The colors in the mostly bright scenes are also stable and vivid, such as the bright red of Chris' Houston Rockets jersey.

The Sound

Playa's sole audio option is an English DTS-HD Master Audio lossless 5.1 mix that will hardly push the limits of anyone's sound system.  The mostly dialogue-driven film has most of its action residing across the front three channels with the surround channels holding a good heavy dose of ambience. The low frequencies come into play with the film's heavily hip-hop influenced soundtrack, but that is the most workout that the subwoofer gets. The mix doesn't even take advantage of the surround channels during the film's most opportune moments during the ping-pong tournament, leaving them only with ambience and not much in the way of discrete, directional effects. Still, dynamics are good and dialogue is clear and intelligible and the mix suits the material at hand.

The Extras

Extras are light and somewhat pointless on this release. Apart from the audio commentary, everything else feels very much like an afterthought that could have been left of without being missed at all.

The extras available on this release are:

• Commentary with Director/Writer Jesiica Yu and Writer/Co-Producer/Actor Jimmy Tsai -- Here's where you'll get the most background information on the film itself. It's best to stick with this audio commentary and bypass the rest of the supplemental material, which is really nonessential.
• Ping Pong Playa: Post Game (1.78:1/standard definition) -- Outtakes and deleted scenes
• Ping Pong Playa: Warm-up Drills (4:3/standard definition)
• Trailer (1.78:1/standard definition) -- The original theatrical trailer for Ping Pong Playa
• Cast and Crew Bios

Final Thoughts

If you're in need of a weekend of some lighthearted fun, then you ought to pick this release up, particularly if you have some kids 13 and up around. It's guaranteed to induce some chuckles and it is the rare, family fun film that isn't completely worthless. The value of this title may mean it s only worth a rental, so definitely try that route first before plunking down the cash for a purchase.

Where to Buy

• Ping Pong Playa on Blu-ray Disc (Amazon.com)

Product Details

• Actors: Jimmy Tsai, Roger Fan, Shelley Malil, Alexander Agate, Percival Arcibal
• Director: Jessica Yu
• Writers: Jimmy Tsai, Jessica Yu
• Producers: Anne Clements, Jeffrey Gou, Joan Huang
• Video Codec: AVC/MPEG-4
• Audio Language: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
• Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: PG-13
• Studio: Image Entertainment
• Blu-ray Disc Release Date: February 10, 2009
• Run Time: 96 minutes
• List Price: $35.98
• Extras:
  • Audio Commentary with director/co-writer Jessica Yu and actor/co-writer Jimmy Tsai
  • Two Featurettes: "Warm-Up Drills" and "Post-Game"
  • Theatrical Trailer and more!