After awkwardly coming out to her conservative parents, an Asian-American teenage girl takes off on a road trip to meet her online crush with the help of her nerdy best friend. Bursting with colorful animation and kinetic comic book flourishes, EGGHEAD & TWINKIE is a heartwarmingly sincere directorial debut about embracing your identity and the ups and downs of best friendship.
Seattle International Film Festival 2023: Film #23
The only component that didn't work for me in this genuinely laugh-out-loud movie was the many drawn-on-with-a-crayon artistic additions. It's revealed in the final few minutes that these are scenes from a comic book that Twinkie was making for Egghead all throughout their road trip, but they are a little too childish—or a little too Tracy Beaker and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)—for my liking. I wouldn't have minded at all, say, the amusing introduction of the on-screen lie counter and the intrusion of manga-style emotions, but learning that these were actual drawings deflated some of the humour from them, as well as reducing them to in-universe concepts instead of the Brechtian alienation devices that let this postmodern film obliquely parody itself. Anyway, I liked how the screenplay was so candid on issues of race, not least with the forthright explanation of Twinkie's nickname, but also in not resolving the question of Twinkie's genetic ancestry as part of the plot; the film clearly implying that the nationality of Twinkie's natal parents is but a minor component of her life.
