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Average User Score: 8 (2 sources)

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julara13

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Please watch this film. This is a great coming of age film. If it comes to your town, make a date to watch! You'll love it and will laugh and cry and remember what its like to be an awkward 12 year old boy.

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Posted dec 14, 2006 4:00 am pt

• [+] TV Guide
  
  88
  Kang's marvelously assured feature debut is a subtle adaptation of Ed Lin's acclaimed novel "Waylaid."

  by Ken Fox | Read Full Review »
• [+] The Onion (A.V. Club)
  
  83
  Like the best independent films, The Motel realizes that life is made up of minor pleasures and tiny epiphanies, not sweeping character arcs or big dramatic moments.

  by Nathan Rabin | Read Full Review »
• [+] Salon.com
  
  80
  There were half a dozen occasions, maybe more, when I roared out loud with laughter. This just may be a filmmaker with great things in him; this one's pretty damn good.

  by Andrew O'Hehir | Read Full Review »
• [+] The New York Times
  
  80
  Michael Kang's small, perfectly observed portrait of Ernest Chin (Jeffrey Chyau), a Chinese-American boy who lives and works in a dingy downscale motel operated by his mother, captures the glum desperation of inhabiting the biological limbo of early adolescence.

  by Stephen Holden | Read Full Review »
• [+] New York Daily News
  
  75
  Unlike so many indie films, Michael Kang's gently empathetic debut embraces eccentricity without drowning in its own hip irony.

  by Elizabeth Weitzman | Read Full Review »
• [+] New York Post
  
  75
  Michael Kang makes an impressive feature directorial debut with The Motel. But the person to keep an eye on is Jeffrey Chyau, a student at the Bronx High School of Science, who is a delight in the lead role.

  by V.A. Musetto | Read Full Review »
• [+] Seattle Post-Intelligencer
  
  75
  It's Kang's first feature and it suffers from rocky moments and an unsure eye, but his sense of detail is rich with prickly contradictions and he resists tidying up the story.

  by Sean Axmaker | Read Full Review »
• [+] San Francisco Chronicle
  
  75
  Pleasant and surprisingly hard-edged coming-of-age indie film.

  by G. Allen Johnson | Read Full Review »
• [+] Boston Globe
  
  75
  Kang balances the uproariously comic with the profoundly sad, and the two tones amplify each other with subtlety.

  by Ty Burr | Read Full Review »
• [+] The Hollywood Reporter
  
  70
  Indie coming-of-age dramas are not exactly an endangered species, but Michael Kang's debut drama is an admirably intelligent and modest example of the genre.

  by Frank Scheck | Read Full Review »
• [+] LA Weekly
  
  70
  By not romanticizing its despairing yet humanistic outlook, The Motel presents a moment-by-moment emotional recap of almost anyone's formative years while simultaneously issuing a stinging reminder on the impossibility of fully outgrowing adolescence's uncertain searching.

  by Tim Grierson | Read Full Review »
• [+] Los Angeles Times
  
  70
  A well-worn coming-of-age tale enlivened by pungent detail and a sharp visual sense.

  by Sam Adams | Read Full Review »
• [+] Film Threat
  
  70
  The backdrop of this seedy motel is just the perfect place to illustrate the awkward times of early teen life.

  by Eric Campos | Read Full Review »
• [+] Variety
  
  70
  The Motel offers a fresh take on characters and conventions, and compels interest with shrewd, sympathy-inspiring storytelling.

  by Joe Leydon | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Reader
  
  60
  There's little originality in the joy rides, first kisses, and clashes with bullies, yet this 2005 debut feature by writer-director Michael Kang captures the small triumphs of a boy becoming a man.

  by Andrea Gronvall | Read Full Review »