The Dissonance of “Love Hurts” (2025)
Satire and parody can be golden genres. Galaxy Quest (1999) is considered by Trekkies to be “one of the best Star Trek movies ever” even though it is not a Star Trek movie. Parodies can tear down, or they can bring together a niche crowd on all the in-jokes of a specific show or topic. Galaxy Quest is beloved not because it tears down Star Trek tropes, but because it acknowledges them, laughs with the fans about them, and also honors the importance of those fans and fanmade culture that has, at times, changed the world.
Love Hurts (2025) is an action-comedy starring Ke Huy Quan as an ex-assassin who has retired to the life of real estate. Given that my sister’s real estate office in Northern Idaho had agents who had grenades sitting on their desks, and the broker was an award-winning black belt with one lung this contrast presented great opportunity for utter hilarity. Many people go into real estate from more stressful occupations–medical, military, etc. so the premise for a delightful “in-joke” movie parodying the absurdity of real estate was ripe for the picking.
The Review
Unfortunately, like so many movies manufactured by Hollywood to niche audiences, Love Hurts seeks mainstream appeal by overshadowing its unique elements (real estate humor) with blockbuster cliches.
The real estate jokes felt like misplaced punctuation or a forgotten gimmick. The action elements were delightful when choreographed by Ke Huy Quan, but otherwise felt as if they were picked up from another movie and dropped off in the wrong script. The romance was irritating to say the least and, instead, felt like it should have been in some toxic, abusive romance film based off a Colleen Hoover novel. Too many times things that should have been dark comedy funny were placed in the wrong contexts. The balance of comedy and thriller did not emotionally complement, but instead emotionally clashed, drawing attention to its dissonant dumpster fire with each attempt.
Ke Huy Quan was delightful as always, and he did the best he could with such a terrible script and worse editing. Lio Tipton stole her scenes as the stressed out transaction coordinator who clearly wants to quit every week. Sean Astin owned his little scene and, honestly, seemed like the only one who enjoyed being in the movie. The little “side quests” of the characters were fun.
But the overall story, and experience as a whole, was devastatingly disappointing. It was as if someone wanted to make action-comedy Sharknado quality but was told to make John Wick in real estate instead.
And in this case, that laziness is a much bigger problem.
Representation.
The history of Asian representation in Hollywood has always been sketchy. Asian actors of many different cultures were either snubbed in favor of white actors playing Asian characters under yellowface or required to play ethnic “stereotypes.” Even today, Asian representation in Hollywood is pretty anemic. When Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite won Best Picture in 2020, that marked a turning point in American film history in which Hollywood acknowledged a foreign language film as superior. Three years later, Everything, Everywhere All at Once won Best Picture, along with six other awards, including best actress and best supporting actor–the latter who happened to be Ke Huy Quan.
But the fact it took until 2023 for there to be that level of acknowledged representation is absurd. The fact that in 2024 Ke Huy Quan, someone who is adored by the public, still sat in the shadow of racial discrimination and, honestly, the stereotype of desexualizing Asian men in the west, is fundamentally insulting and dehumanizing.
Love Hurts should have been a fun film that normalized different ethnicities in roles that diversified our idea of “desirability” in western cinema. Instead, sloppy writing and sloppy editing pieced together two tonally-distinct stories into an uncoordinated dumpster fire that served as an insult to progressive inclusion.
Perhaps if there had been more than scant progression on inclusion of Asian actors in Hollywood by now, there would be less concern about how Love Hurts‘ painful failure would hurt future projects. However, given it still is apparently pulling teeth in Hollywood to get that representation, it feels that we’re still in the phase that, as Guy Aoki mentioned regarding 1998’s Mulan, “Every time a studio takes a chance on an ethnic project, we know, 1, we’re happy, but 2, we’re very worried because if this doesn’t do well, heaven help us, they’re not going to try anything like it again.”
Just because it *shouldn't* be a big deal doesn't mean it *isn't*.
Love Hurts is not predicated on Asian culture like Mulan is. Love Hurts is not, and should not, be considered an “ethnic project” just because the main character is not white. However, Hollywood always takes the wrong ideas away from films that don’t do well. There is almost never reflection that maybe people didn’t like a movie because it was just not a good movie. Instead, it’s assumed people didn’t like something because the cast didn’t look a certain way, it was too dark, it was too light-hearted, it wasn’t flashy enough, it had bad CGI, etc.
No. Usually it’s just because it’s Bad Work. And, unfortunately, bad work hurts not just the individual film, but actors and those attached to the projects. In this case where we finally had some diversity in action-comedy land of a non-white desirable action hero, they botched it. And, because of that, such projects could be botched for a very long time. (Especially with the attack on DEI initiatives in the United States.)
Side Note on the Use of "Asian"
Unfortunately, Hollywood is at the point to which any Asian actors still struggle to get traction in the industry. I use the term “Asian” broadly as a way to address the first step of a multi-layered, dehumanizing problem. In fifty years, I hope that it is culturally recognized as insulting to not differentiate between Indian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, etc. Each country has their own film style with their own history, culture, and storytelling core.
With the fierce interconnectivity of our planet, it is each individual’s responsibility to embrace the mindset of perpetual learning. We have access to so many cultures, which is amazing, but the detachment to those diverse realities leads to novelization of those cultures instead of respect.
Is it possible to know everything about every culture? No. However, “with great power comes great responsibility.” And with great cultural connection comes great responsibility of seeking ongoing education on respecting and relating to those individual cultures on very real levels.
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