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Matt Glasby

This is the latest instalment in a feature series reflecting on instances of East meets West in world cinema, including China-US co-productions.
The Chinese movie market grew rapidly in the late 2000s and early 2010s, becoming the world’s second largest in 2012.
Hollywood responded by wooing Chinese audiences with films set in China (2009’s Push), splicing Chinese stars into successful franchises (2013’s Iron Man 3) and including extra scenes in movies for Chinese viewers (2012’s Looper).
21 & Over, which premiered in 2013 – in the middle of this period and at the end of the gross-out comedy craze – is a Sino-American co-production that seemingly could not decide whether it wanted to please everybody or offend them.


Written and directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, the screenwriters of 2009’s highly successful The Hangover, it is a bad-taste frat comedy that has a special Chinese cut, with extra scenes shot in and around Linyi in Shandong province.
The original version follows old friends Miller (Miles Teller of Top Gun: Maverick fame) and Casey (Skylar Astin) as they visit their pal Jeff Chang (Justin Chon) at university to celebrate his 21st birthday.

Despite the fact that Jeff has an interview for medical school the next morning – and a terrifying dad (Lost’s François Chau) – they go out and get him blind drunk, then cannot find their way home.
A cross-campus odyssey ensues with plenty of breasts, beer pong and bodily fluids. American Pie covered much the same ground 14 years earlier but is almost quaint in comparison.
However, what passed as harmless fun in 2013 definitely would not today.

The film opens with a montage of images of campus life, with an emphasis on women students in bikinis or jogging. Miller makes jokes about having sex with Casey’s underage sister.
In the film’s most near-the-knuckle scene, our heroes trick two blindfolded sorority girls into making out, for their, and presumably the viewer’s, entertainment.
If the sexism is depressing, the racism is astonishing. “Hey, you f***ing Jew, get in the cab!” Miller shouts at Casey by way of greeting.
In the next scene, he tells Jeff, “Happy birthday, you tiny yellow son of a b***h,” before making fun of his accent.
Miller – like American Pie’s Steve Stifler (Seann William Scott) – is a truly terrible person, but it’s worth noting that nobody makes fun of his heritage.

Having an Asian lead character in a mainstream Hollywood comedy might seem like a step in the right direction – in 2013 at least – but Chon is Korean-American, not Chinese (and Chau is Cambodian-American), so it hardly counts as progress.
Even worse, as writer Asawin Suebsaeng of non-profit American progressive magazine Mother Jones points out, Jeff is “passed out for most of the movie and thus reduced to a glorified ethnic prop”.
Both Miller and Casey refer to him by his full name, Jeff Chang, at all times, which might be funny to begin with, but ultimately makes him feel less like an old friend than the butt of a tired joke.
Really, it is only the quality of the three central performances (particularly Astin’s) that makes the film watchable at all.
But there is a twist. Whereas most Hollywood films adapted for Chinese audiences add in throwaway moments, 21 & Over’s extra scenes bookend the movie, completely changing the narrative.

In the extended version – essentially a fish-out-of-water comedy – Jeff is a Chinese exchange student who comes to the United States and finds himself tempted from the path of academic righteousness by the dissolute locals, only to reject that life and return home.
“21 & Over, in China, is sort of a story about a boy who leaves China, gets corrupted by our wayward, Western partying ways and goes back to China a better person,” Lucas told the Los Angeles Times.
Not only does this move make a mockery of the original movie, but it caused international controversy when the production moved to Shandong, near where human rights activist Chen Guangcheng had been held under government house arrest since 2005.
Nicholas Bequelin, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, told entertainment news outlet The Wrap: “Picking Linyi as a film location is probably not a good idea, but signing a deal with [the local officials] directly responsible for one of [the] most egregious and cruel abuses of a human rights defender in China is really beyond the pale.”

This move did not help the film’s box office performance.
It opened to poor reviews and made a modest US$48 million worldwide­ – The Hangover pulled in almost 10 times that amount.
Perhaps nobody really wanted to watch a racist, ruthlessly mercenary comedy, no matter where they were in the world.
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(From left) Miles Teller, Justin Chon and Skylar Astin in a still from 21 & Over (2013). Photo: John Johnson/Twenty One and Over Productions, Inc.

(From left) Skylar Astin, Justin Chon and Miles Teller in a still from 21 & Over. The original Hollywood version of this frat comedy and the subsequent Chinese cut are both controversial, but for different reasons. Photo: John Johnson/Twenty One and Over Productions, Inc.

(From left) Teller, Chon and Astin in a still from 21 & Over. Photo: John Johnson/Twenty One and Over Productions, Inc.

(From left) Astin, Sarah Wright and Teller in a still from 21 & Over. Photo: John Johnson/Twenty One and Over Productions, Inc.

(From left) Astin, Chon and Teller in a still from 21 & Over. Photo: John Johnson/Twenty One and Over Productions, Inc.

Chon in a still from 21 & Over. Photo: John Johnson/Twenty One and Over Productions, Inc.

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