‘Joy Ride’ director responds to critics by saying film ‘targets white people’

Ride of joy Director Adele Lim is dealing with a social media backlash to her film Lionsgate ahead of its theatrical release later this month.

Lim took to Twitter on Tuesday to rate an unfavorable assessment of Jackson Murphy, whose Twitter bio describes himself as a film critic for 99.5 The River, an iHeartRadio station based in Albany, New York. Murphy’s tweet criticized the film as “embarrassing” and “incredibly unpleasant,” as well as adding about the film, “It objectifies men, it targets white people.”

In his response, Lim, who is making his directorial debut after writing credits in films like Crazy Rich Asians AND Raya and the last dragon, published“I need ‘objective men, target whites’ on a T-shirt.”

Ride of joy, which hits theaters on July 7, centers on a woman who travels across China to find her birth mother and was written by Lim, Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao. The R-rated comedy premiered earlier this year at South by Southwest and stars Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu and Sabrina Wu in the lead roles.

In his film review for The Hollywood Reportercritic Lovia Gyarkye wrote: “Like the best quartets of film and TV, the four friends make an unlikely crew, but it’s their differences that make their relationship with each other strangely comforting. Ride of joy it balances its irreverent humor — a mix of sex jokes and warm, intimate jabs at stereotypes within the Asian diaspora — with poignancy.

During a recent interview with DAYLim has faced the pressure of having a voice as a member of a historically underrepresented community in Hollywood.

“It’s the first time we’ve put four Asian faces in the middle of an R-rated comedy,” Lim said at the time. “If you screw up — if a project with a queer lead, a black lead, or an Asian lead fails — the industry’s knee-jerk reaction is to blame it on otherness. You don’t want that fear to paralyze you and keep you from creating from a place of joy.