Worth the Wait
“The emotional maturity of all the main characters in Worth the Wait, men and women alike, goes a long way in balancing onscreen gender roles.”
Title: Worth the Wait (2025)
Director: Tom Shu-Yu Lin 👨🏻🇹🇼
Writers: Screenplay by Maggie Hartmans 👩🏼🇺🇸 and story by Dan Mark 👨🏻🇺🇸, Rachel Tan 👩🏻🇺🇸, and Roberto Girault 👨🏽🇲🇽
Reviewed by Carolyn Hinds 👩🏾🇧🇧🇨🇦♿️
—MILD SPOILERS AHEAD—
Technical: 4.5/5
Yes! A big thank you to Worth the Wait for showing Hollywood that a film about romance, family, tragedy, and new beginnings can have a large East and Southeast Asian cast without feeling the need to add a white character into the mix.
Directed by Tom Shu-Yu Lin (Starry Starry Night, Yen and Ai-Lee), Worth the Wait marks the first original film acquired by the increasingly popular streaming platform Tubi. The ensemble gives a great performance as their characters crisscross, evolve, nurture relationships, and disrupt toxic patterns over time.
Unlike many movies, there’s no need for big set pieces or dramatic panoramic shots to provide interest. Sure, we enjoy Malaysian landscapes and lively scenes in Kuala Lumpur, where a main character—the high-powered (but unhappy) businessman Kai (Ross Butler)—lives and works. But he and the movie’s other central characters feel relatable because the sets feel realistic, even modest. Hospital aide Leah (Lana Condor) and her younger brother Blake (Ricky He) flomp onto a worn sofa as they nurse broken hearts, while other scenes take place in the kitchen or along outdoor running paths. The dialogue echoes this grounded sensibility and subtly connects to Asian heritage, as seen in the character of mum Mary (Kheng Hua Tan), who references bird’s nest soup and prepares specific confinement month dishes for her postpartum daughter, Teresa (Karena Ka-Ya Lam).
This isn’t to say Worth the Wait is perfect. It’s enjoyable but not particularly highbrow, as evidenced by minor plot holes. One story element feels more distracting than it is helpful to the narrative: Kai’s sneezing. When Leah makes the transatlantic trip from Seattle to see Kai, her long-distance boyfriend, he sneezes throughout her visit while brushing it off as just allergies. Leah confronts him about it, saying that he’s sick but overly relies on things being “perfect” rather than real. But the gimmick is a little confusing—maybe he’s not ill, like he says? At any rate, Worth the Wait isn’t trying to win an Oscar. It’s a fun and inclusive rom-com, and it plays that role perfectly.
Gender: 5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES
When we think of the phrase “worth the wait” in relation to rom-coms, we generally associate it with a developing romance between one couple. But here, it also applies to platonic relationships between women. For the grieving Teresa, quite literally running into famous actress Amanda Yan (Elodie Yung) on a trail turns out to be one of the best things to happen to them both.
Their new friendship gives each what they need to move forward. Amanda encourages Teresa to open up about her grief, and in observing Teresa’s courage after a gut-wrenching tragedy, Amanda herself realizes that she has to break the cycle of an on-again, off-again relationship with her ex-fiancé and learn to prioritize her own heart and dreams.
Their bond is one of my favourites in the film. These two women start as strangers who live in totally different social spheres, but Teresa’s home winds up becoming someplace Amanda can literally run to, beautifully mirroring how they first met.
The film also elevates the usually shallow role of a female love interest. High schooler Riley’s storylines with men—boyfriend Blake and her uncle Curtis (Sung Kang)—are central to her narrative, but they don’t overshadow her. She loves Blake, for example, but she doesn’t put him before her own goal of attending college. It’s nice to see a film that takes female teen relationships seriously and doesn’t portray romance as being the only priority in a girl’s life. And just as Riley and her female costars have their moments of vulnerability, so too do the men. Even the amusingly gruff Curtis, who wants to connect with the niece he raised from infancy before she leaves the nest for college, admits to Riley that his controlling behaviour stems from a fear of failing her and her late parents. The emotional maturity of all the main characters, men and women alike, goes a long way in balancing onscreen gender roles.
Race: 5/5
Most film productions still have at least one white actor as a lead, even though box office hits like Black Panther (2018) or Crazy Rich Asians (2018) prove that they aren’t required to make boatloads of money. Yet studios continue to rely on white casts, and that’s neither right nor even a winning financial strategy.
That’s why it’s still refreshing that Worth the Wait (and casting director Leslie Woo) showcases actors of Vietnamese, Singaporean, Korean, Malaysian, Japanese, and multiracial backgrounds from an array of nationalities. This richness also appears behind the lens, with composers Jina Hyojin An and Shirley Song and production designer Tania Rahimikhoshavaz creating the engaging world of the Tubi film.
This authenticity pays off narratively. Leah’s vacation scenes in Malaysia avoid the “Othering” that sneaks into so many Western productions. The camera never lingers over smiling locals, and its casual shots of vendors, tourist sites, and street food don’t make you feel like you’re watching a National Geographic special full of slow motion and sepia color grading. In a night market scene where Kai and Leah sit down to have durian, the camera stays focused on them because this is their story—and it also happened to be Condor’s first time eating the fruit in real life, making her confused expression delightfully genuine. Lin captures Kuala Lumpur as the regular city that it is, with regular people living out their daily lives while tourists enjoy exploring it.
Other stereotypes get subverted, too. As a supporting character to Teresa and husband Nathan’s (Osric Chau) storyline, Mary could’ve fallen into “tiger mom” or strict mother-in-law tropes. But she’s multifaceted—irking Nathan while comforting Teresa and reacting cheekily to meeting superstar Amanda, which reveals her youthful side.
Bonus for Disability: +0.50
Worth the Wait isn’t just about chaotic meet-cutes and romantic drama. One of its central narratives bravely tackles grief and depression, framed around the heartbreaking situation of a stillborn baby. Teresa struggles with the overwhelming effects of having to pump breast milk while sitting in a room filled with new furniture and clothing for a baby who’s died. To get away from it all, she takes punishing runs in the forest, but she isn’t doing so well.
Meanwhile, even if his body hasn’t suffered the physical trauma of having grown and birthed a stillborn child, Nathan grieves as well and feels inadequate as a husband, not knowing what to do or say to comfort his wife. But when he convinces Teresa to follow Amanda’s suggestion to attend a group meeting, the couple begins to heal.
Worth the Wait bravely depicts Teresa and Nathan—as well as teens like Riley and Blake, plus celebrities like Amanda—dealing with intense emotions. Lin doesn’t just carry us through their lowest moments for entertainment value or leverage it as a lazy precursor to a revenge storyline. He and his screenwriters put in the work to model the positive ways that siblings, parents, strangers, and spouses can all support one another to survive, and thrive, throughout life’s hardest challenges.
Mediaversity Grade: A+ 5.00/5
The perfect rom-com balances the tingling excitement of love at first blush with the more serious elements of a relationship once the “honeymoon phase” has ended. Worth the Wait does this wonderfully, crafting an entertaining film that has both depth and heart.
Like Worth the Wait? Try these other Asian-led titles that feature romance as a central theme.
To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
Never Have I Ever - Season 1