Right off, I'll say I haven't laughed so hard at a movie as I did this one in a long time. The touching Quiz Lady follows Anne Yum (Awkwafina), a woman whose response to our intrusive American mass culture takes place by obsessing over TV quiz shows. Anne's sister Jenny (Sandra Oh) returns to her life after a long period of alienation when a dog-napper, Ken (Jonathan "Dumbfoundead" Park), seizes Anne's pooch, Mr. Linguini, in order to take hold of their mother's gambling debts.

The movie has many strong points. For example, it has a worthwhile script with reasonably smart dialogue and plenty of gags that land like a fist. Awkwafina is on point as usual -- actually, maybe improved -- with her acting including comical expressions to rival the seasoned and also funny Oh. Will Ferrell, who tends to annoy me to the point of general nausea, pulls off a generic show host whose role is to help Anne in a near-mentor capacity. Also technically, the film achieves unconventionally good moviemaking for its time. There are many cool shots as well as some great lighting that flatters Awkwafina. The film's slapstick moments knocked me about most effectively.

There are several flashbacks in Quiz Lady, to the point where the storytelling device was overused. One such amusing moment involves a very young Anne doing an act in her backyard that comes back to haunt Jenny -- I won't specify said act much more than to say it's become one of Fina's requisite gags lol.

Yup, Lady worked very well for me up until the anticlimactic-feeling climax set at the TV quiz show meant to redeem Anne and Jenny through the taking of prize money. These kinds of stultifying turns come up occasionally in Fina-involved productions and also reek of our mass culture. There's good tension up through the heroine's victory, but alas, not much more to it. Anne and Jenny do find each other again by acting out the charades-type winning scenario. But it's like those clever peaks and falls in the filmmakers' humor don't follow up with the bang that we need to remember Quiz Lady quite the way that we should. I still rate this a worthwhile 6.8 out of 10.