Debut: 'Ayo, Check Up!'
Sports are arguably one of the cornerstones of society. Complete strangers find unity at a sports bar over their shared love for the winning team. Family members pass on “the family team” to new generations and children learn to work as a team from something as small as peewee soccer. While all this community and growth is found within sports, sometimes, one has to look inward to understand what the game is really about—a concept explored in Ayo, Check Up!.
Ayo, Check Up! (2024) is a short film written and directed by Nathan Xia. The film follows two strangers, Garrett (Elijah R. Reed) and Kevin (Xia) who play a one-on-one basketball game in the park. As they play, their internalized struggles begin to manifest as they struggle with not only the game, but with themselves.
The film sets its tone rather quickly. As Garrett approaches the basketball court, the audience hears self-help audio playing through his earbuds. Right away, Xia makes it clear that Garrett struggles with self-esteem and feeling like he is enough. This is further exemplified in his frequent attempts at shooting a basket, the frequent misses turning into visible frustration. It is this frustration that leads him to challenge Kevin, a man shooting baskets successfully, to a game.
Masculinity is the centerpiece of this short film, and the rapid cuts and shaky camera serve as an emphasis of the “stakes” these two men are playing for. The game is not a game to them. Rather, it becomes a way of asserting dominance over the other man, a way of tearing down the other in order to achieve some form of self-recognition.
The performances of Reed and Xia do a truly solid job in conveying this repressed emotion and desire to assert oneself. As soon as Garrett hears Kevin snicker at his missed shot, Reed brings a brief vulnerability to the character before quickly shielding that vulnerability with hostility, then starting the one-on-one challenge that begins the short film.
It is when Garrett gets knocked down, however, that the heart of the film shows itself. Through Super 8 style footage, the audience sees a cartoonish version of what can be assumed is Garrett’s childhood. A little basketball watches its older “father” basketball easily toss itself through a hoop. Realizing the older basketball only has so much time left, the little basketball devotes its life to making its father proud by trying to make a basket.
Despite this short sequence being shot rather comically with real basketballs beset with eyes and little mouths and wigs, the emotion conveyed is shockingly effective, reminiscent of the absurdist pathos seen in Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022). Society places the patriarch on a pedestal within the average family unit, and unfortunately, if that figure struggles with emotional transparency, those struggles are passed onto the next generation who will then struggle in vain to live up to the expectations that the prior generation didn’t even know how to express.
This is what Garrett’s flashback makes abundantly clear. He spent most of his life trying to make his father proud in the way he thought he needed to, and when he doesn’t, the audience sees his father die right before his eyes after he fails to make a basket—a clear metaphor for how it feels to disappoint someone who will never be seen again.
When Garrett comes to, Kevin taunts him for taking a break on the floor. Yet, in a moment worthy of pointing out, he still extends a hand to help Garrett off the floor. The camera focuses on this hand, not only because of its olive branch-like significance, but also because the audience and Garrett sees scars along Kevin’s wrist, implying self-harm.
Xia’s writing and directing strongly leans towards the idea that men don’t have to be best friends with each other—that would be impossible. However, in the shot of Kevin’s arm, he makes clear to Garrett and the audience that every man has his own struggles. That realization is perhaps the key to not feeling targeted or attacked by other men for struggling.
Ayo, Check Up! is a sports film about masculinity. It is a sports film about rediscovering the comradery in sports that is lost when people grow up. But it is also a reminder, a reminder that no man is alone in his struggles and pain. It is a reminder that if everyone struggles, maybe everyone can struggle together and offer support and love rather than antagonism.
