Ben Wang Continues His Stellar Run In Hilariously Vulnerable High School Comedy

In the pantheon of high school films, few have successfully treated kids like full-blown adults with actual, real-sounding dialogue. Fewer still know how to tackle mental health in a way that doesn’t feel preachy or especially put upon. The immediate magic of Brian, the feature directorial debut from The Fallout actor Will Ropp, is that it does both with grace, ease, and a healthy understanding that sometimes messing up repeatedly is just very funny.

Ben Wang plays the titular Brian, a seventeen-year-old struggling with an anxiety disorder that mostly manifests in outbursts of uncontrollable rage. The situation is such that the entire school seems to know about it, with the faculty even adhering to specific protocol about what to do when Brian loses control. That’s embarrassing enough for him, especially since he has a crush on his teacher Ms. Osweiler (Natalie Morales), which he believes is not just a crush but “real adult love.“

Brian Soars Thanks To A Refreshingly Real Understanding of Mental Health Challenges

Of course, a huge reason it works is Wang, who is on a run of stellar work (including 2025’s The Long Walk and the upcoming Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass). As Brian, he is bitingly hilarious and achingly vulnerable. His every move feels real, which is easy to do when you have dialogue as sensitively written as this from Late Night With Seth Meyers scribe Mike Scollins. From top to bottom, Brian just really works. It knows what game it’s playing and does it with grounded honesty and the kind of blistering comedy that can only emanate from a truly genuine place.

Genuine is something Brian can’t help but be – refreshing at an age when the pressure to have everything figured out is sky-high. He may not know exactly what he wants out of life, but he does know that he’s going to at least try. That includes trying out for the drama club, even though he approaches his Julius Caesar monologue with an exaggerated RP British dialect. The audition was pretty solid, but Brian’s social anxiety prevents him from having even a slight modicum of self-confidence. So, when the drama teacher starts whispering about his audition in front of him, he responds with a torrent of anger that culminates in him essentially telling his superior to go f**k himself.

No one quite knows how to handle Brian, least of all himself. His mother (Edi Patterson) and father (Randall Park) are both wonderfully sweet with him, but also sometimes give advice that is contradictory, or else unknowingly shut him down. His brother, Kyle (Sam Song Li) is his diametric opposite: effortlessly cool, athletic, socially lubricated at all times, and prone to ribbing his younger brother with aggression. Yet, underneath all that, it’s clear they all love him and want him to thrive.

But when Brian decides to run for student class president (in large part because Ms. Osweiler is the faculty advisor), no one knows how to respond. It seems like the worst thing that Brian could do, given his disposition, and the one difficult spot the film runs into is justifying this left-field behavior. Inappropriate crushes notwithstanding, it doesn’t seem all that likely that someone with such debilitating social issues would do this to himself.

Nonetheless, the choice does lead to some beautiful revelations and natural debunking of mythology around what constitutes being cool, smart, talented, attractive, or any other box that the binaries of high school traffic in. Brian is a wonderful proxy for anyone who has felt othered and dismissed. That may sound simple, and it is, but Ropp is a really skilled director. His economical approach allows us to question for ourselves in real time what it is we want out of adulthood. Even if we are already there.

Brian is rounded out by distinct, comically irreverent, and loving performances. Edi Patterson is no stranger to any Righteous Gemstones or Comedy Bang! Bang! fans, but she strikes a different chord here as a mother in just a little bit over her head. She’s as absurdly funny flirting with Brian’s only real friend, Justin (Joshua Colley), as she is heartbreaking when consoling her son. Jacob Moskovitz and Mackenna Shults are perfectly suited to play Brian’s oddball counterparts in student government, and Colley is tender and sweet in the type of role that can often be stereotyped.

But this is Ben Wang’s film, and he proves to be distinctly ready for the task. It’s so exciting to see a role this well-suited to an actor. Ropp and Scollins have made a film about the exact moment in burgeoning adulthood when you have to learn that there is a world bigger than yourself. Frequently that journey can be painful, and for Brian… it is. But it is also hilarious, silly, and filled with the joy of life’s greatest discoveries.

Brian screened at the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival.