‘Watching TV With the Red Chinese’’ was originally to have opened here in December, but its debut was pushed back to today. If the producers of this mess were smart, they would have delayed it indefinitely.
Set in 1980, this desperate indie concerns three young men from mainland China who come to NYC to study. They become friends with Dexter, a white teacher who lives down the hall. When Dexter goes away for a few days, one of the visitors begins a relationship with Suzanne, the teacher’s flame-haired girlfriend (Gillian Jacobs, the only possible reason to see this).
Director-writer Shimon Dotan takes this iffy story and makes it nearly unwatchable by jumping back and forth in time, using screens within screens and bouncing between color and black-and-white. These stylish quirks serve only to diminish what little momentum there is.