Insights and blunt psychological and sociological truths thumb-wrestle with “twee” all the way through actor Randall Park’s directing debut, “Shortcomings,” an Asian American rom-com that comments on Asian-American rom-coms.

Equal measures witty, bittersweet and trite, it lands laughs and body-blows and prompts the occasional eye-roll, but thanks to a superb cast, it comes off more often than not.

Based on Adrian Tomine’s graphic novel, “Shortcomings” is about a film school grad turned arthouse cinema manager and dyed in the wool film snob, and the women in his life. And if the material feels familiar, it should. There’s a hint of every movie about a movie lover — told from a male point of view — ever made in it.

But there’s little sugar coating this Woody Allen character of Japanese descent. Ben, played by Justin H. Min, is insufferable. When we meet him and longtime love Miko (Ally Maki), he’s staring, slack-jawed, at the vapid wish-fulfillment rom-com that she and everybody at the Asian Film Fest she works for are crying and applauding.

“It’s going to be a MASSIVE hit, and that makes it GREAT!” is Miko’s rationale.

“I felt like I was at a BTS concert,” he harrumphs.

Sure, it’s “glossy,” the fest director apologizes. “But it’s OURS.” Inclusion and “representation” matter. Just not to Ben, who can’t help but judge this “Crazy Rich Asians” riff as unrealistic junk.

I have to say, at that moment I muttered “I feel seen.“

But Ben is like that about everything — argumentative, self-absorbed, lost in routine and obsessed with black and white French films, Eric Rohmer and John Cassavetes. Miko, whose rich dad owns the apartment they’re renting, is neglected, to say the least.

Ben’s gay BFF, Korean-American Alice (Sherry Cola of “Joy Ride”) is the one who “gets” him, and her assessments aren’t pretty. He is blind to the role of “race” in his status as “the outsider.” And he’s practically a stereotype, the Asian guy into the blonde shiksa goddess. His eye wanders every time a leggy Bay Area blonde crosses his field of view.

When performance artist Autumn (Tavi Gevinson) interviews for a job at his Berkeley Art Cinema, we see the storm clouds form. When Miko announces an internship “in New York” that “I told you about,” we hear the thunder.

All we need is for the gay best friend, his “unreliable moral compass” to decamp for New York for Ben to find himself abandoned, lonely and prone to stumble in exactly the ways we expect in such rom-coms.

But Tomine and Park — a very funny actor (“Always Be My Maybe,” “The Interview”) who has a cameo here — trip up expectations and find giggles and laughs as they do.

Ben is sometimes Alice’s “beard,” but her fake “boyfriend” has to change his last name so that her older Korean relatives don’t know he’s Japanese because “World War II” and “colonization” of Korea and such. He says “I often pass” for Korean.

“Yeah, right.”

The ditzy Autumn is a goofy, “creative” cliche, with her tone-deaf punk band, exhibitionist-dancer roommate and big plans for an exhibition of her many Polaroids of the toilet filled with her morning bladder-emptying.

“E-PISS-tomology,” she’ll call it. “URINE insane” he offers, unhelpfully.

Debby Ryan plays another exemplar of Ben’s “type,” only more binary. Somehow, he figures the racial difference will be their biggest challenge.

I like the way the script avoids a full swan dive into sentiment even as that expectation is set up by Ben’s movie-based ideas of a Grand Romantic Gesture.

And “Umbrella Academy” alum Min and the script never soften our hero. He’s a bit of a jerk at times, a lot more of a jerk at others.

Cola, Gevinson and Jacob Batalon (a “Spider-Man” alum who plays a “Marvel” obsessed art cinema employee) are playing “types,” but make them funny and human even in limited screen time.

“Shortcomings” isn’t great. It’s never more twee than when the screenwriter insists on using cutesie “chapter” intertitles — “Structurally Unsound,” “Ongoing Charades.” STOP doing that, kids!

But it’s funny, packing in the inclusion while sending up a guy who rejects that as a cinematic be-all and end-all.

Want to know what a “fencer,” a “rice king” and about the minefield of dating in the gender sensitive “consent granted” era is like in America’s most “woke” city? You need to see Park and Tomine’s clever handiwork to find out.

Rating: R for language throughout, sexual material and brief nudity

Cast: Justin H. Min, Sherry Cola, Ally Maki, Debby Ryan, Sonoya Mizuno, Jacob Batalon, Timothy Simmons, Tavi Gevinson and Randall Park.

Credits: Directed by Randall Park, scripted by Adrian Tomine, based on his graphic novel. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time: 1:32