Director Adele Lim of Joy Ride addresses an unfavorable tweet from Jackson Murphy. Murphy is a film critic for an iHeartRadio station, 99.5 The River, based in Albany, New York, according to Murphy’s Twitter bio. Lim made her directorial debut in Crazy Rich Asians and Raya and the Last Dragon.

Murphy’s tweet described the film as “embarrassing,” “incredibly unpleasant,” and “Objectifies men, targets white people.” On Tuesday, Lim responded on Twitter, saying, “Imma need ‘Objectifies men, targets white people’ on a tshirt.”

Joy Ride is an R-rated comedy and releases in theaters July 7th. It follows a woman traveling across China in search of her birth mother. Lim, Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, and Teresa Hsiao wrote Joy Ride. The lead roles in the film are Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu, and Sabrina Wu.

Critic Lovia Gyarke wrote, “Like the best quartets in film and TV, the four friends form an unlikely crew, but it’s their differences that make their relationships with one another oddly comforting. Joy Ride balances its irreverent humor- a mix of sex jokes and insider-y, affectionate jabs at stereotypes with the Asian diaspora-with poignance.”

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Lim said, “It’s the first time that we are putting four Asian faces in the middle of an R-rated comedy… If you f**k up- if a project with a queer lead, a Black lead, or an Asian lead fails- the industry’s knee-jerk reaction is to blame it on the otherness. You don’t want that fear to paralyze you and keep you from creating from a place of joy.”

Imma need “Objectifies men, targets white people” on a tshirt 🙏🏼🤣 https://t.co/5oEggiF2Og

— Adele Lim (@adeleBlim) July 5, 2023