The Donut King

Gu keeps her camera on how the community he helped build thrived and flourished without him, even as it acknowledged his role. As Asian Americans face increasing racism, its closing message about how immigrant communities – like the Cambodians who came over in 1975 with guns at their backs – help define America has only become more timely.

It’s a fine yarn spiced up with moments of hip hop, animation and pop culture references, all packaged nicely in something like the hot-pink doughnut boxes that the cruller maestro Ngoy supposedly invented.

What’s impressive about the documentary in particular is how it captures a wide range of personal histories, placing viewers in the various emotional journeys of different Cambodian refugees who call Ngoy "Uncle Ted."

Gu’s to be commended for recognizing that the hollow part of a donut might provide such a rich window into another culture. There’s much to learn about the immigrant experience from her research, even if the movie leaves us craving two things: donuts, obviously, but also a more well-rounded sense of all the incredible personalities she too-politely engages with along the way.

The filmmaker deftly moves backward and forward in time to chronicle Ngoy’s remarkable journey from war-torn Cambodia to the strip malls of Orange County while becoming a multimillionaire.

And The Donut King is about the doughnuts themselves — how they’ve evolved over the decades from a sturdy staple into a fantasy, if not quite a delicacy, of prismatic colors and preposterous toppings.

Too sentimental in its final act, “The Donut King” doesn’t quite manage to connect the dots between Ngoy’s financial troubles and the voracious capitalism that enabled his rise. The result is a cheery portrait of immigrant entrepreneurship that lacks political punch.