Love Hurts is a huge disappointment considering the fact that it offered Ke Huy Quan a huge career opportunity that he had never had before. Quan is an actor who got his start as a child performer in notable 1980s movies, but took a hiatus from performing onscreen between 2002 and 2021, largely because he was only being offered smaller roles that featured negative Asian stereotypes. However, he experienced a career renaissance after starring opposite Michelle Yeoh in the surreal 2022 science fiction action movie Everything Everywhere All At Once, for which he won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

Most likely because he showed off his ability to perform well in a fight scene in Everything Everywhere All At Once, Ke Huy Quan was cast in the 2025 action-comedy movie Love Hurts. The movie, which is the directorial debut of stunt performer Jonathan Eusebio, is a production of 87North, the company behind the John Wick movies and other action тιтles such as Atomic Blonde, Violent Night, The Fall Guy, and Bullet Train. Quan stars alongside Ariana DeBose, Daniel Wu, Marshawn Lynch, and Sean Astin, playing wholesome realtor Marvin, whose violent past as a hitman comes back to haunt him.

Love Hurts Is Ke Huy Quan’s First Lead Role 41 Years After He Started Acting

He Is A Longtime Supporting Player

When he joined the Love Hurts cast, Ke Huy Quan marked a career first by taking on the lead role in a movie. Although quite a few of his projects are iconic, as are his roles in them, until now he has made a career out of playing supporting characters. This includes his breakout performance as Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which starred Harrison Ford, his follow-up role as Data in the 1985 adventure movie The Goonies, in which he was seventh-billed, and his appearance as Kim in the 1992 Brendan Fraser comedy Encino Man.

Even when he returned as an adult star, Quan’s career resurgence came off the back of playing supporting characters. He followed his Oscar-winning role as the mild-mannered Waymond Wang in Everything Everywhere All At Once by continuing to take on similar roles. This includes appearing as Jamie Yao in the Disney+ graphic novel adaptation American Born Chinese (which starred Ben Wang and Quan’s Everything Everywhere co-star Michelle Yeoh), Han in DreamWorks’ Kung Fu Panda 4 (as part of a voice cast led by Jack Black), and Ouroboros in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Loki (which stars Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson).

Love Hurts Was Not Well-Received By Critics, And Audiences Are Mixed

It Earned A Rotten Tomatoes Splat

Although the movie gave Quan his first lead role, Love Hurts reviews have been dismal. In fact, on Rotten Tomatoes, more than 141 different critic’s reviews, with an average rating of 4.2 out of 10, have been aggregated to give the movie a perilously low score of 18%, which marks the lowest score that Quan has ever received, beating his former record holder, 2001’s Second Time Around (31%). Metacritic delivered a similarly dismal score of 34 out of 100. However, audiences’ reactions were more mixed. Below, see how the movie has fared with both critics and audiences across review platforms:

While audiences consistently rated Love Hurts higher than critics on platforms where scores were aggregated from both groups, only Rotten Tomatoes showed audiences giving it a mildly positive score. However, a 61% audience score means that it was only 1% over the 60% threshold, past which a movie can be considered Fresh. This means that a sudden influx of negative user reviews could easily see the score dropping lower, into Rotten territory. The movie split audiences even more elsewhere, generally earning scores that would translate to roughly 50% or lower on Rotten Tomatoes.

Ke Huy Quan’s First Movie As A Lead Deserved To Be A Lot Better

Love Hurts Has Underperformed At The Box Office Too

In addition to being taken down by critics, the Love Hurts release has had a lukewarm performance at the box office. It debuted at No. 3 during its opening weekend, taking bronze on the domestic chart behind the new release horror movie Heart Eyes at No. 2 and the holdover DreamWorks release Dog Man at No. 1 in its sophomore weekend. By the end of its first full week, Love Hurts only grossed roughly $8 million worldwide, which sees it struggling to make up its $18 million budget, a price tag that likely places its break-even point around $45 million.

Ke Huy Quan deserved much better than Love Hurts as a showcase for his talents, especially after more than four decades of waiting for a lead rol. This is underscored by the fact that the majority of the movie’s negative reviews specifically praise Quan’s performance and lambast the movie for wasting it. Generally, the elements of the movie that have drawn the most condemnation, rather than Quan, are – according to many critics – its lackluster action, shallow romance, thin plot, and failure to find an interesting character for Quan’s Oscar-winning co-star Ariana DeBose.

Love Hurts Hopefully Won’t Keep Ke Huy Quan From Leading More Movies

The Star Deserves A Better Showcase

Despite its critical and commercial underperformance, hopefully Love Hurts does not prevent Ke Huy Quan from being offered more lead roles in movies, in any genre. His Oscar-winning performance in Everything Everywhere All At Once proved his facility with drama, comedy, action, and more, so it should continue to act as a calling card for his ability to lead future projects.

So far, the majority of the upcoming Ke Huy Quan movies after Love Hurts see him returning to supporting roles. This includes his roles in The Electric State (which stars Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown), Zootopia 2 (which stars Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman), and the horror movie Bad Boy (in which he co-stars with Lili Reinhart). So far, the only movie he is set to lead is the action-thriller Fairytale in New York, from Sisu director Jalmari Helander, which will hopefully perform better than his 2025 outing and pave the way for more such roles.