Skip to main content

A Crazy Rich Rom-Com


An all Asian cast is nothing new to fans of world cinema -some of the best movies ever made have had all Asian casts after all. But Crazy Rich Asians, the romantic-comedy based on the book by Kevin Kwan and forebodingly directed by Jon M. Chu, is not a Chinese movie, or a Korean movie, or a Japanese movie, but firmly an American movie, made by a cast and crew of largely American, British, and Australian people of Asian heritage. And that is certainly rare. It hasn’t really happened since 1993’s The Joy Luck Club. Early on in this film it dawned on me I’d never seen a mainstream Hollywood movie with two Asian romantic leads (sometimes the woman would be, scarcely would the man), which speaks to this movies’ importance. The likeability of their relationship speaks to its quality.
The movie’s about Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) an NYU economics professor dating Nick Young (Henry Golding) who invites her to come back to Singapore with him where he’s to be the Best Man at a wedding. Once there though she learns that he happens to belong to one of the richest, most prestigious families in all of South Asia and must contend with his stern, disapproving mother Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh), as well as his barrage of eccentric relatives.
There’s nothing in this movie you haven’t seen in another romantic comedy. Crazy Rich Asians is a cornucopia of clichés, but it knows and loves the genre conventions so earnestly so as to elevate its rom-com trite into an art form unto itself. While there’s almost no self-awareness, there’s no cynicism either, and with the unique context and presentation, Chu does the best that he can to make it all feel new. And a lot of the time he succeeds. This is an unusually well-directed movie from him. The lavish presentation and cultural touches make it visually unique and colourful, a couple sequences shot almost like a Bollywood movie, but it remains rooted in its simple yet charmingly told story.
The cast is one of the biggest factors in lifting up the banal material and lacklustre script. Wu and Golding are terrific on their own, but they have incredibly palpable chemistry when on screen together. They’re a legitimately endearing couple. Golding has a natural charisma, something which no doubt suited him well as a television presenter, but also conveys genuine humility, while Wu as the star really rises above her stereotypical character arc. Perhaps she doesn’t react entirely realistically to the fact her boyfriend’s been deliberately hiding a large part of his life from her initially, but she does hold her own going toe to toe with Michelle Yeoh. Yeoh of course is a force of nature, delivering a powerful performance as the traditionalist matriarch with her own pent-up insecurities. Gemma Chan is superb as well, as Nick’s cousin Astrid dealing with her own tempestuous personal life. There are likewise good turns from Chris Pang, Jing Lusi, Sonoya Mizuno, Tan Kheng Hua, and veteran actress Lisa Lu (of films like The Mountain Road and The Last Emperor) as Nick’s grandmother, and even decent comic relief coming from Nico Santos and Ronny Chieng. Ken Jeong and Awkwafina however feel kind of misplaced. Jeong’s talented at playing obnoxious characters, but it takes the right kind of script and direction to make it funny, and here Chu doesn’t have either. And though Awkwafina gets a couple laughs, her character is exactly the kind of American Eleanor fears Rachel is -though she’s supposed to be Singaporean.
The movie goes on a bit long to fit in the obligatory third act break-up. But perhaps the biggest problem with Crazy Rich Asians is that by the very nature of its story, it’s a tribute to privileged excess and the wealthy elite. It glamourizes ultra-rich lifestyles without any real satirical commentary or addressing of social inequity outside of Rachel and Nick’s humble necessities. The homogeneity of the class being appraised has already drawn criticism from some in the South Asian community for being inaccurate to Singaporean diversity and promoting the dominant culture at the expense of the marginalized, which is true. The filmmakers didn’t really think of the consequences of a story about the problems of the top tier members of society, as they were preoccupied with its fairy tale romance potential. However consequences are very rarely a part of romantic-comedies in general -they would ruin the genre’s tenets of wish fulfilment. This isn’t an excuse, just the logical explanation. Still, I wish more of the movies’ rich jokes took the form of scathing indictments rather than mere shows of extravagance.
Crazy Rich Asians, for all its predictability and formula storytelling, does the romantic comedy justice by its sheer passion to do so. Everyone involved seems to be enjoying themselves and aware of the movies’ importance as a diversity touchstone. It exposes plenty of great talent, though Wu, Golding, Yeoh, and Chan especially stand out. And it even incorporates lightly, some interesting aspects of Chinese and Malaysian culture. It’s certainly a typical Hollywood love story, but atypical in most of the right ways.

 Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Strange History of the American Spoof Movie

Parody movies have been around for a lot longer than we tend to think of them. Even from the earliest days of Hollywood there were movies meant to satirize a particular subject or genre. In the silent era, Buster Keaton was responsible for a few. And in the early sound era, almost as soon as the monster pictures took off did you see comic versions of them -Abbott and Costello hosting a few. But parody movies tended to be subtle for most of cinema history, or parody came in conjunction with another goal of the comedy. It really wasn’t until the 1980s and 90s that it took off and became popularly understood. And there is perhaps a line to be drawn to the counterculture comedy explosion that began in the 1970s through avenues like  Saturday Night Live , which frequently parodied from even its earliest years popular movies and cultural properties of the time. But that is still a way’s back. To my generation though, ‘parody movie’ is perhaps a less known term than the more blunt ‘s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Notes on the Title Cards of The Lord of the Rings

It might be sacrilege for one who both considers The Lord of the Rings  trilogy to be one of the greatest triumphs of cinema and has been an avid lover of the films since adolescence, to declare that the original theatrical cuts of the films are better than the much beloved extended editions. Easily it’s my most controversial opinion regarding these movies. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the extended editions quite a lot, especially as someone who just enjoys spending time in that universe. They flesh it out more, add extra flavour, and in increasing the length by about an hour really emphasize the epic quality of these films. But I find that the original cuts are generally more cleanly paced, more seamlessly edited, and much more accessible to audiences. All the stuff there is to love about The Lord of the Rings  is there in the original versions, the plethora of new and extended scenes merely add to that for fans. And of those, they fall into three camps for me: 1....
1 comment
Read more

Back to the Feature: New York, New York (1977)

New York, New York  is a two hour forty minute musical movie largely about a toxic relationship and I understand why it was Martin Scorsese’s first big flop. Some have blamed its poor reception on the kind of movie it was, of a style and tone Scorsese wasn’t known for, but I find that hard to believe. Even after only five films, he’d proven himself an extremely versatile director, and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore  found an audience. Sure this jazz musical love letter to New York City was following up Taxi Driver and its’ far more cynical take on the city, but then it’s also ‘from the director of Taxi Driver ’ which itself was a big hit. Was it a matter of public appetite for musicals, or mere word of mouth and early critical reception that dissuaded viewers? Irrespective of that, I was stunned to discover this movie was the origin of the titular song, which I’d assumed was much older (it’s definitely got the sound of something that might have come out of the Jazz sce...
Post a Comment
Read more