Way Too Much Money

I generally don’t go in for romantic comedies. If you look back at the various genres regularly covered on this site, romantic comedies aren’t a normal type of film that we cover here. The occasional one does slip through (especially during Jocular Jesting July), but by and large this site tends to stick to the Blockbuster Action aisle (Action, Action Horror, Action Sci-Fi, Action Fantasy) over most other genres. On a given day I’m far more likely to go watch a film with aliens, or a slasher killer, than I am something where the driving force is romance (although a romantic movie where the alien monster falls for a slasher killer is one I would watch in a heart beat).

Still, I do keep my eye out for films that garner the attention of the cultural zeitgeist, and when a romantic comedy comes along that everyone raves about, I will eventually sit down and give it a try. The operative word there being “eventually”. Crazy Rich Asians came out in 2018 and it took me this long to see it float past on my Netflix queue and decide to watch it. It’s not that I doubted what people said, how critics raved about the film, but it simply wasn’t a film I was going to go out of my way for. I had to be bored, have nothing else to watch, and it had to be right there, in a streaming service, when I started my search. And so it was.

With all that said, yes, Crazy Rich Asians is good. I mean, you probably suspected as much since it stole everyone’s attention eight years ago (everyone other than me), but I will confirm that everything everyone else said was correct. This is a fun, funny, and at times heartwarming story of romance, love, and people finding family where they can. I wouldn’t exactly call it a twisty movie, with its main plot playing out more or less as you’d expect, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it does everything it needs to very well, all while giving viewers a very rich (in multiple ways) viewing experience.

The film stars Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), an American-born Chinese woman who has been dating Nick Young (Henry Golding) for a little while. They’ve just started discussing next steps in their relationship (something Rachel mocks Nick for as he’s a guy that gets very set in his ways), when he’s suddenly called to Singapore because his best friend, Colin Khoo (Chris Pang), is getting married. He offers for Rachel to come with him, which she agrees to, not knowing that Nick is actually the son of a very, very rich Chinese family who, functionally, own all the good parts of Singapore. Oh, and also that she’s about to be under a very big microscope from everyone in Nick’s life.

The big issue is Nick’s mother, Eleanor Sung-Young (Michelle Yeoh), who is very protective not only of her son but also of the family’s name, fortune, and legacy. She doesn’t think that Rachel is good enough for Nick in large part because she’s American-born Chinese and not “real” Chinese (as I white person writing this review I will not write the slur they use to describe Rachel). She suspects Rachel is a golddigger, that she just wants into the family fortune, but most of all she just thinks Nick could do better, and she expects that Rachel is a passing phase for Nick and soon her son will move on. Rachel, then, has to prove herself to his family and show she is good enough… or at least learn that she doesn’t need their validation to be happy with her life.

If you’ve seen any romantic comedy before you likely know the basic plot of this film and how it will all play out. A son has an overbearing mother, the mother tries to meddle and get in the way of the young lovers’ romance, things then backfire for the parent, and the young woman comes out ahead in the relationship. I would say it’s spoilers to even write all that, but you can pretty easily guess all the facts of the story the second you get into it because, plainly, it’s really not that complex or different (at its romantic comedy core) from other films in the genre.

But that’s the main story. There’s a lot that’s going on around the periphery that helps to set the film apart. There’s Rachel’s friend, Goh Peik Lin (Awkwafina), who also comes from a rich family (although nowhere near as rich as Nick). She went to college with Rachel before heading back home, and she’s a solid support point for Rachel. Lin also functions as one of two “fairy godparents” for Rachel when, later in the film, Rachel needs help getting ready for an all-star gala wedding. The other godparent is played by Nico Santos, and he absolutely steals the show with Awkwafina in every scene they share.

There’s also Nick’s cousin, Astrid Leong-Teo (Gemma Chan), a sisterly figure in his life who is also one of the few family members that genuinely likes Rachel. She has her own subplot in the film as she suspects her husband, Michael (Pierre Png), is cheating on her. It adds more complexity to her relationship, and this story keeps the film feeling like too much of a frothy, frivolous story despite, well, so much of everything else going on in the film. It adds needed weight and grounding, helping the film to remain in the real world instead of becoming an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

See, Crazy Rich Asians isn’t just a romantic comedy; it’s also a bit of fabulously rich lifestyle porn. Just about everyone in the film, other than Rachel, is extremely wealthy, being tied to Nick’s family or one of the other big families (like Lin’s) in Singapore. That means that we get to see a ton of lavish lifestyles, big houses, fancy parties, amazing restaurants, and more. The film is constantly showing us how the upper one percent of the upper one percent lives in Singapore, and it acts as a kind of escapist fantasy for all of us plebs on the outside. The film is richly made, and richly decorated, through and through.

That’s one way that it got people to come in and watch the movie. The other way that is struck and got attention was from the fact that everyone in the film is Asian. This is the rare movie out of Hollywood that doesn’t feature a single white actor anywhere. From the largest to the smallest part, this is an all Asian cast, which certainly let Asians in the audience (and in various countries) feel far more represented than they would have otherwise. The fact that Rachel doesn’t have a white best friend she can talk to, simply so the white friend can act as a gateway for the white people in the audience, is a big thing and I appreciate the film more for it.

And I don’t want to downplay the power of the cast, which is, across the board, amazing. Wu and Golding are great in their parts, with Wu playing the fish out of water while Golding is the guy that doesn’t even realize that this opulent life is weird. That’s funnier when you consider that back in New York City he lives in a small apartment and goes to the YMCA to workout. It’s a casual kind of charisma he portrays, and it works so well. Plus he and Wu have such lived-in chemistry together that you can instantly see why their characters are meant to be. They are the stars, and everyone else in the film gives just as much to make this a really well acted production.

All of this contributes to a film that works on all levels, even if the story is a little expected. That’s my biggest gripe with the film, that the story goes just about exactly where you expect it to and it doesn’t really surprise at any point. But it’s a small critique for a film that, otherwise, hits it out of the park. Crazy Rich Asians is a solid film, as a romantic comedy and as a bit of lifestyle porn, and it works very well. I’m not generally much for romantic comedies but this is one I find easy to recommend. Yes, I’m eight years late to the party but I did eventually get there.