Wayne Wang
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Connections, in both directions
Anyone who�s seen the inferior Pretty Woman, can easily guess where their relationship is headed, but the awareness of class issues grounds this Cinderella story.
Take the main ingredient, the fabulously popular Jennifer Lopez, put her in a shoddy retread of the already shoddy Pretty Woman, and add a cute little boy and a cute older boy and a few cynical stabs at social consciousness.
Like Pretty Woman but without the laughs.
Fortunately, the skillful hand of director Wayne Wang ("Smoke") and smart tailoring to the talents of indomitable star Jennifer Lopez help this housekeeping-service spin on "Pretty Woman" pump a surprising amount of fresh life into the formula.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton
influenced by The Joy Luck Club (1993)
(The early nods to “The Joy Luck Club,” from the San Francisco setting to a brief cameo by the great Tsai Chin, are surely no accident.)
Of course, most of this smacks of wish-fulfilment – and the idea of the hidden village within the city recalls Paul Auster and Wayne Wang’s Smoke – but it’s a timely antidote to the kind of pumped up misery that is usually paraded as authenticity itself (see American Honey).
Consider the magical scene in which Mei meets her mother as a young girl and gets to hear what pushy parents so rarely tell their children — perhaps the most resonant expression of long-withheld approval since the beauty parlor scene in “The Joy Luck Club,” when Tsai Chin’s character assures her daughter, “Now you make me happy.”
Which is not to say that “Turning Red” — a cheeky title for a movie that sometimes plays like “Carrie” with the cutes, or “The Joy Luck Club” meets “Ginger Snaps” — deals purely in the metaphorical.
Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
Directed by Jon M. Chu
influenced by Chan Is Missing (1982), The Joy Luck Club (1993)
Plot Themes
The Joy Luck Club, with its assimilationist assumptions and arrays of long-suffering women and absent or oppressive men, hasn't aged as well as Wang’s 1982 movie Chan Is Missing, which remains rough and vibrant and the greatest onscreen evocation of the kaleidoscopic, contradictory concept of Asian Americanness I’ve seen.
While Crazy Rich Asians has quite rightfully won plaudits for Asian representation (it is, as we have been ceaselessly told, the first major American film to feature a majority-Asian cast since 1993’s The Joy Luck Club) it is, at base, a romantic comedy, and that means it follows certain forms and hits certain expected beats.
You may know this already, but: Crazy Rich Asians is an adaptation of the bestselling book by Kevin Kwan (the first of a series, followed by China Rich Girlfriend and Rich People Problems) and the first studio movie in more than two decades with a majority Asian-American cast (the last one was 1993’s The Joy Luck Club), and the filmmakers turned down a boatload of money from Netflix to get the movie into theaters, eventually partnering with Warner Bros. Director Jon M. Chu (who previously helmed some Step Up films and the sequels of G.I. Joe and Now You See Me ), Kwan, and the film’s producers wanted the movie to be seen as an event experience, to increase visibility while attacking cultural stereotypes about Asian attractiveness, subservience, and masculinity, and they sure as hell nailed it.
It has been way too long since there has been an all Asian-American ensemble and a female Asian-American lead in an American movie...you'd have to go back 25 years to 1993's "The Joy Luck Club" to find the last occurrence of this.
(The precedents include 1993’s The Joy Luck Club, 2004’s Memoirs of a Geisha, 2006’s Letters from Iwo Jima, and my favorite in this list, Justin Lin’s sizzling 2002 teen-rebel movie, Better Luck Tomorrow.)
It’s an important film regardless, as Crazy Rich Asians is the first major Hollywood movie with an exclusively Asian main cast since The Joy Luck Club 25 years ago.
Other new cast members include Macau's Iong’s Magic Shop proprietors (Jay Chou, "The Interview" and Tsai Chin, "The Joy Luck Club") and Richard Laing ("Batman Begins") as Lionel Shrike in flashback.
To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
Directed by Susan Johnson
influenced by The Joy Luck Club (1993)
While Crazy Rich Asians is the first major film to feature an all-Asian cast since The Joy Luck Club , which came out 25 years ago, To All the Boys is the first mainstream teen romance to have a young Asian-American actress as its lead.
“Crazy Rich Asians” is the first film in 25 years to star an all Asian American cast since “The Joy Luck Club”, and “To All the Boys” is the first mainstream teen romance to have an Asian American actress as its lead.
In the years since Last Tango, a brave few have attempted baring their souls with varying results, such as Boxing Helena (1993) and Showgirls (1995) on the low end or Empire of the Senses (1976) and Crash (1996) on the high end.
It's an empathic performance -- even eclipsing the heartfelt ones she gave in Beautiful Girls and Anywhere But Here -- and her compassion eventually wears off on us: It's hard not to laugh, weep or ruminate right along with her character.
Mulan, played by willowy screen veteran Liu Yifei (“The Forbidden Kingdom,” “In Harm’s Way”) is the daughter of a former soldier (Tzi Ma of “The Farewell”) and a mother (Rosalind Chao, “The Joy Luck Club”) who have to remind her — constantly — that “a daughter brings honor (to the family) through marriage.”
She also finds pathos in gentler family scenes across Tzi Ma (“The Farewell”) and Rosalind Chao (“The Joy Luck Club”) as her loving parents stuck in their traditional ways of matchmaking (Cliche dialogue alert: “Blinded by my own foolish pride”).
His wife (Rosalind Chao, “The Joy Luck Club”) emphasizes that Mulan’s only way to bring honor is to marry well, just as in the animated film.
Her mother, Hua Li (played by The Joy Luck Club ’s Rosalind Chao), teaches Mulan to hide her gift as a form of protection and, instead, to bring “honour to family” as a daughter destined for marriage.
The all-Asian cast also includes notable names like Donnie Yen ( Rogue One , Ip Man ), Li Gong ( Memoirs of a Geisha , Miami Vice ), Jet Li ( The Expendables , Romeo Must Die ), Jason Scott Lee ( Dragon , Lilo & Stitch ), Tzi Ma ( The Farewell , The Man in the High Castle ), and Rosalind Chao ( The Joy Luck Club , The Laundromat ).
There's a moment in the first story, when Marv visits his probation officer, Lucille (Carla Gugino: The Center of the World ), in the middle of the night, and he wonders how she can be a dyke with a body like that (she sleeps in the nude and doesn't bother to dress to confront her visitor), a body that would attract any man.
Mulan (voiced by actress Ming-Na Wen, from "The Joy Luck Club" and TV's "The Single Guy") is a big-time tomboy who, when China is invaded by the Huns, steals her crippled father's marching orders and takes his place on the front disguised as a boy.
Mulan herself (drawn to resemble The Joy Luck Club's Ming-Na Wen, her speaking voice) is a winner, and the story is designed to appeal to both boys (lots of action) and girls (a woman in the middle of all that action, plus a little romance): few summer movies will surpass it.
(Ming-Na Wen of "The Joy Luck Club" provides the speaking voice of Mulan.)
Like The Joy Luck Club, this is a rarity - a motion picture made in the United States with an almost all-Asian cast.
The cast is packed with excellent character actors, unsung talents whose faces you will remember but whose names you've never heard: Tamlyn Tomita (The Joy Luck Club), Adrian Lester (Primary Colors), Nestor Serrano (Runaway Jury), and Kenneth Welsh (Miracle) as a dead ringer for Dick Cheney.
She will have to stay with Mike (Nathan Gamble) and Debbie (Elle Fanning, "Because of Winn-Dixie"), the couple's children.
And what could that story have in common with a story about an illegal immigrant housekeeper (Adriana Barraza, Amores Perros) taking two American kids (Elle Fanning, Because of Winn-Dixie, and newcomer Nathan Gamble) across the border into Mexico in order to be at her son's wedding?
In the supporting cast arena, Ashley Johnson (1999's "Anywhere But Here") has the most significant role, and is highly effective as Nick's bitter daughter Alex. Johnson paints Alex as a realistic, likable, if occasionally stubborn teenager, and has what are questionably the best scenes in the movie, including a delightful montage of Nick helping her to pick a prom dress, and a late, heartfelt scene where, for the first time in her life, Alex finds herself being able to open up to her father.
His theory is stolen and confirmed by a world famous colleague, Dr. Conrad Zimsky (Stanley Tucci, "Maid in Manhattan"), and the U.S. Government forms a team of specialists that will travel to the center of the earth to jump start "The Core."
The Manhattan of Hitch is a remarkably small world where seemingly every character, incidental or not, is connected to someone else in the film; it's neat--maybe too neat--and modeled pretty clearly along the lines of a fairy tale--like, say, Maid in Manhattan , In Good Company , or last week's professional-man-whore comedy The Wedding Date .