Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
Directed by Jon M. Chu
An American-born Chinese economics professor accompanies her boyfriend to Singapore for his best friend's wedding, only to get thrust into the lives of Asia's rich and famous.
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53 films that influenced Crazy Rich Asians
What critics say influenced Crazy Rich Asians
Like many of its genre mates, from Pretty Woman to Sex and the City to, yeah, even Fifty Shades, Crazy Rich Asians is lifestyle porn, and though it takes a few vague stabs at the nobility of self-enforced poverty, it’s really about Rachel proving herself worthy of joining this rarefied clique, where everyone is beautiful, bachelor parties in international waters are the norm, and glamorous shopping expeditions are but a private helicopter ride away.
On her first trip to Singapore (and Asia, for that matter), Rachel, a brilliant economics professor at NYU, gets treated worse than Julia Roberts did in Pretty Woman.
Director Jon M. Chu deftly weaves the numerous story strands while still finding time to toss in the mandatory visits to the bachelor and bachelorette parties (a hedonistic blowout aboard a cargo ship for him and decadent island spa for her); a swank boutique for the elegant quest for “the dress” straight out of “Pretty Woman”; and to the palatial Young estate for the eventual showdown with the potential mother-in-law who thinks Maleficent an ideal role model.
Most of which comes from the comedic skills of supporting characters like Rachel’s college pal Peik Lin Goh (Awkwafina, who has the standout force of a Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids) and one of Nick’s snarky cousins Oliver (Nico Santos, who can spear with just a line or withering glance) who help Rachel navigate this new, high flying world by giving her a makeover (a squeal-worthy moment of fashion akin to Pretty Woman) and boosting her self worth.
Chu and his screenwriters Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim clearly are sharp observers of what made movies like Pretty Woman work so well onscreen.
Recalling the likes of Pretty Woman, Coming to America and, forgive me for saying this, Fifty Shades of Grey , it’s not like anything that happens will be startling to a single viewer sitting in the audience.
(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.)
The Joy Luck Club is the most full-throated chorus about the heft of immigrant parent expectations, the theme that's become a maybe too stubbornly inescapable throughline in Asian American output, from Justin Lin's not-your-model-minority 2002 debut Better Luck Tomorrow to Master of None to the most recent Pixar short .
While that sentiment holds largely true, it’s not wholly accurate; those behind the labeling likely forgot about “Better Luck Tomorrow,” the 2002 curio from director Justin Lin (of the “Fast and Furious” and “Star Trek” franchises) about overachieving high schoolers.
Even more upsettingly, Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyrie" blares as Singaporean-Chinese men slowly descend upon international waters in helicopters for a bachelor party, a tasteless nod to the American imperialism of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, itself a display of Coppola's megalomania and wealth.
It has worn out its welcome as a smart-alecky way to reference Apocalypse Now, and here it blares out while choppers fly the groomsmen to a bachelor party staged on a cargo ship.
Though the high-water mark in conspicuous consumerism has to be the bachelor party, whose budget must have rivalled that ofApocalypse Now.
By 1994, in Four Weddings and a Funeral Hugh Grant could only invoke the lyrics of the Partridge Family with: “I think I love you.”
You could think of its as something akin to “Sex and the City” by way of “Four Weddings and a Funeral” with a fuller body, greater nuance and a twist of zest.
This is the longwinded way of saying, in spite of its familiar, sometimes even ingratiating mien, “Crazy Rich Asians” is, mostly, quite delightful, funny and sweet—everything you really want from a romantic comedy, and a kind of classic, “Four Weddings And A Funeral“-esque tenor.
In fact, this is a movie carved directly from the Richard Curtis school, and it’s a film that could easily join the rotation of “Love Actually” and “Four Weddings and a Funeral” as another romantic minor classic.
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(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.)
There were “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000) and “Memoirs of a Geisha” (2005) but they were period movies.
An international line-up which includes Gemma Chan, Ken Jeong and Michelle Yeoh will entice audiences, and the scarcity of studio films with an all-Asian cast (2001’s Memoirs Of A Geisha, 1993’s The Joy Luck Club) should help raise visibility.
The very existence of this cast really can't be downplayed — you have to go back to 1993's The Joy Luck Club and 2001's Memoirs of a Geisha to find other Hollywood films starring so many actors of Asian descent.
It’s been more than a decade since “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “Letters From Iwo Jima,” the last major studio pictures to feature all-Asian ensembles, and a full quarter-century since “The Joy Luck Club,” the last such production to grapple with the puzzle of contemporary Asian American identity.
Michelle Yeoh’s work is deserving of the ensuing Oscar buzz in the same way that Meryl Streep deserved her nod for “The Devil Wears Prada.”
Rom-com and culture-clash plot conventions are universal, so why not a PG-rated “Sex and the City” meets “The Devil Wears Prada,” but stocked with solid Asian and Asian-American actors.
(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 been more than a decade since “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “Letters From Iwo Jima,” the last major studio pictures to feature all-Asian ensembles, and a full quarter-century since “The Joy Luck Club,” the last such production to grapple with the puzzle of contemporary Asian American identity.
Cinematographer Vanja Cernjul ( Violet & Daisy ) shoots things with a colorful eye for detail, things achieving an almost Technicolor-like splendor that reminded me of Douglas Sirk classics like Written on the Wind and Magnificent Obsession.
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Cinematographer Vanja Cernjul ( Violet & Daisy ) shoots things with a colorful eye for detail, things achieving an almost Technicolor-like splendor that reminded me of Douglas Sirk classics like Written on the Wind and Magnificent Obsession.
This is Crazy Rich Asians meet Rational Middle-Class Asian American, as if Meet the Parents and Monster-in-Law, with a bit of the Metropolitans, were spliced together with Joy Luck and one of those Asian domestic market screwball comedies that are never released stateside.
The film, adapted by screenwriters Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim from the 2013 novel by Kevin Kwan, is notionally a Meet the Parents-style tale of Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), a lifelong New Yorker with a smoking hot boyfriend from Singapore, Nick Young (Henry Golding) traveling to Asia for the first time ever to meet his family at a wedding, which mostly means meeting his harsh, judgmental mother Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh).
Constance Wu and Henry Golding make for a fairytale couple as Rachel and Nick, lovers of one year who are about to endure something akin to a mash-up of Cinderella and Meet the Parents .
Based on Kevin Kwan’s novel of the same name, Jon M. Chu’s “Crazy Rich Asians” is a zany kind of “Cinderella” and “Meet the Parents” mashup about a young woman who discovers that her boyfriend is the heir of a real estate fortune.
The comedy is one part Meet the Parents , two parts Cinderella story, with those familiar elements reinvigorated by the fresh setting of upscale Singapore, with its architectural splendors embracing both colonial history and imposing modernist forms.