Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

This is the first time in two years I've seen a movie set primarily in Southeast Asia. I couldn't help but be suspicious of the hype: Is it popular for being great or simply for being decent and having a mostly Asian cast, as is so rare for Hollywood? And how much does the Asian aspect matter to the plot?

Well, let me answer the latter question first: somewhat. Rachel (Constance Wu), a middle-class New Yorker of recent Chinese descent, agrees to accompany boyfriend Nick (Henry Golding) to the wedding of his friends Colin (Chris Pang) and Araminta (Sonoya Mizuno) in his native Singapore. Only then does she learn that Nick is famous, being the likely heir to one of Singapore's biggest and oldest fortunes. Of course, this means that Rachel sticks out like a sore thumb at the festivities; others look down on her as a gold digger or, at best, not in the same league. But Nick's mom, Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh), also of Chinese descent, has a different concern: the allegedly incompatible philosophies of the East and West. She doesn't trust an American, even one who can speak Cantonese, to respect the tradition of heeding one's mother.

Yes, there's some subtitled dialog, especially in the presence of Nick's grandma (Lisa Lu), but not a whole lot. I surmised right from the first scene, the only one with any prominent roles for White people (who exhibit a thinly veiled bigotry fit for Gentleman's Agreement), that the filmmakers wanted to make this easily accessible to audiences who can barely tell Java from Japan. I'm sure a number of details got lost on me -- the mahjong scene is loaded with symbolism that I understood only later, and I wouldn't have gotten the reference to red envelopes three years ago -- but at no point did I really feel left behind. The important points are at the surface.

So just how flamboyantly Asian is it? Not as much as you might think. It's not like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, throwing cultural stereotypes left and right nonstop for laughs. At least, I didn't perceive it that way; maybe I'm not up to date on the stereotypes in question. Most characters strike me as more than halfway westernized. This is reflected in part by the majority of the classy soundtrack, whether in the original English or covered in another language (Coldplay's "Yellow"?).

No, the bulk of the laughs come from the extravagant lifestyles of the "crazy rich," which may or may not have a double meaning. In the past, I've complained about comedies that make fun of the upper class, but those are the ones in which the focal characters are members. By contrast, Rachel represents the rest of us peeking in from the outside. I get the impression that nothing is more than slightly exaggerated, which, oddly enough, might just make things funnier than more over-the-top fare. It helps that the luxuries are...what's a good number...eight times as tasteful as those in The Wolf of Wall Street. Indeed, the humor seldom approaches vulgarity.

To me, the funniest characters are Peik Lin (Awkwafina), Rachel's Singaporean female friend from college days; and Oliver (Nico Santos), Nick's second cousin. Both appear to be gay, but I assure you that's incidental to their humor value. Perhaps having to contend with their orientation in the face of traditional values led them to develop a way with words.

It's not all humor, mind you. When the camera follows Colin and/or Araminta, things take a darker turn. For that matter, Rachel can take only so much of the cold shoulder before she has second thoughts about Nick, whom she partly blames for not sufficiently warning her, and even falls into a depressive inertia. In Nick's defense, he loves Rachel for being unlike the people who used to surround him all the time, and telling her about his family up front might have immediately jeopardized what they had.

I sensed that others in my theater (who I don't think were Asian) were moved toward more than one thorough emotion. They also sometimes knew what was happening before I did. Guess I need to watch more of the genre before I find it so predictable. BTW, a synopsis of the book by the same title indicates severe revamping by the ending, which may explain why that part felt a bit formulaic to me.

The prime complaint I've read about CRA is the dearth of genuine Singaporeans. We get quite a bit of Malaysian presence as well as Chinese, but it seems that the only reason for the precise setting is its reputation for wealth per capita. I'll take the depiction with a grain of salt.

CRA may not feel as though it were made for me, but I prefer it to any Judd Apatow or Paul Feig hit. In the end, I think it falls only marginally short of meriting its present popularity. Go ahead and see it if you were considering doing so.