Crazy Rich Asians

So many reviews and articles about Crazy Rich Asians are focusing on the fact that this is the first Hollywood film since 1993's The Joy Luck Club to feature an all-Asian cast, so it's surprisingly easy to ignore the fact that it's also probably the best romantic comedy to come along since The Big Sick, and is definitely one of the more likable films of this summer.  This is an incredibly well-paced film that juggles some big laughs and a few serious and thought provoking plot elements regarding how immigrants are viewed.  To me, the ethnicity of the cast doesn't matter.  What matters most is that it's just a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

Adapted from the highly successful novel by Kevin Kwan, the film's premise of a young woman in love who must face her boyfriend's judgemental and wealthy family is nothing new, but the way it is executed here, and especially the sparkling cast, make it a story worth listening to all over again.  The young woman is Rachel (Constance Wu, from TV's Fresh Off the Boat), an economics professor at NYU, and the daughter of a single mother who came to America from China when she was pregnant.  Her boyfriend Nick (newcomer Henry Golding), whom she has been dating for the past year, seems like an average guy.  He plays basketball at the Y, is charming and well mannered, and has a habit of finishing off Rachel's deserts when they go out together.  What he has not told her about himself is that he is the heir and son of a massively wealthy Singapore family, and was being groomed to take over the family's multiple businesses and wealth before he left to live in America. 

Now he must return home to be the Best Man at a friend's wedding, and he asks Rachel to come with him and meet his family.  She is not prepared for what is waiting for her when they arrive, as it turns out not only is Nick's family one of the wealthiest, if not the single wealthiest, in Singapore, but that the media is constantly covering the event, and following Rachel, who immediately becomes the target of multiple jealous young women who try to shame her as being a gold digger.  And then there is Nick's mother, Eleanor (a magnificent Michelle Yeoh), who immediately gives Rachel a cold reception.  She does not approve of Rachel, for even though she is Chinese, she was born in America.  Nick's family is huge, and sometimes the amount of characters and their individual subplots that the movie asks us to keep track of can seem overwhelming at times.  But the pacing and structure of the story never once falters, and not only do we keep track, we realize we're having a great time doing it.

Crazy Rich Asians is directed by Jon M. Chu, a filmmaker who up to now has not exactly had the best track record, and is actually more well known up to now for directing forgettable sequels like G.I. Joe: Retaliation, and not one but two documentaries about Justin Bieber.  He also was responsible for the awful Jem and the Holograms movie that we got.  To say that this is easily the best film of his career is an understatement.  I'm actually amazed by the talent he shows behind the camera here.  He balances the excess of the incredibly wealthy world that Rachel finds herself dropped into, while also masterfully handling some smaller intimate moments that are well-acted and touching.  He also has made what is easily the most beautiful looking movie of the Summer season.  This is a film that is so awash in color and detail, it's worth seeing on the big screen just so you can savor it all.  The way that he juggles the various performances, plots, and exotic and memorable scenery shows a filmmaker who is almost being reinvented, as this is nothing like anything he's done before, and shows a certainty that was lacking in his previous efforts.  Whatever he did here, I hope he gets to do it again soon.

However, it's the cast and the way that the characters are handled that really make this worth watching.  Wu and Golding have great romantic chemistry.  The way they kind of flirt and tease each other comes across as being very natural.  They never seem like a phony movie couple, not even in the film's final moments when Golding makes a surprise appearance when Rachel is getting ready to leave Singapore.  The way the movie handles the character of Eleanor is also masterful.  Yes, she is very cold to Rachel, but the movie also allows us to understand and even sympathize with her.  There's a wonderful prologue scene set in a posh London hotel that shows us a glimpse of why Eleanor has had to be so tough all of her life, and is not so willing to welcome Rachel into her life.  And even though it's a smaller role, Singaporean stage and TV actor Tan Kheng Hua gets to stand out as Rachel's mother in a few choice scenes late in the film that hold a lot of emotional power.

But if there must be a cast member to be singled out as the MVP of the film, it is recording artist Awkwafina, who turned up earlier this summer in Ocean's 8, but all but steals the film here as Rachel's best friend from college and main sidekick, Peik Lin.  She's one of the better "best friend" characters we've had in a comedy in a while, as not only does she get some wonderful comedic lines, but she's been written in an incredibly smart way.  Yes, she grabs your attention, but she's also used well enough so that she doesn't overpower everyone else who may be sharing the camera with her.  Her advice, her fashion sense, and the way that she guides Rachel through the world of the elite is just so wonderfully written, as well as performed.  It's one of the great comedic performances of the year, and I can only hope Hollywood continues to use her this well in the future.

Crazy Rich Asians is the rare romantic comedy that combines laughs with intelligence.  It's not wholly original, but it doesn't have to be.  In my review of Dog Days last week, I said, "I don't need my movies to be completely original, as long as they offer something smart or witty in the script that gives me the impression that the writers were not sleeping at the wheel while dreaming up the story".  This is an excellent example of just that.  Not only did the writers truly care, but so did the cast and the director, and everything has come together to create a memorable entertainment.

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