A CULTURAL AWAKENING
Crazy Rich Asians resonates
I want us to show up as a community, (so) that Hollywood will create these opportunities for Asian creatives and Asian actors.
TORONTO The first time Crazy Rich Asians author Kevin Kwan realized the magnitude of his lavish Singapore-set story, he was in Canada.
It was 2013 and the New Yorkbased writer was in Toronto touring for the bestselling novel when a journalist told him how profound it was to read a book that reflected his own experience growing up Asian-Canadian.
“My awakening came in Canada,” Kwan said. “That was the very first time I’d ever heard such a thing, because I was really cut off from the community response until that moment. And it’s just grown ever since then, exponentially. So I’m very grateful to be a part of this change.”
That change is Asian representation in popular culture.
Until the anticipated big-screen adaptation of Crazy Rich Asians, there hadn’t been an Englishlanguage Hollywood film with a primarily Asian cast since 1993’s The Joy Luck Club.
“For such a visible and large part of the population to have never had this in 25 years, it’s a disgrace, really. It’s a travesty,” said Singaporeraised Kwan.
Directed by Jon M. Chu, Crazy Rich Asians stars Constance Wu and Henry Golding as a couple grappling with the pressures of his family’s riches in Singapore.
While there have been other films with primarily Asian-American casts in recent years, such as 2002’s Better Luck Tomorrow, they were smaller indies and not the summer blockbuster that Crazy Rich Asians is positioned as, experts say.
“The difference here is that it very much features and centres Asians and Asian-Americans and Asian-internationals as the story, and not as a cursory part of the story,” said Vincent Pham, a communication professor at Willamette University in Salem, Ore., who has published research on representations of Asians in media.
“I think that means a lot in getting people that aren’t part of the niche audiences or aren’t part of the Asian-American community, who already go to Asian-American independent film festivals or watch Asian-American content on YouTube, to be piqued by the possibilities of this.”
Reactions from Asian-American audiences at early screenings of the movie have already exceeded Kwan’s expectations.
“I’ve heard from so many people that have seen the film that they burst out crying, for reasons they don’t even understand — grown men, middle-aged men,” he said.
“A fan wrote to me a touching email that he’d never seen his father cry before, and here he was in a screening with his 70-something-year-old father and (the dad) just burst into tears because this is something he never imagined he’d see in his lifetime.”
Toronto actor Simu Liu of the CBC Korean-Canadian comedy Kim’s Convenience recently caught an early screening and described it as “a surreal moment.”
“Literally from beginning to end I saw very few non-Asian characters,” Liu said. “And I realized that this is the norm if you are, for example, a white Canadian — that you can walk into any theatre on any given day and watch a film to a point where you take it for granted that everybody kind of looks like you.”
Liu is now asking fans on social media to join him for a Crazy Rich Asians screening at a Toronto theatre on Sunday. “I want us to show up as a community, because one of the ways that Hollywood will create these opportunities for Asian creatives and Asian actors is through the success of a movie like Crazy Rich Asians,” Liu said.
Kwan echoes those thoughts, noting Warner Bros. wants to also make big-screen adaptations of his other two novels, China Rich Girlfriend and Rich People Problems.
“But it’s so important that the audience shows up around the world for this on opening weekend,” he said. “We’re being put, unfortunately, to the test. This is the litmus test, this is the lightning rod, and everyone is watching.”
CRAZY RICH ASIANS
★★★★ out of 5
Cast: Constance Wu, Henry Golding Director: John M. Chu
Duration: 2h
There’s been much talk about how Crazy Rich Asians — the title is meant to suggest both Asians who are crazy-rich and rich Asians who are crazy — marks a bold new step in filmmaking diversity. It does: The cast is all Asian or Asian-American, as is director Jon M. Chu, one of the two screenwriters, at least three of the 11 producers, and novelist Kevin Kwan, who provided the source material (and shares an executive producer credit).
But in just about every other way, the film is a step backward, though not in a bad way. Let’s just say that the opening scene takes place in 1995, and the rest of the film, while set in the present, might as well occupy the decade that gave us Sleepless in Seattle, Notting Hill and Jerry Maguire. It’s an unabashedly retro romcom, and will doubtless live in perpetuity on what used to be called cable, then VHS rentals and now streaming.
The setup is simple, provided you park your critical skills at the concession counter. Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) has been dating hunky Nick Young (Henry Golding) for about a year without realizing that he is the scion of a wealthy Singapore family. But when he invites her to the wedding of his best friend back home, she discovers his filthyrich secret.
Rachel isn’t fazed by the news. “I think it’s kind of weird that I had no idea,” she notes mildly.
Rachel and Nick are clearly very much in love, but Nick’s imperious mother (the incomparable Michelle Yeoh) thinks this Chinese-American nobody is nowhere good enough for her son. Thus must Rachel ingratiate herself with her wealthy maybefuture-in-laws, while to her own self being true.
She’s helped in this by her former roommate Peik Lin (rapper Awkwafina, last seen in Ocean’s 8), whose own family’s modest fortune seems to have been built on comic relief.
With a few deft twists — most of the soundtrack’s jazz standards and pop songs, including Yellow, Money (That’s What I Want) and Material Girl and sung in Chinese — Crazy Rich Asians sticks close to the ’90s rom-com playbook. So there’s a touristy montage of Singapore, a shopping spree, a gay friend, a makeover scene and a couple of banquets.
You can be forgiven for losing track of the sprawling cast, although its standouts include Rachel’s single mom (Kheng Hua Tan), who proves that motherhood at its best is a kind of sisterhood too. There’s also Fiona Xie, whom I point out only because it’s almost unbelievable that her character’s name, Kitty Pong, never appeared in a James Bond movie.
But the star-crossed lovers are the main attraction here. Wu, who gained notice for her work in TV’s Fresh Off the Boat (another ’90s-vibe vehicle), is appealing as the level-headed Rachel. And Golding, a BritishMalaysian model and TV host, makes his acting debut here; he also appears in the upcoming thriller A Simple Favor. The script doesn’t give him much to do beyond look pretty, which he does perfectly. He might be a great actor, but I didn’t get the chance to find out.
There’s also a tear-jerking rendition of Can’t Help Falling in Love, performed by Kina Grannis. It takes place during Nick’s best friend’s wedding, though truth be told there’s enough romance in this movie to power four weddings. And if you can’t appreciate that — well, it’s your funeral.