MOVIES
Is ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ a gem?
The amount of hype around the importance of this film as a means of addressing the thorny issue of diversity in Hollywood will ensure that no matter what is said about director Jon M Chu’s all-Asian cast romcom, the curious will not be deterred from going to see what all the fuss is about. Chu’s film, based on a bestselling novel by real-life crazy rich Asian Kevin Kwann, is the first Hollywood film to feature an all-Asian cast since 1993’s The Joy Luck Club. It’s already taken $34m at the US box office in its opening weekend and has been described by its director as “not a movie, [but] a moment”.
Although Asia has its own commercially successful film industry, Hollywood remains the ultimate prize. As far as representation in Hollywood goes, Asian actors are grossly absent while Asian characters still tend to be played by non-Asians. The need for a more inclusive portrayal of an overwhelming majority of the world's population is undeniably obvious.
Like Black Panther earlier this year, Crazy Rich Asians represents a welcome and necessary revision of Hollywood racism within the framework of one of the machine’s most popular and exportable genres. This time it’s the romantic comedy that serves as the vehicle for exposing a glaring hole in Hollywood’s representation — according to a recent study by the University of Southern California, Asians have been given less than 5% of the speaking parts in the history of American movies.
So you can see why millennial AsianAmerican audiences, tired of seeing themselves shown only in token parts on screen (if ever), are excitedly rallying behind the project. That having been said, and in spite of Chu’s assertion that this should be seen as a moment, it is also a movie and as such it is uneven, predictable, over-long and too comfortable letting flashy setpieces substitute for real characters and emotion. The story is something along the lines of My Big Fat Greek Wedding meets Cinderella against the backdrop of spectacular wealth and privilege among the elite of Singapore.
Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) is a firstgeneration Chinese-American raised by a single mother who has overcome the odds to become a successful economics professor in New York. She’s smart, pretty enough, down to earth and comfortable with the life she leads. Her boyfriend Nick Young (Henry Golding) seems like a nice, handsome, educated, middle-class young man from Singapore, who loves her and the city they call home. When Nick asks Rachel to accompany him to Singapore for his best friend’s wedding, she learns Nick is in fact a prince of the island — its most eligible bachelor and heir to a multibillion-dollar construction empire.
The whole of Singapore, Nick’s family and in particular his stern mother, Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh), are aghast that he is in love with such a plain American girl and they will stop at nothing to break them apart. But they haven’t counted on Rachel’s pig-headedness and particular combination of American can-do and economics professor smarts.
Unless you’ve never watched a romantic comedy and know nothing about what the genre entails you’ll quickly figure out what’s going to happen. Along the way Chu delivers some entertaining culturally specific setpieces, but there are also a few cringeworthy stereotypical ones that don’t sit better because they’re delivered by an Asian cast and director. Similarly, the demonstration of the life and playgrounds of the mega-wealthy don’t add anything to the depth of the characters and are far more suited to an MTV reality show than they are to a story supposedly trying to convey the message that true love wins over all the riches in Singapore.
It’s not without its moments and it’s refreshing to see a story being told by and for the people whose lives its represents but by the time the credits roll at the end of an overlong 2 hours – Crazy Rich Asians is not much more than a good first step in the right direction. Hopefully it will open the door for more than the inevitable sequel and create a space for more nuanced examinations of 21st century Diasporic, globalised Asian identity in Hollywood’s future. ●
But they haven’t counted on Rachel’s pig-headedness and particular combination of American can-do and economics professor smarts