Chattanooga Times Free Press

In ‘Crazy Rich Asians,’ a delightful new fairy tale

- BY JAKE COYLE

There are two glittering parades running in tandem through Jon M. Chu’s “Crazy Rich Asians,” a glitzy and delightful adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s 2013 bestseller. One is the blinged-out, designer-label, crazy-rich opulence often characteri­stic of rom-coms yet extreme enough here to make even Carrie Bradshaw or Christian Grey blush. The other, and far more arresting pageant, is of the film’s Asian cast of various nationalit­ies who, one after another, shame Hollywood’s regular disinteres­t in them by being so effortless­ly dazzling.

The result is a totally winning confection: a frothy fairy tale, trivial and weighty at once, that simultaneo­usly uses tried-and-true romantic comedy convention while riotously bursting free of movie-business formula. “Crazy Rich Asians” has much of the same DNA as a host of princess tales like “Cinderella,” but it is a radical departure, too.

Chu’s film is the first contempora­ry-set studio film centered on an allAsian and Asian-American cast in 25 years, following Wayne Wang’s 1993 adaptation of Amy Tan’s “The Joy Luck Club.” Further, studies have shown that less than 5 percent of the most popular movies in North America last year even featured a speaking character of Asian descent. Movies like this, to everyone’s loss, almost never come along.

“Crazy Rich Asians” would still be an important film even if it understand­ably sagged with such history on its shoulders. And it’s not perfect. Like rom-coms before it, it has a blatantly superficia­l side, so drowning in the accoutreme­nts of high-society Singapore that it conflates materialis­m with matrimony. (There is a wedding set in a church transforme­d into a lily pond and a bachelor party on a cargo ship anchored in internatio­nal waters.) And some could reasonably quibble that Chu’s film has blind spots of its own, omitting South and Southeaste­rn Asians for a tale entirely focused on Chinese and Chinese-American characters.

But it’s not for “Crazy Rich Asians” to single-handedly make up for all the studio movies that have been missing for the last 25 years. And thanks largely to its energetic ensemble, led by Constance Wu and Henry Golding, Chu’s film is a charming romp, full of heart and heartening breakout stars.

Wu plays Rachel Chu, an economics professor at New York University whose Singapore-born businessma­n boyfriend Nick Young (Golding) suggests a trip to the Far East.

“Like Queens?” she replies over dinner in Manhattan. But his proposal is that they fly back to Singapore for his best friend’s wedding and to meet his family. It’s only as they are boarding the airplane and are led to an entire bedroom suite that Rachel realizes her longterm boyfriend is filthy, stinking rich.

“We’re comfortabl­e,” he says, a phrasing Rachel immediatel­y recognizes as “exactly what a super-rich person would say.” Once they arrive in Singapore, it gradually dawns on Rachel that she’s on the cusp of marrying into one of Asia’s wealthiest real-estate empires. Young is the princely heir of the family business, which he has temporaril­y fled but is still expected to soon takeover.

For Rachel, it’s like stepping into a fantasy and a nightmare. She has unwittingl­y landed one of Asia’s most sought-after bachelors, drawing the jealous, ever-watchful eyes of all around her, along with the piercing glare of Nick’s mother, the fiercely Old-World matriarch Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh). In their palatial estate, Rachel — a selfmade woman raised by a working-class single-parent — feels acutely like an unworthy outsider. Eleanor sneers at her “American” aspiration­s of “happiness” and following her “passion,” a collision with her stout beliefs of spousal sacrifice.

That “Crazy Rich Asians” is a rom-com where the mothers are its most vital co-stars is one of the movie’s best attributes. Though some of the satirical edges of Kwan’s book have been smoothed down, it remains a love story more about immigrant identity and Chinese heritage than romance. Its climactic moments are found not in a wedding aisle or in some impossibly lavish setting, but over a mahjong table and on an airplane, in coach.

But what most makes “Crazy Rich Asians” such a pleasure is its spectacula­r ensemble of performers so often unseen on American movie screens. There is Wu, the “Fresh Off the Boat” star, who glides with grace and comic timing through the film; the British-Malaysian newcomer Golding, who already has the sheen of a leading man for years to come; the scene-stealing Awkwafina, as Rachel’s college pal; the wry Nico Santos, as Nick’s cousin; Jimmy O. Yang, of “Silicon Valley,” as a loose cannon relative; and the reliably hysterical (and a little underused here) Ken Jeong as Awkwafina’s father.

Some are already well known, some are totally new, but they collective­ly make an overwhelmi­ng impression: Hollywood, this is what you’ve been missing.

 ?? WARNER BROS. ?? Constance Wu, right, plays an American-born economics professor who visits Singapore to meet the family of her boyfriend, played by Henry Golding, in “Crazy Rich Asians.”
WARNER BROS. Constance Wu, right, plays an American-born economics professor who visits Singapore to meet the family of her boyfriend, played by Henry Golding, in “Crazy Rich Asians.”

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States