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This whole article is analyzing the whole film and all the small details. It will help gather more information on the thing I missed while watching the movie. Our essay is also a film analysis and this will help gather some ideas.

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Thoroughly assimilated and confident Chinese-American woman Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) has fallen in love with supremely suave but slightly enigmatic Singaporean man Nick Young (Henry Golding). Nick's big secret: his family back home belongs to the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent. The broad joke behind the setup: their healthy Greenwich Village romance scandalizes his hoity-toity kith and kin. On her first trip to Singapore (and Asia, for that matter), Rachel, a brilliant economics professor at NYU, gets treated worse than Julia Roberts did in Pretty Woman . Nobody ever put a dead fish in the L.A. streetwalker's bed.

In the novel, the first time Rachel hears Nick's name, she asks, "A Brit?" Casting Golding in the role has roused controversy, because this first-time actor is a British-Malaysian model and TV host. But he's effortlessly persuasive as a Singaporean golden boy.

Crazy Rich Asians requires our willing suspension of disbelief for other reasons-such as its premise. Yet it comes on cool and amusing enough for us to buy that Nick could shield Rachel from the truth about his wealth for many months. Rachel protests that he couldn't be loaded, or, as he puts it, "comfortable"-after all, he uses her Netflix password. It's a nifty gag, especially if you know that Netflix made a major bid for Kevin Kwan's novel and two sequels. (Kwan also serves as executive producer.)

A binge-able series might have been a better way to go, since the script squeezes a sprawling supporting cast into boisterous caricatures and transforms an intricate flow chart of status among Singapore's superrich into a flood of affectations. I'm not a fan of the book. But I prefer Kwan's sly, patient catalogue of outré, vulgar, and exquisite customs to the film's rim-shot burlesques or its awestruck interludes of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous , Singapore Edition.

The director, Jon M. Chu ( , Step Up 3D, G.I. Joe: Retaliation ) smartly retains the novel's period introduction. In 1995, the racist manager of an august London hotel disrespects Nick's mother Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh), ignores her confirmed reservation, and recommends that she and her group seek a suite in Chinatown. Quietly, and quickly, she outflanks him and re-enters in triumph. For Asian billionaires, living large is the best revenge.

With that idea safely noted, the rest of the film simply revels in the instant power at the Singapore nabobs' fingertips. In the cleverest sequence, Nick and Rachel share dessert at a New York café while he begs her to attend his closest friend's Singapore wedding. A svelte observer recognizes Nick, snaps a picture, and relays the news across the globe via her Asian in-crowd (or, as Nick puts it, "RadioOneAsian"). The frame fractures into an ultra-hyperactive version of the split-screen telephone scenes from Bye Bye Birdie and Pillow Talk . Magnified text messages, search results, and profile pictures fill every inch of the wide 2.39:1 aspect ratio. By the time Rachel agrees to go, Eleanor calls Nick from Singapore to verify the breaking news.

I wish Chu had conceived the entire film this playfully, the way Norman Jewison did Thomas Crown , another film that lets us glimpse the affluent life. To pull it off, Chu and his screenwriters, Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim, might have had to stylize the straight-arrow love story that made the 2013 book a best-selling "beach read." The way it is, the film's most daring humor comes from dropping its lovebirds into hedonistic gilded cages.

Can we retire the use of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" for helicopter music? It has worn out its welcome as a smart-alecky way to reference Apocalypse Now , and here it blares out while choppers fly the groomsmen to a bachelor party staged on a cargo ship. Hidden by walls of containers, the men cavort with bikini-clad Miss World contestants-all Caucasian. Meanwhile, the bachelorettes carry on as if they're cramming a Bravo Housewives getaway weekend into 24 hours. They jet to a Sumatran resort complete with spa treatments, free shopping sprees, and multiple opportunities to play Mean Girls at poor Rachel's expense. The comedy (and in Rachel's case, the drama, too) feels forced and sour. Happily, there's some genuine gaiety in the big-hearted, nouveau riche household of Rachel's college pal, Peik Lin Goh (Awkwafina). The Gohs' home glitters with gold and its reflections, but their low-comic exuberance is infectious. They've patterned their décor on Versailles' Hall of Mirrors and Donald Trump's bathroom. Elsewhere, the excess starts at "wretched" and never quite makes it to funny.

The director often seems as glamour-obsessed as his characters. (The anti-climactic wedding scene, staged with physical effects like water coating the aisle to mirror shimmering lights, amounts to high-gloss kitsch, down to best man Nick and Rachel mouthing a heartfelt "I love you.") Once they board the plane from New York to Singapore, all we can do is look agog at the features of Rachel and Nick's first-class sleeping cabin and the upscale wonders to come. Nick's pal Colin (Chris Pang) and his fiancée Araminta (Sonoya Mizuno) graciously pick up the couple at the airport and join them in scarfing down the viands of Singapore's renowned street hawkers. Rachel couldn't, then, be more stunned when Nick's mom starts cold and grows antagonistic, or when Araminta's friends accuse her of being a gold-digger, or when Mandy (Jing Lusi), Nick's malicious ex, informs her that was Eleanor's pick for her son's bride. They rationalize that Rachel is too déclassé and too American. Raised by a single working mother, Rachel doesn't know her own back story, and she believes in following her professional passion-which the Singaporeans think precludes her from devotion to "family."

We're geared for Rachel to summon her you-go-girl spirit and take on Nick's mother and wily old grandmother (Lisa Lu). For all their pompous, snooty talk, they appear to be expelling her reflexively. The film takes too long to clarify why Rachel should care about these self-important people or try to preserve Nick's links to them. Her responses to their luxury are passive, ambiguous, or dazzled. But Wu rises to this complex acting challenge. She uses her own emotional transparency to reveal Rachel's confusion, then insight. She communicates, way before the script does, that Rachel wants to win Nick without severing him from his insular family and its opulence, because they are part of what makes him who he is. Without much writing help until her final showdown with Yeoh's Eleanor, Wu demonstrates how intensely Rachel gropes toward understanding this forbidding elite. All the while she steels herself to fight it for her man.

At least one actor every episode punctures the Old School "class" or the new-style glitz with skeptical intelligence or anarchic energy. When Rachel and Peik Lin first ooh and aah over the Youngs' palatial estate, I thought they must be reacting to its size, because there isn't anything glorious about the Asian-colonial style. On the outside it's a house of seven or eight gables, with each gable topping its own wing. Inside, it resembles a museum containing objects they can touch, including an enormous stuffed tiger. Luckily, even here, Awkwafina's Peik Lin imbues her screen time with live-wire attitude. Awkwafina turns Peik Lin grabbing selfies on the Youngs' grand staircase into an uproarious little dance. The jagged, springy rhythms in her voice and her walk animate the conventional material. Her father (Ken Jeong) says her blonde pixie hairdo makes her look like "Asian Ellen," but her farcical instincts are more ferocious than DeGeneres's. She finds an apt buddy in Oliver (Nico Santos), the gay wit of the Youngs' extended clan. He stays in Eleanor's good favor as a problem-solver, whether by finding just the right ceremonial gong or by neutralizing a troublesome guest. Santos boasts an apt Wildean flair: he articulates outrageous perceptions with his sparkling conversation. He describes himself as the Youngs' "poor relation rainbow sheep."

Golding, an impressive first-time actor, and Wu, the star of ABC's Fresh Off the Boat , do make a charming couple. Golding has physical grace, candid expressions, and an engaging gentleness. From certain angles he resembles that debonair master James Mason. Wu, always genuine and sympathetic, can also be immensely touching: she instinctively hugs Eleanor at their first meeting. Neither Golding nor Wu suggests hidden mysteries or fire-one reason it's hard to believe that Golding's Nick could keep his nuclear family life a secret for over a year.

In different ways, Yeoh and Gemma Chan (as Nick's closest cousin, Astrid), transcend familiar domestic melodrama because of their power to surprise. Few can top Yeoh for still waters running deep. We don't want to believe that someone of her gravity would be so bigoted toward "ABCs" (American-born Chinese) and so cruel to Rachel, who immigrated with her mother when she was six months old. Yeoh subtly expresses the underlying tensions beneath Eleanor's blanket statements of principle-a triumph of understatement in a hyperbolic movie. As Astrid, considered the perfect woman in her set, Chan doesn't over-rely on elegance. Her luminous beauty vibrates with thought and feeling. She conveys the importance Astrid places on remaining composed: for her it's an aesthetic choice, not just learned behavior. She won't violate her personal style by screaming at her husband over his infidelity.

Media coverage of the film has focused on how significant it is for all audiences, especially Asian-Americans, to see an all-Asian ensemble in a big-studio release. (The precedents include 1993's The Joy Luck Club, 2004's Memoirs of a Geisha , 2006's Letters from Iwo Jima , and my favorite in this list, Justin Lin's sizzling 2002 teen-rebel movie, Better Luck Tomorrow .) Several actors here do get a chance to prove their talents in a film that immerses us in a rarefied, exotic milieu.

What gives the movie its erratic vitality, though, is its of Asian and European mores and culture, jet-set flash, and American Pop, which evokes the particular ambiance of Singapore's high-society subculture. The score emphasizes eclectic, cosmopolitan vibes. The Elvis hit "Can't Help Falling In Love" (itself loosely based on a classical French ) becomes Colin and Araminta's wedding song. Berry Gordy's "Money (That's What I Want)" emerges as the movie's theme song. The strictly instrumental music ripples with American swing and Big Band flourishes.

In Kwan's novel, Rachel decides that Nick is her true love when he knows the words to the Talking Heads' "This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)." The Talking Heads' sweetest lyrics celebrate, "You're standing here beside me / I love the passing of time/Never for money, always for love." Too bad this number didn't make it into Chu's Crazy Rich Asians. It would have infused this literal, glittery film with some downtown lyricism and irony.

Michael Sragow is a contributing editor to Film Comment and writes its Deep Focus column. He is a member of the National Society of Film Critics and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and a contributor to the Criterion Collection.

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Deep Focus: Crazy Rich Asians - Film Comment

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Thoroughly assimilated and confident Chinese-American woman Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) has fallen in love with supremely suave but slightly enigmatic Singaporean man Nick Young (Henry Golding). Nick's big secret: his family back home belongs to the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent.

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Crazy Rich Asians has so much rom-com razzle dazzle it practically sings

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Crazy Rich Asians has so much rom-com razzle dazzle it practically sings

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This film is filled with extravagant sets. In this article, they talk about how all the scenes are well put together and how that effects the movie overall. This will be helpful when talking about how the movie is overall.

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Cast

Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Gemma Chan, Lisa Lu, Awkwafina, Sonoya Mizuno, Chris Pang, Jimmy O. Yang, Ronny Chieng, Remy Hii, Nico Santos, Ken Jeong, Michelle Yeoh

Availability

Theaters everywhere August 15

Crazy Rich Asians isn't a musical, but it feels like one. Frequent dance-movie director Jon M. Chu, who made a couple of the Step Up sequels, films the opulent world of Singaporean elite as if they might break out in song at any moment. A zippy montage of social media gossip feels like a modern update on Bye Bye Birdie's "Telephone Hour." Beauty And The Beast's "Be Our Guest" could easily underscore any of the film's many montages of delectable-looking Chinese cuisine. And there's a wedding sequence so elaborately staged you could place it wholesale into a Broadway show. Chu's film revels in the glamorous attire, kooky supporting characters, and elaborate parties that so often define the movie musical genre. And like the best musicals, Crazy Rich Asians joyouslyembraces a heightened aesthetic while keeping its story grounded in real emotional truth.

Constance Wu stars as Rachel Chu, a practical NYU economics professor who's shocked to learn that the man she's been dating for the past year is basically Singaporean royalty. Hunky boyfriend Nick Young (Henry Golding) isn't just rich; he's the 1 percent of the 1 percent. And since he's set to inherit the family's real estate empire and expected to marry the right sort of woman to sit by his side, there's a metric ton of pressure on Rachel's shoulders when she joins Nick in Singapore for his best friend's wedding and meets his family for the first time. Nick's intimidating mother, Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh), immediately disapproves of her son's choice. And Rachel-who was raised in the U.S. by a hard-working Chinese immigrant single-mom-is treated to a crash course in cultural differences, not just between the rich and the middle class, but also between Asian and Asian-American cultures.

There's a version of this film that holds Nick more accountable for thrusting Rachel into an overwhelming world without much in the way of guidance. Crazy Rich Asians doesn't take that route. Instead, Nick remains a dashing Prince Charming (Golding more than fits the bill), and the threats to his relationship with Rachel are external rather than internal. There are plenty of heartwarming, tearjerking romantic moments to keep rom-com fans happy, but Crazy Rich Asians is first and foremost the story of Rachel struggling against the complex dynamics of Nick's insular family. It's also a surprisingly thoughtful meditation on wealth and womanhood. Those looking for even the smallest amount of capitalist critique have come to the wrong film, but Crazy Rich Asians does provide an empathetic exploration of the ways in which wealth can become a glamorous prison for women who are granted a life of luxury but not necessarily the same expectation of independence as their husbands.

Based on Kevin Kwan's 2013 bestseller of the same name (the first in a trilogy of novels about Nick and Rachel), Crazy Rich Asians features a massive ensemble crammed full of over-the-top supporting characters who likely resonated a bit more on the page than they do on screen. Those who do make an impression include Astrid (Gemma Chan), Nick's glamorous cousin whose statuesque figure belies her massive heart; Oliver (Nico Santos), the "rainbow sheep" of Nick's family, who serves as a fairy godfather in Rachel's Cinderella story; and Peik Lin (Awkwafina), Rachel's oddball college bestie whose own considerable Singapore-based wealth would be impressive if it weren't so dwarfed by Nick's.

Though Golding gets plenty of screentime (much of it spent shirtless), it's the film's female cast who really shine. Following her breakout role on ABC's Fresh Off The Boat, Wu gets the chance to stretch her acting wings in an entirely different direction. She makes the perfect rom-com everywoman-one of the best the genre has had in a while, in fact-and the film makes great use of both her wry comedic timing and her expressiveness. pickpocket Awkwafina just about steals the movie in its most overtly comedic role. And though Chan is stuck in a subplot that feels somewhat tangential, her storyline remains compelling solely because of her ethereal performance. The film's true standout, however, is Yeoh, who makes the perfect sparring partner for Wu. Yeoh fought to ensure Eleanor wouldn't just be a tiger mom stereotype, and Malaysian-born TV writer Adele Lim was brought on to add more emotional authenticity to Peter Chiarelli's initial script. That's a huge boon for the whole movie (Rachel and her mom get a nice subplot as well), and particularly for Yeoh, who's able to root Eleanor's icy authority in complex layers of protectiveness, regret, and dignity.

Plot wise, Crazy Rich Asians assembles its story from familiar rom-com building blocks, with elements of everything from Cinderella to The Family Stone to The Princess Diaries. But what's revolutionary about Crazy Rich Asians isn't the story it's telling, it's who gets to tell it. This is Hollywood's first Asian-American-centric studio movie since The Joy Luck Club 25 years ago, and the first mainstream American rom-com to feature an East-Asian-American lead. The film's detailedexploration of Singapore's rich and famous ensures it always feels unique, even when its story starts to get a bit familiar. Crazy Rich Asians has substance, but most importantly, it has style. That Chu's parents are restaurateurs probably explains the loving way in which he shoots food; it also serves as a metaphor for his directorial style as a whole. Chu films the world of Crazy Rich Asians as if it were a decadent dessert just waiting to be eaten: From the gorgeous gowns Rachel wears to the aerial shots of Singapore's stunning architecture to the elaborate party sequences that sometimes involve 1920s dance numbers and synchronized swimmers, Crazy Rich Asians feels like a Busby Berkeley number made of colorful fondant and served alongside a Singapore ice kachang. As a late summer treat, it practically dances off the screen.

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Crazy Rich Asians has so much rom-com razzle dazzle it practically sings

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Crazy Rich Asians isn't a musical, but it feels like one. Frequent dance-movie director Jon M. Chu, who made a couple of the Step Up sequels, films the opulent world of Singaporean elite as if they might break out in song at any moment.

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Crazy Rich Asians Is a Breath of Fresh Air

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Crazy Rich Asians Is a Breath of Fresh Air

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Crazy Rich Asians isn't the typical love story that we see in Hollywood. This article does a good job talking about how this movie is different from others and how its nice to have something new. This article will be helpful when talking about the directors work on the film.

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Crazy Rich Asians is about Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), a Chinese American economics professor at NYU who has a nice boyfriend named Nick Young (Henry Golding). Casually at dinner, Nick mentions that his friend is getting married back home in Singapore and that Rachel should come with him and finally meet his family. The request seems innocent enough-but then off in the distance, a lady in a stunning houndstooth shawl snaps a picture of the couple and texts it to her friends. Suddenly, the movie screen explodes in a cacophony of text messages, angry gifs, and animated emojis, as the entirety of Singapore's upper crust tries to figure out who this mystery woman in Nick Young's life could be.

That's because Nick is the scion of the richest and oldest family on the wealthy island nation, and Rachel is about to walk into a hornet's nest without realizing it. The bulk of Crazy Rich Asians ' two-hour running time sees her navigating the myriad egos and personalities at play in the Young family: the gossiping aunts, Nick's power-hungry cousins, the imperious matriarch Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh), and the equally imperious (but more outwardly kind) grand-matriarch Shang Su Yi (Lisa Lu).

It's largely a blast, anchored by an extremely confident lead performance from Wu. This isn't a story about Rachel being tempted by Nick's riches and getting drawn into the power plays that might come with trying to secure them. Rachel is just in town to meet the folks. She's secure in her own identity and in the strength of her relationship with Nick (who's somewhat bland but very lovable all the same); it's everyone else who sees her as an intruder.

The sometimes hyperactive script (from Adele Lim and Peter Chiarelli) lays out the movie's stakes with the help of Goh Peik Lin (Awkwafina), Rachel's friend from college who belongs to a much gaudier "new money" Singaporean family. The wealth of the Youngs, Peik Lin explains, is rooted in Singapore's postcolonial history. For the Youngs, the idea of the family heir marrying an American simply won't do, no matter how charming or accomplished Rachel is. As Eleanor later explains, Americans are cursed with wanting to pursue their own happiness; to the Youngs, that value ranks a distant second to family tradition.

Yeoh is perfectly cast as Rachel's foil; she's a commandingly cool movie star who can show just the right hint of sublimated emotion when necessary. The film's first scene is a prologue set in London where a stuffy hotel concierge tries to deny the Young family service, after which Eleanor quickly, and cleanly, exacts her revenge-just so the viewer knows what a hard case she is. She's an adversary deserving of the greatest respect, and her steeliness prompts Rachel to try harder to prove her worth.

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'Crazy Rich Asians' Is a Breath of Fresh Air

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Crazy Rich Asians is about Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), a Chinese American economics professor at NYU who has a nice boyfriend named Nick Young (Henry Golding). Casually at dinner, Nick mentions that his friend is getting married back home in Singapore and that Rachel should come with him and finally meet his family.

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The symbolism of Crazy Rich Asians’ pivotal mahjong scene, explained

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The symbolism of Crazy Rich Asians’ pivotal mahjong scene, explained

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The ending scene shows Rachel and Eleanor playing a game that I didn't while watching. This article does a good job explaining what that scene was meant to symbolize and this is helpful for my overall understanding of the film.

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This story is part of a group of stories called

First-person essays and interviews with unique perspectives on complicated issues.

One of the most beautiful things about Crazy Rich Asians is how it refuses to explain many of its most intrinsically Asian elements. That lack of training wheels is intentional: As director Jon M. Chu told me, "We didn't want to give people an excuse to think of this world as some kind of obscure, exotic fantasyland - this is a real place, with real culture, history and tradition, and instead of just giving them answers to their questions, we want them to have conversations."

The movie's Singapore-specific local color and broadly Asian cultural nuances are indeed fairly Google-able, and can readily be contextualized through polite discussions with actual Asian people. But there's one scene in particular that has been resiliently enigmatic to audiences of many backgrounds, both Asian and non-Asian ... and it's a pivotal one: the mahjong scene.

That's especially true for fans of the book, who won't recognize it; it's original to the movie. It was inserted in part because Michelle Yeoh, who delivers an amazing steel-and-silk performance as the movie's main antagonist, refused to play the stock villainous tiger mom from the book. This scene provides her with critical impetus toward her eventual redemption.

But it's also true for people who don't understand the complex rules of the game, which aren't intuitive and are often different depending on the region of the world. So here's a quick primer on the game of mahjong itself, as well as its significance to the film in that pivotal scene. Spoilers abound below, so if you haven't yet watched the deliriously warm and funny movie, crawl out from under that rock and see it before reading further.

Mahjong, explained

A quick primer on mahjong itself. A fast-paced, rummy-style game in which four players attempt to form sets of three or four matching or sequenced tiles, it's hugely popular not only across Asia but around the world. Its origins are Chinese: All the way back in 1927, about a century after the game was invented, the Chinese scholar and essayist Hu Shi complained that mahjong was so popular that it had become China's "national pastime," calculating that the millions of games of mahjong played each day by Chinese were the equivalent of 4 million hours of wasted time daily.

But most Chinese don't see the game as "wasted time." In fact, despite his grousing, Hu himself was an inveterate player who spent many an evening tossing the tiles. Mao Zedong once said the game should not be underestimated - because "If you know how to play it, you'll have a better understanding of the relationship between chance and necessity. There's philosophy in mahjong."

Mahjong remains extraordinarily popular among Chinese immigrants and beyond, and it's featured in both the film The Joy Luck Club and the TV show Fresh Off the Boat, both of which depict Asian-American post-immigrant life. (Mandatory disclosure: My son Hudson Yang plays Eddie on Fresh Off the Boat; Crazy Rich Asians' Constance Wu plays his mother.)

When asked about the mahjong scene, Chu told me, "Never thought we'd have to explain it," and laughed. "I wanted it to be very specifically choreographed, and obviously, for it to happen that fast is almost impossible. But I wanted to intercut the game with the conversation, so it was critical for them to know exactly what they were doing at every moment. We got a mahjong expert - basically a gambling addict! - to help choreograph that game, to make it authentic."

The closest Western analog to Mahjong might be gin rummy. The goal of the game is to reach certain combinations of tiles before your opponents. Tiles have numbers and suits, which can be combined into winning hands through sets of either matching numbers or suited numerically sequential tiles, just like in gin rummy. Each player's hand is 13 tiles throughout the game, though the pickup of a 14th tile is needed to win.

Here is a very simplified explanation of the options that, in combination, can compose winning hands:

1. Chow, which is three tiles in a sequential number sequence of the same suit

2. Pong, which is three of the exact same tile

3. Plus a pair of the exact same tile, called the "eye"

Communication, negotiation, strategy, and even cooperation are far more critical in mahjong than in most card games. Watching what your opponents discard as well as the completed sets they lay out in front of them - when one steals a tile that another player has discarded, one must expose the completed set - is the key to understanding what each is attempting to accomplish.

What the climactic mahjong scene means

In the movie, the mahjong scene takes place in a pivotal scene after our protagonist Rachel Chu, played by Constance Wu, has been rejected by her boyfriend Nick's mother, Eleanor (played by Michelle Yeoh). This is because Eleanor learns that Rachel was born to a single mother who fled China for the States. However, unbeknownst to Eleanor, Nick has gone against his mother's wishes and proposed to Rachel anyway.

In the mahjong scene, Rachel and Eleanor go head to head right after this stunning twist. Rachel invites Eleanor to meet with her at a mahjong parlor - a gambling house frequented mostly by working- or middle-class older folks who rent tables by the hour. The persistent clacking of tiles is a sound familiar to anyone who has been around people playing mahjong.

When Eleanor arrives, she takes the open seat across from Rachel and is offered the role of dealer - the "East" seat. The four seats in mahjong are named after the compass directions, which plays an important role both in the rules of the game and in the symbolism of the scene. Eleanor, in the role of the "East," representing Asia, is the player in control. Rachel, sitting across from her, represents America - the "West."

Early in the scene, Eleanor completes a "pong," or a matched set of tiles. This move demonstrates that Eleanor plans to win using the strategy of matched tiles, and she's making Rachel aware. In this moment, Eleanor tells Rachel that her mother taught her how to play too.

As the conversation continues, Rachel asks Eleanor why she didn't like her from the very beginning - even before her family history was revealed. Eleanor expounds on the difference between Asians and Americans, noting how even though Asian Americans look Asian, they are American at heart. Referencing a Hokkien term that means "our kind of people," she says that Asian Americans are not kaki lang. Remember, in this game, Eleanor is trying to create a winning hand comprising all matches of the same exact tile - an "extended family" that's metaphorically composed of kaki lang.

The camera then cuts to show a number of discarded bamboo tiles. Discarded bamboo calls to mind a frequently used term for Westernized overseas Asians, this one Cantonese: jook sing, which literally means "empty bamboo." It's a slang term that's the Chinese equivalent of the Asian-American term "banana" - yellow on the outside, white on the inside - cited earlier in the film by Peik Lin (the frenetically hilarious Awkwafina). The "empty" bamboo tiles are scattered alongside the tiles for East and West, not truly part of either, representing Eleanor's perception of Rachel.

At this point, Rachel drops the bomb on Eleanor that Nick proposed to her, telling her that he said he'd be willing to walk away from everything - his family, his family's wealth - to be with her. Right as Rachel is saying this, she draws the most important tile in the game: an eight of bamboo.

The number eight is of huge symbolic importance to the Chinese; it resembles the character for fortune and is considered a sign of wealth, prosperity, and happiness. It's why so many Chinese license plates, phone numbers, and even street addresses contain eights. Monterey Park, the first city in San Gabriel Valley, California, to become a suburban destination for wealthy Chinese, was considered a particularly propitious place to live because it had an 818 area code.

While an eight doesn't have special value in the game of mahjong, we see that the eight of bamboo is also the one tile Rachel needs to complete her hand. This is a winning tile for her. But Rachel knows something else, based on her observation of how the game has played out (remember, she's a game theory professor!): It's Eleanor's winning tile too.

She then discloses to Eleanor that she turned Nick down. Eleanor is dumbfounded. "Only a fool folds a winning hand," she says, referring to Nick's proposal.

This is critical, because in the very first scene of the movie, Rachel demonstrated through a poker game with one of her TAs that to be successful in any game where psychology and choice are a factor, you can't play "not to lose" - you have to play to win.

Rachel explains: When it comes to her marriage with Nick, Eleanor has guaranteed there's no winning outcome for them. Nick choosing Rachel means he'd lose his mother and his family. Nick choosing his family means he might resent Eleanor forever - thus losing his mother anyway. Lose-lose.

So she decided to seize control of the situation and choose for him. But she doesn't want it to happen without Eleanor knowing exactly why it's happening and what Rachel is giving up to make it possible.

She tells Eleanor that she knows Nick will eventually find someone else, someone that his family approves of - that's what every generation of Youngs has done before him, after all. And while her own heart will be broken, as she says, she loves him so much that she is willing to suffer if it means that Nick will keep the thing that is at the heart of Asian culture, and of his story: his family.

That's when Rachel throws out the eight of bamboo as a discard - folding her winning hand, knowing that Eleanor will pick it up and declare victory. While this happens, she explains that when Nick finds the proper match in the future, she wants Eleanor to understand that the only reason it occurred was because a "poor, raised by a single mother, low-class immigrant nobody" - Rachel - made it possible.

She then reveals her hand, which would have won, making it clear to the whole table what she's done, and walks away.

In this move, Rachel has demonstrated to Eleanor three critical things. The first is that she loves Nick enough to put his future ahead of hers. The second is that she understands that family should always come first, something that Eleanor suspected she didn't comprehend as a jook sing Asian American. And the third is that Rachel is strong, self-sacrificing, and courageous - a lot like Eleanor herself. Instead of "never being enough" for Nick, a line Eleanor uses to surgically destroy Rachel in an earlier scene, she's most likely exactly what Nick needs.

Knowing all of this context isn't necessary for the scene to work, but it certainly adds depth to understand the symbolism of the game.
This essay was adapted from a post on Angry Asian Man. For a more detailed look at mahjong, .
Jeff Yang is a co-host of the podcast They Call Us Bruce, a featured contributor for CNN Opinion, and a columnist for South China Morning Post's Inkstone magazine. His elder son, Hudson Yang, plays Eddie on ABC's Fresh Off the Boat.

First Person is Vox's home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at firstperson@vox.com.

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The symbolism of Crazy Rich Asians' pivotal mahjong scene, explained

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First-person essays and interviews with unique perspectives on complicated issues. One of the most beautiful things about Crazy Rich Asians is how it refuses to explain many of its most intrinsically Asian elements. That lack of training wheels is intentional: As director Jon M.

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How the Crazy Rich Asians Movie Departs From the Book

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How the Crazy Rich Asians Movie Departs From the Book

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The movie is based off of a book and movies are usually always different from the book. I can use this article to compare the authors views and what the director was aiming for. This article also compares the charters form the book to the movie and that can be helpful for the analysis.

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Crazy Rich Asians is a lot of things: one of the summer's most buzzed-about films, the first major Hollywood studio release starring an all-Asian American cast since The Joy Luck Clubin 1993, a "transportive delight" overflowing with charisma. But it is also, first and foremost, an adaptation of the first book in the best-selling series by Kevin Kwan, himself a Singaporean elite turned U.S. transplant.

How faithful is the movie to the original text? At its most basic, the fish-out-of-water plot remains the same, but where Kwan's novel sprawls, director Jon M. Chu's adaptation is more compact, paring down multiple storylines and voices into a single, structurally sound rom-com. Here's a breakdown of the main similarities and differences between the two. (Spoilers ahead.)

The "Crazy Rich" of Crazy Rich Asians

One of the book's main voyeuristic appeals is the sheer number of words Kwan dedicates to describing the lavish-and frankly, maddening-levels of wealth that the titular characters hold in their finely manicured hands. The movie delivers some sense of that, with the outcome of the opening scene in the hotel, Astrid's million-dollar earrings, and the outrageous opulence of Colin and Araminta's $40 million wedding, but the lack of a narrator deprives viewers of the insider knowledge of how the families made their fortunes (real estate, banking, hospitality-you name it), the obscene amount of dollars they casually drop on luxury items, and the historical and cultural differences between Singapore's "old money" and the mainland's nouveau riche that Kwan so clearly relishes recounting.

The Characters Beyond Rachel Chu

The movie features a huge ensemble cast, but many of the actors don't have more than a couple of speaking lines, and several characters are consolidated into one or just plain missing from the film. (Hi, Nick's dad?)

Meanwhile, the book dives deeper into the three interconnected families (the Youngs, the Shangs, and the T'siens) and rotates the point of view for different chapters, shining a spotlight on characters outside of Rachel's core storyline.

On screen, it makes sense to center Rachel as the protagonist around whom everything revolves. Introducing too many characters and their competing motivations on screen would distract from the love story at the heart of the rom-com. Still, it's a bit of a shame, as I can only imagine how fun it would've been to see what actors like Ronny Chieng could've done with more time as Eddie, who, if you can believe it, is even more of an insufferable asshole in the text.

Astrid Leong

With the exception of the rudely axed Philip Young, the movie's Godot-like patriarch, Astrid's arc suffers the most pruning in the movie. In both the book and the movie, she confronts her husband Michael after discovering he might be having an affair. From there, the storyline diverges. In the book, Michael admits to having a mistress in Hong Kong and leaves, despite Astrid's pleas that they stay together and work on their relationship. Astrid then teams up with her ex-fiancé Charlie Wu (played in the film, however briefly, by Harry Shum Jr.) to track down Michael, only to discover that Michael had not been unfaithful. He had only been pretending so that Astrid would divorce him, thus ending his misery at the hands of her snobby family. Charlie, who still harbors feelings for Astrid, ends up secretly pouring money into Michael's startup, thus giving Michael financial footing and saving his marriage with Astrid.

The movie flattens this convoluted storyline into a simple infidelity plot, with Michael painted as the clear wrongdoer. (Spoiler for the later books: Readers will know that it's only after the first novel that he becomes a real villain.) Charlie doesn't even enter the equation until the bonus scene that comes in the middle of the film's closing credits, when Shum Jr. makes what must be the shortest appearance ever to receive star billing.

Peik Lin Goh

Peik Lin plays the same best-friend role in both the novel and the movie, but the on-screen treatment gets extra weight thanks to the scene-stealing Awkwafina. Movie Peik Lin-and her father, played by Ken Jeong doing what Ken Jeong does best-functions as the film's comic relief and Rachel's main ally. Consequently, the film sneaks Peik Lin and her blonde, Ellen-like coif into scenes she was never part of in the novel, like the fancy fete at Tyersall Park.

Eleanor Young

The book version of Nick's mother is controlling and conniving. Those traits still apply to the movie version too, but are elevated into something more elegant and menacing by the always excellent Michelle Yeoh. Unlike in the book, in which Su Yi, Nick's grandmother, plays an equally important role in coldly disapproving of her grandson's American girlfriend, in the movie Eleanor is the primary opposing force cutting off Rachel at each turn. This stealth war culminates in a mahjong faceoff between Eleanor and Rachel that never happens in the novel but makes for a good cinematic climax.

Rachel's Parents

In both the book and the movie, the final weapon in Eleanor's arsenal is a dossier she hires a private investigator to put together on Rachel and her family. In the book, Eleanor and Su Yi surprise Nick and Rachel with the results of the investigation at Su Yi's lodge in Malaysia: Rachel's father is not dead, but is rather in prison in Shenzhen, China, and her mother Kerry is wanted for kidnapping charges. Stunned, Rachel leaves Nick and starts planning to go to Shenzhen to meet her father. Kerry arrives in Singapore in time to stop Rachel and finally reveals the truth: The man in prison is her abusive husband, whom Kerry left after falling in love with another man and becoming pregnant with his child. Kerry was wanted for kidnapping because she had taken Rachel and fled to America.

The movie takes the basic facts of Kerry's secret-conceiving Rachel with a man who is not her husband-and reorients them a degree. Instead of disapproving of the "criminal" backgrounds of Rachel's parents, in the movie Eleanor and Su Yi's scorn hinges on Kerry's infidelity. Unlike in the book, Rachel neither attempts to find her father nor interrogates her mother any further.

The Ending

Crazy Rich Asians the book concludes with more loose ends than it does neat bows. Will Rachel take back up her quest to see her father? Will Nick propose to Rachel? (And if so, will she say yes?) Will the Youngs ever come around, or is Nick henceforth exiled from Tyersall Park? These are the unanswered questions that hang over the denouement, setting up the plot for the next book in Kwan's trilogy.

The movie, on the other hand, stays true to the rom-com genre and ties up the story with a patented happy ending. Having gained respect for Rachel during the climactic mahjong game, Eleanor finally allows Nick to propose to Rachel-on a plane slated for departure, no less-with her own ring. Rachel accepts, and the film wraps up with an engagement, a party, and a single nod exchanged between Eleanor and Rachel.

Read more in Slate about Crazy Rich Asians
﻿A Guide to Crazy Rich Asians' Many Cameos, Homages, and Easter Eggs
Crazy Rich Asians Is Crazy, Rich, and Actually Very American
This Week's Other Asian American Rom-Com Is Streaming on Netflix

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How the Crazy Rich Asians Movie Departs From the Book

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Crazy Rich Asians is a lot of things: one of the summer's most buzzed-about films, the first major Hollywood studio release starring an all-Asian American cast since The Joy Luck Club in 1993, a "transportive delight" overflowing with charisma.

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Crazy Rich Asians Isn’t Quite Crazy Enough

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Crazy Rich Asians Isn’t Quite Crazy Enough

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In this article they explain that in the book, it was more crazy. They believe that the movie did a good job capturing what the book was trying to portray but they think it could have been crazier. This can be helpful when talking about the directors work.

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Watching Crazy Rich Asians, the film adaptation of Kevin Kwan's bestselling novel, I found myself wondering how I'm supposed to read the title. Is it "crazy rich" as in, "they're crazy rich"? Or is it "crazy rich" as in, "they're crazy and they're rich"? Jon M. Chu's film certainly delivers on the lavish trappings of the former interpretation, but if the latter is meant to be the mood of the film, it falls a little short. I wanted things to be a little crazier, I guess, wild high-society intrigue staged with the satisfying bite of mean, wicked satire.

But that is maybe not the movie Warner Bros. and its producing partners wanted to spend $30 million on. What we get instead is smoother and brighter, a fairy-tale romp full of direct Cinderella references that has some muddied messaging about wealth. Mostly, it just whisks us away on a whirlwind tour of an almost fantastical world. Crazy Rich Asians is breathless fun-rather weightless, too.

The movie isn't without consequence, though. It's the first major American studio release since 1993's The Joy Luck Club to feature a predominantly Asian and Asian-American cast, starring Chinese and Chinese-American actors alongside performers from Malaysia, the Philippines, Japan, and beyond. The broadness of the film's casting-with actors of different backgrounds all playing ethnic Chinese people-has drawn some criticism. But Crazy Rich Asians has also been greeted as an exciting, if distressingly rare, event. Watching the film and its lively ensemble, one gets frustrated thinking of all the time Hollywood has spent saying it would hire diversely if only it could find the talent. If I may gesture broadly at this film.

Leading the pack is Constance Wu, breakout star of ABC's Fresh Off the Boat, here putting a funny spin on a familiar fish-out-of-water romantic ingenue role. (An ingenue who's an economics professor at N.Y.U., no less.) She plays Rachel Chu, a Chinese American who's been wooed by Chinese-Singaporean heartthrob Nick Young (the jaw-droppingly dashing TV presenter-turned-first-time actor Henry Golding -make him a movie star, please). They've been serious for a while now, and Nick thinks it's time she met his family back in Singapore, where he'll be the best man at a friend's wedding. Rachel agrees and off they go, on what Rachel assumes will be a fairly standard meet-the-parents trip, albeit one requiring an extra-long plane ride.

The giddy joke of the film, of course, is that Nick Young is in fact the beloved chosen son of one of Singapore's wealthiest families, and that Nick is something of a celebrity back home. As someone who Googles every Tinder match (and all his exes) before we've even made a date, I don't quite believe that Rachel has never looked up her boyfriend of a year and found out that, holy shit, he's loaded-with cash and with obligation. But maybe Rachel's just that admirably unplugged. Whatever the reason, her dawning realization about with whom she's coupled up gives a giddy zap to the first half of the film. I'm revealing a lot about myself in this review (hell, in this paragraph), but as someone who has seen and enjoyed The Prince & Me many times, I was easily won over by Crazy Rich Asians ' version of this fantasy discovery.

It's easy to get lost in it. The more one thinks about the movie, though, it's a bit troubling how wishy-washy Crazy Rich Asians is about its depiction of extreme wealth. The journey of the film is Rachel and Nick agreeing to love each other on their own terms, family expectations be damned, while Nick's coolly domineering mother, Eleanor (an effectively icy Michelle Yeoh), must come to accept this American interloper or risk losing her son. So there's a lot about class being considered here, and a bit of a comment on how having too much money can corrode your sense of propriety (while thinking it's been sharpened). But the film also revels in its material abundance, even going so far as to have a B-story (involving the fabulous Gemma Chan as Nick's kind but unhappy cousin) that asks us to see righteous empowerment in inherited wealth. Cinderella stories are one thing if they are about someone being magically, bogglingly lifted out of terrible circumstances, a reward for all their suffering. But Rachel is an economics professor at N.Y.U.! How much should all this opulence really matter to her, and to us?

As this summer's sleeper hit Succession showed us, depictions of monstrously rich people in these difficult times are tricky to assess. Obviously the means that led to Singaporean wealth, and the mechanisms that sustain it, are different than those that keep the American machine churning along. Crazy Rich Asians is novel for being an American studio movie that shows us a different horror of excess. But it's still excess, and the movie's wan barbs are not enough to counter all the celebration. The film gives you the odd opportunity to feel swoony and gross at the same time, carried away by the lavishness while also knowing it's wrong.

Still, plenty of white Americans have been able to enjoy all that stuff guilt-free on film for a century-so why shouldn't some other people get to join the orgy? There's a sense of reclamation, or maybe it's assertion, to Crazy Rich Asians, adamantly illustrating Singapore's place in the oligarchic narrative of the world. (We even get a little history and geography lesson in the film, delivered by the elastic and ever-welcome Awkwafina.) There's power in that, in reflecting that heritage (and current reality) onscreen to audiences who recognize it, as well as to those learning it for the first time. If that kind of cultural exchange can also include some good-lookin' men who are shirtless a lot and Michelle Yeoh in a series of terrific outfits, well, what's the harm in that? I only wish that if we were going to venerate the ludicrously monied, it had been done with a bit more venom. They can take it. They're really rich, after all.

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Crazy Rich Asians Review: The Movie Isn't Quite Crazy Enough

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Watching Crazy Rich Asians, the film adaptation of Kevin Kwan's bestselling novel, I found myself wondering how I'm supposed to read the title. Is it "crazy rich" as in, "they're crazy rich"? Or is it "crazy rich" as in, "they're crazy and they're rich"? Jon M.

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Review: ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Is a Party With a First-Rate Guest List

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Review: ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Is a Party With a First-Rate Guest List

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This article describes what kind of audience was intended for the movie. With this information, I can talk about how everyone my interoperate the movie differently. People who are different from the group it was intended for probably have a different view.

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As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.

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'Crazy Rich Asians' | Anatomy of a Scene

Jon M. Chu narrates a sequence from his film.

Hey, this is Jon M. Chu, director of "Crazy Rich Asians." And this is in the beginning of the movie, where we get to meet Rachel Chu, played by the incredible Constance Wu, and Nick Young, played by Henry Golding, who, this is his first movie. We found him from our accountant in Malaysia. He was a travel host there. Never done a movie before, so this is his first movie. This is his second day shooting. And he really improved every day he was there. He's an incredible actor, actually, and super natural. And you're going to see him a lot. And he plays the lead in our movie. And here, he's inviting her to Singapore to meet his family. What she doesn't know is that his family is the richest in Singapore. And so she's about to fly into a hornet's nest, as they say. This is a very popular section in the book. In our script, it's about two sentences. So we had to design from the ground up. But in the book, they talk about how all the gossip spreads through Radio 1 Asia. And you can see her slyly taking a cell phone pic there. And she's going to pass it on to all the friends, socialites, ex-girlfriends, family members to destroy this American girl coming to Singapore to take their man. How did we communicate this stuff is through text message and social media. And there's so much and so many ways you can do it. We really didn't want to shoot people's screens. So we tried to come up with the most buoyant way that even the book describes of how information passes. So we had these wispy, colorful things, sort of in the colors of the book covers, that spread through all the people throughout Singapore. And we had a great company, Aspect Ratio, to help design it. There's my baby in the second there, screaming "no," that was born about two weeks after we finished shooting. And then we really wanted to show that this information was spreading all around the world and ending up at this beautiful home, during this Bible study, where we meet Michelle Yeoh, who plays Nick Young's mother and wants nothing to do with this American girl coming to Singapore, which is very relatable to my experience as an Asian-American going to Asia for the first time, where it feels sort of like home but not like home. And that's really what our movie is about is this dual cultural identity that we all go through, especially in this generation of no matter where you're from - whether you're Asian or not - everyone's figuring out who we want to be for the future. And so text messaging is a great way to show all the ways that those things spread.

Jon M. Chu narrates a sequence from his film. Credit Credit... Sanja Bucko/Warner Bros.

Crazy Rich Asians

Directed by Jon M. Chu

Comedy, Romance

PG-13

2 hours

As of the moment as an Instagram feed, "Crazy Rich Asians" revisits Jane Austen's timeless universal truth about a man in possession of a fortune being in want of a wife. The man in question is Nick Young (Henry Golding), the exquisitely eligible scion of a Singapore real estate family. The scale of his fortune is suggested by the first scene, in which his mother, insulted by the manager of a fancy London hotel, buys it out from under him.

There's no doubt in Nick's mind about whom he wants to marry: Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), an economics professor at N.Y.U. originally from Queens. She and Nick, who have been together for a year, are clearly a perfect match. At least in Manhattan. But when they travel back to Singapore for a wedding, Rachel finds herself subjected to the disapproving scrutiny of the older generation and vicious sniping from potential rivals.

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Constance Wu stars in the romantic comedy "Crazy Rich Asians," the director Jon M. Chu's adaptation of Kevin Kwan's best-selling novel. Credit... Sanja Bucko/Warner Bros.

Every romantic comedy depends on obstacles to the central couple's ultimate happiness. "Crazy Rich Asians," a busy, fizzy movie winnowed from Kevin Kwan's sprawling, dishy novel, sets up a series of clashes - between tradition and individualism, between the heart's desire and familial duty, between insane wealth and prudent upward mobility - that are resolved with more laughter than tears. There are squalls of intrigue and a melodramatic cloudburst or two, but nothing that threatens to spoil the festivities.

The venue is fabulous - if there is any part of Singapore that is less than dazzlingly picturesque, we don't see it here - the music is great, and the food includes homemade dumplings, street-stall delicacies and lavish banquet dishes. But the key to this party is surely the guest list. It has been noted that this is the first Hollywood movie in a long time with a mostly Asian and Asian-American cast, and if anything this observation understates the diversity of the performers onscreen, in terms of both their origins and their pop-cultural affiliations. They include Michelle Yeoh, one of the great international movie stars of the past quarter-century; Ken Jeong, a staple of naughty American comedy for almost as long; and Awkwafina, a hip-hop artist, actress and web celebrity of more recent vintage.

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A preview of the film.

[ Why did it take so long to see a cast like this?]

That's only a small sampling. Mr. Kwan's book, a best-seller that has spawned two sequels since it was published in 2013, runs to more than 500 pages and includes footnotes, genealogical charts and a telephone directory's worth of names. Its digressions and tangents would easily fill up a television season or two, and the movie, directed by Jon M. Chu, can feel a bit rushed and cramped. There's too much and also not enough.

Still, it's hard not to have fun, though not always for poor Rachel. After a pleasant excursion with the soon-to-be newlyweds, Nick's boyhood friend Colin (Chris Pang) and his fiancée, Araminta (Sonoya Mizuno), the family drama and the peripheral silliness kick into high gear. Rachel meets an ex-girlfriend of Nick's, Amanda (Jing Lusi), who is less of an ally than she seems. More simpatico is Astrid (Gemma Chan), Nick's ultraglamorous cousin, whose marital troubles provide the most developed secondary plot. Her husband, Michael (Pierre Png), is, like Rachel, an outsider; his insecurity about his wife's money and status turns their marriage into a potential cautionary tale.

From left, Michelle Yeoh, Henry Golding and Ms. Wu in the film. Credit... Sanja Bucko/Warner Bros.

A more serious intimation of trouble arrives every time Nick's mother, Eleanor (Ms. Yeoh), looks in Rachel's direction. (His father is away on a business trip.) Her judgment seems severe and unfair, but she also possesses an undeniable grandeur, a seriousness about family, power and her own identity that is noble as well as cruel. While there is never any real doubt that "Crazy Rich Asians" will come down on the side of free choice and true love, it does pay lip service to the gravity and durability of other values.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time. It is an unabashed celebration of luxury and money, with hints of class conflict that have more to do with aspiration than envy or anger, set in an Asia miraculously free of history or politics. Comic relief is provided by Peik Lin Goh (Awkwafina), Rachel's nutty friend, and her nutty parents (Mr. Jeong and Koh Chieng Mun), whose nouveau riche tackiness stands in contrast to the aristocratic hauteur of the Young family. Not everyone in that clan is as regal as Eleanor or as blandly agreeable as her son. There are a gaggle of funny aunties and a witty gay cousin (Nico Santos), who is no less amusing for being a rather tiresome stereotype.

You could also view that character as a self-conscious throwback - part of the film's sly and appealing old-fashionedness. Without betraying any overt nostalgia, "Crazy Rich Asians" casts a fond eye backward as well as Eastward, conjuring a world defined by hierarchies and prescribed roles in a way that evokes classic novels and films. Its keenest romantic impulse has less to do with Nick and Rachel's rather pedestrian love story than with the allure of endless luxury and dynastic authority. Which I guess is pretty modern after all.

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Review: 'Crazy Rich Asians' Is a Party With a First-Rate Guest List (Published 2018)

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Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share. Crazy Rich Asians Directed by Jon M. Chu Comedy, Romance PG-13 2 hours As of the moment as an Instagram feed, "Crazy Rich Asians" revisits Jane Austen's timeless universal truth about a man in possession of a fortune being in want of a wife.

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Film reviews provide me with a different point of view which helps look at the movie with a new perspective. Others may have caught something I didn't or know more about certain symbols in the movie. That can be helpful when trying to write about what I thought about the film

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Constance Wu and newcomer Henry Golding play a young couple in love bedeviled by questions of class, money and family background in the screen adaptation of Kevin Kwan's global best-seller.

Given that it's been 25 long years since The Joy Luck Club, the first and only other major Hollywood studio film with a Westernized Asian ensemble and a contemporary setting, anyone who cares about cultural representation will be in the corner of Crazy Rich Asians even before the jazzy title sequence gets underway. So it's both a relief and a pleasure to report that this high-gloss rom-com - based on the bestselling novel of a Singaporean author, directed by an Asian-American and featuring an all-Asian cast - is such a thoroughly captivating exploration of the rarefied question of whether true love can conquer head-spinning wealth.

Warner Bros. has high expectations for the Aug. 15 wide release, which should do gangbusters business in Asian markets. The real test will be its ability to transcend the core domestic audience of Asian-Americans and play more broadly at home. The signs in that regard appear auspicious.

Director Jon M. Chu, novelist Kevin Kwan, co-screenwriters Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim and the appealing cast make the story culturally specific yet eminently relatable. It's a rocky romance dripping in the kind of stonking extravagance most of us can only fantasize about, like a $40 million wedding, for instance. And yet it's viewed from the anchoring perspective of a young woman who comes from nothing and remains true to herself throughout, played with grounded intelligence, backbone and emotional integrity by Fresh Off the Boat's Constance Wu in a lovely performance that gives the film real heart.

What will likely sweeten the deal for many voyeuristic audiences is the movie's mouth-watering sampling of guilt-free luxury porn. It's a sybaritic celebration of high-end travel, food, architecture, decor and fashion, but it somehow eschews the vulgarity of conspicuous consumerism. There's flashy excess aplenty, but at the story's core, Trumpian ostentation takes a backseat to proud tradition, family honor, friendship and, most of all, love.

The romantic stakes are misinterpreted as gold-digging aspiration only by judgmental snobs, whereas for the couple at the mercy of gossiping meddlers and suspicious relatives, dizzying wealth and all its attendant clubby insularity are an obstacle to be surmounted. The movie is less satirical in tone than Kwan's novel; as a result it has the necessary depth of feeling to make us root for the beleaguered lovebirds to beat the odds and make a go of it.

Wu plays Rachel Chu, a self-possessed NYU economics professor raised by a working-class single mother (Tan Kheng Hua) who emigrated from China when Rachel was a baby. Her dreamboat boyfriend of two years, Nick Young (Henry Golding), invites her to be his date for the wedding of his best friend Colin (Chris Pang) in Singapore and then spend the summer traveling through Southeast Asia. That news pings through the international social-media grapevine of moneyed Asians at dizzying speed in an amusing montage that represents director Chu's effervescent style at its best.

Nick has been reticent about his family's astronomical, old-money wealth, evasively describing their situation as "comfortable." Even when he and the wide-eyed Rachel are ushered into their first-class private suite on the flight from New York, Nick brushes it off as a perk of family business connections. But his desire to explore a relationship with Rachel on equal terms, unimpeded by his elevated social status, soon proves naive, especially once his hyper-vigilant mother Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh) gets wind of it. Even before any actual talk of wedding bells is broached, multiple forces are conspiring to separate Singapore's golden child from the perceived interloper.

The comedy is one part Meet the Parents, two parts Cinderella story, with those familiar elements reinvigorated by the fresh setting of upscale Singapore, with its architectural splendors embracing both colonial history and imposing modernist forms. Cinematographer Vanja Cernjul shoots the locations in dynamic widescreen compositions full of bold colors that add to the sense of a 21st-century fairy tale. The writers also expand the geographical canvas by taking in Nick's globe-trotting extended family, and dropping the principals into exotic locations for the pre-nuptial partying of Colin and his bride-to-be Araminta (Sonoya Mizuno).

While that couple's fondness for Nick makes them instantly accepting of Rachel, that is generally not the case. But she has a few strategic allies on her side.

Chief among them is her hilariously unfiltered former New York college friend Peik Lin Goh, played by rapper Awkwafina, the scene-stealer of Ocean's 8, who effortlessly repeats that feat with her irresistible insouciance here. Having returned home to her wacky nouveau riche parents, played to the hilt as shamelessly broad caricatures by Ken Jeong and Koh Chieng Mun, Peik Lin sets Rachel straight on the true scope of Nick's family fortune. She then teams with Oliver (Nico Santos), the flamboyantly gay "poor-relation rainbow sheep" of the Young family, to give Rachel the necessary makeover to pass muster with Eleanor. Even more important is Rachel's first impression on Nick's doting grandmother, or Ah Ma in local parlance, played with beatific serenity and just the right touch of inscrutability by veteran Lisa Lu.

Rachel also gets insider support from Nick's favorite cousin Astrid (Gemma Chan), the essence of poise, beauty and sophistication, whose own difficult experience of marrying beneath her income bracket makes her sympathetic to the outsider's discomfort. While screenwriters Chiarelli and Lim generally have been successful at corralling Kwan's vast panoply of characters into a manageable group, Astrid's troubled marriage to Michael (Pierre Png) gets somewhat shortchanged as a subplot, even if it serves to show the fissures that wealth disparity can create in a relationship. Nevertheless, Chan is a radiant presence who lights up her every scene.

Chu's pacing is uneven, and the film lags especially when Rachel and Nick are kept apart for extended periods. But Wu and Golding have charming chemistry that drives the plot and keeps you invested in their future together, even when it seems most hopeless.

It helps also that the luminous Yeoh brings such complexity to Eleanor, refusing to make her a one-dimensional dragon lady but rather a woman fiercely protective of her family and mindful of the kind of wife she thinks Nick will need in order to take his rightful place as head of their massive pan-Asian real estate empire. Her own uneasy entrée into the family as a young woman and her thorny past with the formidable Ah Ma also add texture to her interactions with Rachel, whom she dismisses as an American with insufficient understanding of Chinese family traditions. Those scenes are beautifully contrasted by affecting moments between Rachel and her mother, who appears when her daughter most needs her.

The filmmakers stir occasional bursts of raucous humor into the mix, primarily via Peik Lin's family or Bernard (Jimmy O. Yang), an obnoxious overgrown frat boy who takes charge of Colin's lavish bachelor weekend. But mostly, the comedy is breezy, smart and tethered to issues far more universal than the obscenely rich high-society milieu would suggest.

Aside from Peik Lin's outrageously campy mother, there are surprisingly scant traces of pronounced Singlish in the dialogue, and few brown faces to represent Singapore's large Indian and Malay communities. (Eagle-eyed viewers, however, will find subtle Singaporean references embedded throughout.) But the choice to go for a less localized, more borderless cosmopolitan feel seems right in terms of maximizing the film's reach and eliminating the need for explanatory footnotes, like those dotted through the novel.

Chu has put together a slick, highly entertaining package. Unsurprisingly for a director who cut his teeth on films including the Step Up sequels and Justin Bieber concert docs, Crazy Rich Asians is energized by infectious use of Brian Tyler's big, bouncy score and some terrific song choices, notably fun Cantopop versions of "Material Girl" and "Money (That's What I Want)." What makes it so genuinely uplifting, however, is the establishment of the central relationship as a union between partners determined to remain on equal footing, far more concerned with each other's mutual happiness than with all the wealth and luxury that stands between them.
Production companies: Color Force, Ivanhoe Pictures, Electric Somewhere
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Cast: Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, Gemma Chan, Lisa Lu, Awkwafina, Harry Shum Jr., Ken Jeong, Sonoya Mizuno, Chris Pang, Jimmy O. Yang, Ronny Chieng, Remy Hii, Nico Santos, Jing Lusi, Tan Kheng Hua, Carmen Soo, Pierre Png, Fiona Xie, Victoria Loke, Janice Koh, Amy J. Cheng, Koh Chieng Mun, Calvin Wong
Director: Jon M. Chu
Screenwriters: Peter Chiarelli, Adele Lim, based on the novel by Kevin Kwan
Producers: Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, John Penotti
Executive producers: Tim Coddington, Kevin Kwan, Robert Friedland, Sidney Kimmel
Director of photography: Vanja Cernjul
Production designer: Nelson Coates
Costume designer: Mary Vogt
Music: Brian Tyler
Editor: Myron Kerstein
Casting: Terri Taylor

Rated PG; 121 minutes

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Given that it's been 25 long years since The Joy Luck Club , the first and only other major Hollywood studio film with a Westernized Asian ensemble and a contemporary setting, anyone who cares about cultural representation will be in the corner of Crazy Rich Asians even before the jazzy title sequence gets underway.

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Crazy Rich Asians review – Cinderella does Singapore in a riotous romance

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Crazy Rich Asians review – Cinderella does Singapore in a riotous romance

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Crazy Rich Asians review - Cinderella does Singapore in a riotous romance | Peter Bradshaw's film of the week

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In Jon M Chu's spectacular comedy, a Chinese-American academic discovers her boyfriend belongs to a fabulously wealthy dynasty

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This review shows a different perspective because they watched it and may have had different thoughts than I do. In the essay, I can use this to take about how everyone who watched this film may have different thoughts. It can also help with getting someones detailed opinion on the film.

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Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

Rated PG-13 for some suggestive content and language.

120 minutes

Cast

Director

Writer (based on the novel "Crazy Rich Asians" by)

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Crazy Rich Asians movie review (2018) | Roger Ebert

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Rated PG-13 for some suggestive content and language. 120 minutes Cast Director Writer (based on the novel "Crazy Rich Asians" by) Writer Cinematographer Editor Composer

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How to Watch “Crazy Rich Asians” Like an Asian-American

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How to Watch “Crazy Rich Asians” Like an Asian-American

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Many people who watched this film may not have been Asian-American so this article helps people try to watch it in the perspective the director wants. I will use this by trying to figure out how to watch the movie in a different perspective and understanding more of it. I've watched this film before but I would like to watch it again with a different point of view.

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"Please, God, let me like this movie," I said as I walked into a screening of a film I'd been awaiting more eagerly than any other in years. "Crazy Rich Asians," directed by Jon M. Chu, is the first movie from a major Hollywood studio to feature an entirely Asian cast in a contemporary story since Hollywood Pictures released "The Joy Luck Club," twenty-five years ago. That movie, based on the novel by Amy Tan, came out a year after I had arrived in the United States from China, as a child, and it became the reference point for anyone who learned of my growing literary ambitions. "Maybe one day you can write a book like 'The Joy Luck Club,' " I was told by well-meaning adults, both Chinese and American, who often added that they hadn't read the book but had enjoyed the movie immensely. Movies, more than the written word, were how you reached a mass audience, and in the history of American cinema there have been woefully few faces like mine on the big screen.

I forgot about my little entreaty to God about three minutes after the opening credits of "Crazy Rich Asians" and became engrossed in following the film's riotous, surreal, impious world, which felt something like a cross between a roller-coaster ride and a safari. The movie's aim (a largely successful one) is to take its viewers through narrative loops, arcs, and spirals rising to formidable heights in order to reveal a particular species of the überwealthy, roaming with spectacular abandon in its native habitat, far from the prying eyes of lesser mortals. That species may be rare, but over the past decade its numbers have grown robustly, its members flitting freely among the world's most cosmopolitan cities-from Singapore to Shanghai to New York-and living with the irreverent glee that comes from the recognition that, in a global society increasingly covetous of material wealth, they are evolutionary winners.

Amid this astonishing opulence, the movie, based on a 2013 novel of the same name by the Singaporean-American author Kevin Kwan, is built along the lines of a conventional rom-com, with added hints of both "Cinderella" and "Pride and Prejudice." At the center of the story is a wedding-in this case, a forty-million-dollar extravaganza in Singapore, at which the beloved scion of one of Singapore's wealthiest families, Nick Young (Henry Golding), is to be his best friend's best man. Like most upper-class Asians, Nick was educated in the West; unlike many of his class, he prefers to keep a low profile. Since grad school, he has lived frugally as a history professor at New York University. A little implausibly in the age of the Google, his wealth has been a secret to his girlfriend of a year, Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), a middle-class, American-born Chinese woman who teaches economics at N.Y.U., whom Nick invites to go with him to Singapore. She has never been to Asia, and the trip presents an opportunity for Nick to introduce her to his highly status-conscious, old-money family. But word of his pending arrival, plus one, throws not only his family but all of Singaporean society into a disoriented, self-interested tizzy. Trouble, intrigue, and hilarity ensue.

Kwan's novel, which is loosely based on his own childhood in Singapore, had already printed a million copies when Warner Bros. acquired it for production. I read it a couple of years ago, when I wrote a piece for The New Yorker about the phenomenon of wealthy young Chinese living in Vancouver. (I followed a group that appeared in a reality-TV show called "Ultra Rich Asian Girls.") Chu, the film's director, was born in California, and his depiction of the Asian-American experience resonates the way that messages scribbled on bathroom stalls occasionally do, articulating uncomfortable truths that are generally too politically incorrect to discuss in the open. At the beginning of the novel, before Rachel starts dating Nick, her friend teasingly accuses her of being a "self-loathing Asian," since she doesn't go out with Asian men. "The real reason you treat Asian men the way you do is because they represent the type of man your family wishes you would bring home," the friend says. "Either that, or growing up as a racial minority in America, you feel that the ultimate act of assimilation is to marry into the dominant race. Which is why you only ever date WASP s."

In the novel, Rachel vigorously denies the accusation. But, as a fellow Chinese-American woman about Rachel's age living in New York City, I wondered about the extent to which my own impulse to fit in, and that of other Asian-Americans I knew, was a function of what we saw in popular culture. When I was growing up, in the nineteen-nineties and the early aughts, the lack of Asian appearances on television and in the movies seemed like the surest sign, despite what liberal-minded friends and teachers told me, that Asians were too different to ever be representatively American.

To see Asians onscreen, you mostly had to turn to DVDs of dramas produced in Asia, and those tended toward a distinct cultural aesthetic that felt increasingly alien to me as years passed. In my teens and twenties, whenever I watched the few available movies about Asian-Americans-mostly indie productions-I felt refreshed but suddenly and awkwardly exposed, as you do when, after a shower in a hotel bathroom, you catch a glimpse of your bare body in a mirror that you had forgotten was there. Watching mainstream TV and movies, I rooted for the Asian actor if there was one, but at the moment, in spite of myself, I couldn't help feeling aspirationally white. How could I not when the characters given the most complexity, screen time, and humanity were the Caucasian leads?

That's why, for me, the true star of "Crazy Rich Asians" is its inversion of racial expectation. The movie opens on a rain-drenched Asian family, laden with suitcases, attempting to check into a posh London hotel only to be dismissed by a pasty-faced manager who suggests that the family try Chinatown for accommodations. By the end of the scene, it becomes apparent that the family-Nick's family-are the hotel's new owners. In another scene, at an unspeakably over-the-top bachelor party for Nick's best friend, beauty queens from the Miss World competition (uniformly Caucasian, sporting bikinis and ceremonial sashes) are flown in. Their appearance is fleeting, as is that of all the white people in the movie-they are tokens in the way minorities have traditionally been in American movies. What's more, "Crazy Rich Asians" has fun deliberately upending the trope of Asians as hardscrabble immigrants (which the "Joy Luck Club" protagonists were). In one scene, a Singaporean patriarch encourages his children to eat up all their dinner by saying, "Think of all the starving children in America!" Similarly, when Rachel arrives in Singapore's famously luxe Changi airport, she whispers, "Changi has a butterfly garden. All J.F.K. has is salmonella and despair." One gets the sense that the Western centers of cultural gravity-London, Los Angeles, and New York-have effectively finished their reign.

When I was a child, Asians, both those living in Asia and those tucked away in ethnic enclaves in the diaspora, turned to shows such as "Dynasty" and "Dallas" to spy on the inner world of American blue bloods. The reversal, in "Crazy Rich Asians," in which the audience is made to feel like an interloper vying for a glimpse of Asia's glittering class, is what makes the movie, as many critics have deemed it, a landmark. At the screening, I imagined what it would have been like to watch the film as a twelve-year-old or an eighteen-year-old, and wondered whether, in the novel, Rachel would have felt compelled to date only Wasps if she had had the opportunity to see movies like it.

In the days leading up to the film's release, Chu told the Hollywood Reporter that "we can sugarcoat it all we want, but the moment you bring up an Asian-led movie, there's one example to point to, and that'll be us. To be on the biggest stage with the biggest stakes, that's what we asked for." For many Asian-Americans, both cinephiles and those, like me, who haven't been inside a movie theatre in a couple years, the mere existence of "Crazy Rich Asians" has been cause for celebration. But some have also expressed anxiety. "Is this supposed to be our Black Panther moment for stereotype-shattering Asian-American representation in mainstream media?" a millennial from San Francisco asked on Medium. "What if no one watches it? Does it prove once and for all that Asian-Americans are not bankable stars?"

The question is not an idle one. Every stage of the process of attempting to make a "barrier-breaking movie" required a painstaking exploration of identity, of both Asian-Americans and of the ever-changing continent from which their parents or their grandparents emigrated. Chu, to insure that he was doing justice to the biggest stage with the biggest stakes, supplemented casting calls in New York and L.A. with a five-continent search and an online open call. "We just didn't want to miss anybody," he told . "I wanted this to be the 'Avengers' of Asian actors."

But a two-hour movie, no matter how action-packed, can't be all things to all people, or even to all Asians. As soon as the trailer came out, some lamented the absence of South and Southeast Asians. One Twitter user noted, "All the representation talk on the red carpet, yet brown people used as servants, drivers." Others decried the movie's failure to depict the life of the vast majority of Singaporeans and Malays, who live workaday lives, and complained of its eagerness to caricature and exoticize Asians to entertain mainstream American audiences.

I had a concern of my own: What does it mean that "Crazy Rich Asians" must accommodate simultaneous, conflicting demands-to tell a coherent narrative, to represent Asians of all stripes, to showcase Asian culture without alienating the dominant culture, to sell something palatable to the average American-when other movies, starring white leads, are asked only to tell a single story convincingly? Asian-Americans, a largely made-up group that is united, more than anything else, by a historical marginalization, are desperate for a movie like this one to be perfect, because the opportunity to make another might not arrive for another quarter of a century. In this sense, we can't help but become emblematic of another stereotype: the overbearing Asian parent, demanding the best of our creation, endowing it with our greatest hopes and, like any good tiger mom, our fiercest criticisms.

After all, if we don't ace every test and hit every mark, how will we ever prove our worth? If we don't achieve the impossible, how will we realize our crazy dream of being truly American?

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How to Watch "Crazy Rich Asians" Like an Asian-American

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"Please, God, let me like this movie," I said as I walked into a screening of a film I'd been awaiting more eagerly than any other in years. "Crazy Rich Asians," directed by Jon M.

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First trailer for 'Crazy Rich Asians' promises glamour, opulence, and loads of drama

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First trailer for 'Crazy Rich Asians' promises glamour, opulence, and loads of drama

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This article talks about how people reacted to the first trailer. Obviously when a trailer comes out, everyone is excited and they try to find clues and hints in the trailer. This can be helpful to compare peoples expectations to what the movie was actually like.

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Contra Costa Community College District - Portal Login

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Crazy Rich Asians is a dazzling, sumptuous success

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Crazy Rich Asians is a dazzling, sumptuous success

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Crazy Rich Asians made a lot of money when the movie came out which made it a success. With it being a successful movie, people gave their input on their opinion on the directors work. This can be helpful when talking about how the director did in making the movie and how people reacted to that.

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News and reviews of 2019's biggest summer blockbuster films.

I'm not sure any Hollywood romantic comedy has hit the big screen bearing more expectations than Crazy Rich Asians. It's the first contemporary English-language Hollywood movie with an almost all-Asian cast in a quarter-century (the last was 1993's The Joy Luck Club). And in risk-averse Hollywood, that means the film's reception has huge implications for Asian and Asian-American actors and filmmakers in all kinds of genres.

That's a lot of pressure for any film, but especially a romantic comedy - a genre that's been sidelined for the past decade and is still considered less artisticallyimportant than prestige dramas or big-budget action movies.

Thankfully, all that pressure has pressed this film into a diamond: Directed by Jon M. Chu, Crazy Rich Asians is fun, funny, gorgeous, and swoon-worthy. It's got a terrific cast, glamorous locations, witty jokes, and a story with a lot of heart. And on top of all that, it may actually succeed in proving to Hollywood that both Asian-centered stories and romantic comedies deserve much more attention.

Crazy Rich Asians is a full-steam-ahead romantic comedy with a setting Hollywood has often ignored

Crazy Rich Asians' plot is a slimmed-down version of Kevin Kwan's 2013 novel of the same name (which birthed a trilogy - hello, future film sequels), though it still crams a lot into its two-hour runtime. As adapted by Peter Chiarelli ( The Proposal) and TV writer Adele Lim, the screenplay draws on some of the most beloved tropes of the romantic comedy. It's got hints of Cinderella, which has provided a partial template for many a rom-com ( Pretty Woman, Ever After, The Prince and Me, even the pretty terrible but much-watched Netflix movie A Christmas Prince).

There are hints of the lineage of Jane Austen here too - especially stories like Pride and Prejudice and Emma, which explore class in the midst of a swoony, clever romance. And those pieces share DNA with movies like Pretty in Pink, in which the spunky, self-assured heroine finds her own way in the world, and finds love in the process.

The result is a thoroughly recognizable romantic comedy, with many of the same tropes that rom-coms have used for decades. And yet it feels fresh too, because the story at its center is foreign territory for Hollywood both literally and figuratively. Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), a Chinese-American NYU economics professor, decides to spend spring break with her boyfriend Nick Young (Henry Golding), who's going home to Singapore to be the best man in his friend's wedding.

What Rachel doesn't know is that Nick comes from a fabulously wealthy family, a thing she starts to realize when they're ushered to their private suite on the airplane. But it soon becomes clear that his family and the social circle in which they move are far, far wealthier than anything she could have imagined.

Rachel was raised by a single mother who emigrated from mainland China to New York City, a far cry from the gilded, glitzy world Nick that brings her into. The Young family, which immigrated to Singapore from China centuries earlier, are "old money" rich, and basically own all the real estate on the island, as Rachel's college roommate Peik Lin (Awkwafina) tells her. Their friends and relatives are all fabulously rich as well.

They're also very close-knit. Nick has a couple of cousins with whom he's friendly - uptight, image-obsessed business executive Eddie (Ronny Chieng) and movie director Alistair (Remy Hii) - but he's closest to Astrid (Gemma Chan), who is richer than any of them by dint of parentage, and yet married Michael (Pierre Png), a self-described "commoner." And though Nick is close to his mother Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh), he grew up living with his grandmother (Lisa Lu) at her estate, for which the only word is "palatial."

Nick and Rachel haven't discussed marriage, but everyone's pretty sure that Rachel's presence in Singapore for the wedding means a proposal is on the way. And that, of course, doesn't sit right with everyone.

It's a great setup for a joyous, eye-popping, dramatic spectacle - centered on a lavish wedding, no less - and Crazy Rich Asians probably could have left it at that and still been a huge success. As a number of critics have written, just seeing an all-Asian cast in complex roles is a game changer; the film challenges racial expectations and brings underrepresented voices before a huge audience.

But even setting aside its strides for onscreen representation, Crazy Rich Asians also succeeds as both a celebration and subtle subversion of the romantic comedy. It does what great romantic comedies do - makes you laugh, smile, cheer for the heroine, and root for love - but it also challenges some conventional expectations about Hollywood romantic comedies, and not just in its casting.

Crazy Rich Asians' heroine is refreshingly self-assured

In Rachel, Crazy Rich Asians boasts a heroine who is not in any way portrayed as a hot mess. She has her personal and professional life together just fine. She has a healthy relationship with her handsome boyfriend, who loves her (even if he needs some schooling on conflict avoidance). She loves her mother and is loved by her in return. She is able to form warm relationships with other women, in particular the reliably delightful Peik Lin.

Rachel is wowed by Nick's world, but she doesn't succumb to its more outrageous charms. She never trips over her skirt or accidentally insults someone; the only social gaffe she commits while in Singapore is misidentifying one old woman as another. She is confident, competent, kind, respectful, and invested in her own family. And though Nick's friends and family are certain she's a gold digger, their relationship is genuine - Rachel was never after his money in the first place.

I cannot remember the last time I saw a rom-com in which this type of heroine even existed - maybe Pretty in Pink. Most rom-com heroines have to be a mess in one way or another. Her flaws might be obvious to everybody; Bridget Jones's Diary is the clearest example, with a story that hinges on its heroine trying to get her act together. Or they think they have the world by the tail, but in fact they're secretly a wreck, as in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days or 10 Things I Hate About You. It's part of the genre.

You've Got Mail's Kathleen Kelly is a business owner, but her business is going under, and her relationship with her boyfriend is as well. It's at least clear to us that Sally loves Harry. Julianne Potter comes awfully close to wrecking her best friend's wedding because she's been so out of touch with her feelings. Even , the most recent entry into the genre, features a millennial heroine who works so much that her personal life is entirely nonexistent.

So it's refreshing to watch a movie that can get along fine with a heroine who doesn't need saving. She just wants to continue loving Nick, who loves her back. Crazy Rich Asians is a groundbreaker for lots of reasons, but having a woman at its center who grows and becomes stronger without compromising her own moral center in the midst of unimaginable glamour is one of them.

And if the Hollywood rom-com is indeed making its glorious return with this film, I hope we'll soon be treated to a lot more of the same.

Crazy Rich Asians opened in theaters on August 15.

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Crazy Rich Asians is a dazzling, sumptuous success

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News and reviews of 2019's biggest summer blockbuster films. I'm not sure any Hollywood romantic comedy has hit the big screen bearing more expectations than Crazy Rich Asians . It's the first contemporary English-language Hollywood movie with an almost all-Asian cast in a quarter-century (the last was 1993's The Joy Luck Club).

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How Capitalist Power Compensates for Racial Oppression in Crazy Rich Asians

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How Capitalist Power Compensates for Racial Oppression in Crazy Rich Asians

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In our class we will be talking about race and this article will help bring what we talked about in class into my film analysis. The movie made a few people mad because it misrepresented them and this can be something interesting to mention in the analysis.

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Obscene wealth, and its spectacular power to compensate for racial loss, is the central protagonist we are invited to cheer on in Crazy Rich Asians.

When was the last time a generic romantic comedy faced such scrutiny? I am chagrined to pen any self-serious, heavy-handed opinion that treats Crazy Rich Asians as anything other than the lighthearted joyride it attempts to be. Indeed, a critique at this point might only signify misplaced expectation. The hypocrisies and contradictions are obvious: these "crazy rich Asians" are celebrated as harbingers of racial progress while producers bank on the hope that audiences will forget how capitalism has always been inextricably linked to racial oppression.

However, it feels naive to expect authenticity or sincerity from Hollywood when it has always manufactured fictions that seduce us into abandoning our realities. Instead, I ask how Asiatic bodies are afforded such sudden visibility. Is the film really so different from an industry recently outed as one of the most repressive, white, sexist, and exploitative machines via the #MeToo movement? Or, is it more likely that the film too, despite its all-Asian cast and Asian director Jon M. Chu, is still vulnerable to the same racial and gendered logic that warranted its production?

Crazy Rich Asians begins in 1995, when madame Eleanor Sung, played by the elegantly fearsome Michelle Yeoh, glides into a posh hotel and prepares to flip tables as if on an episode of Undercover Boss . Her furs are dripping from the raging storm outside, but we surmise that she can afford to toss them anyway, and her two children track mud across the gleaming marble floor. The (racist) concierge tries to turn them away; but no, they'll be sorry, because: Eleanor has ! Obscene wealth, and its spectacular power to compensate for racial loss, is the central protagonist we are invited to cheer on in Crazy Rich Asians .

Fast forward to 2018, and Eleanor's son Nick Young, played by Henry Golding, has grown distant from his wealthy family. Young's extravagant endowments are slowly unveiled to an unsuspecting girlfriend Rachel Chu, played by Constance Wu, once they travel together to his best friend's wedding in Singapore. Between then and now, has-beens and soon-to-be's, cultural wholeness and successful assimilation correlate directly with dollar signs. The bachelor parties would make a Baz Luhrmann remake of The Titanic blush. If McMansions embarrass us in their failed ambition, then try the McAcropolises in Crazy Rich Asians . Throughout these grandiose scenes, no one is more othered or shocked from the spectacle than the most "foreign" Asian subject who just arrived from America: Rachel Chu.

Greed is easy to dismiss, and yes, there is predictably plenty in a film called Crazy Rich Asians . Yet, there has been little examination of what excessive capital promises racially denigrated subjects. In her book The Melancholy of Race , Anne Anlin Cheng writes about melancholia as a metaphor for the process of racialization in America and asks, "How to bury the remnants of denigration and disgust created in the name of progress and the formation of an 'American identity'?" Apparently, with any major credit card. In a manic gesture that attempts to reverse discrimination through inversion, the film attempts to compensate for the racialization of Asians like Eleanor Young through the performance of overabundance. The primitivist stereotypes of Asia, such as dirty streets and dog meat made popular by films like (1962), are transformed instead into decorative and ornamental glamor: million-dollar gems and ravenous spending habits.

Like many "Asian" Hollywood films, Crazy Rich Asians relies almost entirely on the bodies of Asian women in order to resolve the anxieties between Eastern and Western identity. Eleanor finds beef with her son's American-raised, low-income girlfriend Rachel, activating the old (read: tired), binary schisms between seemingly polar opposites that never mix well. Here we are invited to feel fear for a miscegenous relationship: a regressive, traditional, despotic East and a progressive, modern, free-spirited West. Rachel's illegality and pennilessness (almost equatable with Chinese-lessness throughout the film) is outed by a catty network of primarily women.

The film's humor relies on the fundamental irony that wholesome Asian beauties like Rachel can be othered in a place that, by Orientalist logic, should be welcoming. The character Peik Lin, embodying the long tradition of simultaneous Black and Orientalist minstrelsy , pokes fun at Rachel's inward whiteness in saying, "she's gonna think you're a banana - yellow on the outside, white on the inside." Although the banana metaphor identifies Rachel's interior as foreign, her outer foreignness is just as palpable. Whiteness is continuously mapped onto her body as one that is severely lacking: in ornamentation, vibrancy, luxury, surgical injection, and implants. From recent cinematic tradition such as Blade Runner and all the way back to the 18th-century exhibition of the first Asian woman in the United States, 's "tiny lotus feet," Asiatic femininity is repeatedly "proven" and theatrically revealed through extreme artifice.

Naturally, Rachel embarks on a quest to prove her racial wholeness through artificial attachment. This forced peacocking is achieved through sartorial transformation, such as her mother's insistence that she wear a red dress for its auspicious symbolism (as opposed to a later dress disturbingly characterized as a "slutty ebola virus" and thus, unfit), to witty scenes involving mahjong, where Rachel outsmarts her future mother-in-law by beating her in a so-called " intrinsically Asian " game, in which knowing the rules is a form of authenticating her ethnicity.

This compensatory behavior might be taken simply as materialist consumption if not for its racialized connotations. I am reminded of The New Yorker 's " Crying in H Mart ," a powerful article written recently by Michelle Zauner (aka Japanese Breakfast), in which she reckons with how shopping in an ethnic grocery store becomes one of the only viable options in white American society in which to connect with her Korean mother. As in "Crying in H-Mart," in Crazy Rich Asians the process of being reunified with cultural commodities is only a balm for a deep melancholia. This is perhaps why its storyline - despite all the valid circulating critiques of how it is shallow and uninventive , even - might not even matter for some viewers who are eager to have racial loss compensated. At the end of the film, we see again how this logic is deployed. Eleanor gives Rachel her own wedding ring, which promises not just a moneyed future, but also forgiveness, approval, and cultural belonging. The film itself, like this shiny well-intentioned gemstone, is a glitzy offering that asks for a redemption that perhaps will never be reconciled.

Crazy Rich Asians is screening at theaters nationwide.

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How Capitalist Power Compensates for Racial Oppression in Crazy Rich Asians

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Obscene wealth, and its spectacular power to compensate for racial loss, is the central protagonist we are invited to cheer on in Crazy Rich Asians. When was the last time a generic romantic comedy faced such scrutiny? I am chagrined to pen any self-serious, heavy-handed opinion that treats Crazy Rich Asians as anything other than the lighthearted joyride it attempts to be.

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This article is just a basic film review of the movie. This article does a good job going over the movie and what they found interesting and what was not so good. This can come in handy when talking about my opinion of the film and how I felt about it because it helps me understand what a film review needs.

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At New York's Serendipity 3 café, money-is-no-object customers can order a $1,000 sundae that's garnished with gold leaf. Like plunking a cherry atop such an extravagant dessert, the delirious sugar high that is " Crazy Rich Asians" ends with fireworks exploding along the roof of Singapore's Marina Bay Sands hotel - one of the world's most expensive buildings. Surprisingly enough, it's the first touch that genuinely feels over-the-top in a movie that expertly manages to balance the opulence of incalculable wealth with the pragmatic, well-grounded sensibility embodied by its heroine, Rachel Chu ( Constance Wu), a middle-class economics professor who discovers that her Singapore-born boyfriend is not just handsome but worth more than the GDP of most countries.

If those pyrotechnic bursts seem to be gilding the lily, it's only because Warner Bros.' spared-no-expense adaptation of Kevin Kwan's status-obsessed best-seller already feels like a grand, two-hour fireworks show, one in which gorgeous Asian stars parade around in dazzling, brightly colored couture, driving luxury cars to and from locations that suggest a cross between Versailles and Donald Trump's bathroom (no, really, those are the design influences). Normally, such grandiosity is reserved for the queen of England, or the rarefied circles in which James Bond operates, although director Jon M. Chu ("Step Up 2: The Streets") has crafted a broadly appealing charmer in which practically anyone can identify with Wu's character as she's whisked into this elite milieu.

This is wish-fulfillment fantasy on a whole other level. Kwan's characters aren't just rich, they're crazy rich (and in some cases, just plain crazy), which makes Chu's version the most blinged-out big-screen romance since Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby" - minus the looming sense of tragedy that separates F. Scott Fitzgerald from a guilty-pleasure beach-read writer like Kwan. As books go, " Crazy Rich Asians " is unapologetically tacky, a finger-snapping satire of the conflict between old-money attitudes and nouveau-riche ambition at a moment when Asia is producing billionaires by the dozen. To their credit, screenwriters Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim keep the sass while filing down its fangs to make the characters more agreeable all around.

Rachel remains a smart, self-reliant character who finds herself at the center of a sparkling princess fantasy - except that unlike the clichéd heroines of such movies, she isn't waiting for a makeover or for some kinky Christian Grey type to come along and transform her life. If anything, the conflict here is that her boyfriend, Nick Young ( Henry Golding), has to convince his family that she's the one for him and, as favorite son and heir to a dynasty of real estate moguls, might have to sacrifice his fortune if he doesn't want to lose her.

Following brief prologues in London and New York, the pageant that is "Crazy Rich Asians" takes place on a trip back to Singapore, after Nick invites Rachel to be his date at his best friend's wedding. She's understandably nervous about meeting his mother, Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh, kinder and far more dignified than the conniving matriarch described in the book), and never imagined that Nick, who hasn't mentioned what kind of family he comes from, could be so loaded.

Hanging out with his friends, who take her to the city's hawker stalls for an unpretentious street-food meal, she's slow to pick up on just how wealthy the Youngs are. The movie milks this brilliant young woman's naiveté for as long as it can (until the big reveal of the Youngs' palatial estate, shown in a breathtaking flyover helicopter shot), although it cleverly tips audiences off to the family's buying power in that earlier London-set scene, in which the racist British staff turns Eleanor away from a posh private hotel, only to be instantly humbled after she makes a quick phone call to her husband, who purchases the business out from under them.

That's a hugely empowering moment for not only Asians but anyone who has ever been discriminated against for not being part of the white establishment, and it sets the tone for a film that celebrates a world in which money can buy everything but common sense, rolling its eyes at how outrageously those who have it choose to spend their millions. Once in Singapore, Rachel reaches out to her filthy-rich college roommate, Peik Lin (Awkwafina, winning laughs with her mix of wide-eyed incredulity and faux-disaffected 'tude), who essentially serves as a substitute fairy godmother, coaching Rachel on fashion and how to handle herself among the Singapore super-elite. (The movie's other comic standout is "The Hangover" star Ken Jeong, playing Peik Lin's hilariously inappropriate father.)

Nick and the guys head for a bachelor party on international waters (where there are no laws against firing bazookas, apparently), leaving Rachel to join the bride's friends on a nearby island, where they're treated to an all-expense shopping spree and other chichi perks. While audiences try to process the excess, Wu plays it cool and unimpressed, earning our admiration as precisely the opposite of the gold-digger everyone mistakes her for. And though the movie becomes predictable in its final stretch, the depth of her character's integrity is poignantly conveyed over a strategic game of mahjong with her would-be mother-in-law.

As entertaining as the more opulent displays must have been to stage, director Chu actually had to tone things down from the source material, in which the wedding involves private performances by the Vienna Boys' Choir and Cirque du Soleil (even so, the multimillion-dollar event is jaw-dropping, leaving "Mamma Mia!" and "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn" in the dust). In the book, Kwan quotes Far East explorer Marco Polo's deathbed claim, "I did not tell half of what I saw, for no one would have believed me," and the same filter was clearly required here - without limiting the film's visual excess in the slightest. Though most of the dresses are designer (Asians' obsession with European brands is a running joke), costume chief Mary Vogt is to be commended for the way her selections convey the personalities of the characters who wear these fabulous frocks, as her job isn't merely to wow but to define the people she's outfitting.

And this is one massive ensemble she's working with, so much so that it can be tough to keep the characters straight. Money may be the surface distraction here, but the true theme is family - and what it means to Asian culture in particular. Rachel may be an embodiment of the American dream, having been raised by a single working-class immigrant mom (Kheng Hua Tan), but her lack of family ties is an issue with the Young clan, whose many generations are assembled for the occasion.

The moment Rachel meets Nick's amah (Lisa Lu) feels wonderfully propitious as the camera pans to witness the rare bloom of a Tan Hua flower, although not all the relatives are so welcoming. Of Nick's three cousins, two are insufferable with their jealous gossip and shameful shenanigans, while big-spending Astrid (Gemma Chan), who flies to Paris regularly and has been known to drop seven figures when she shops, makes an elegant ally for Rachel.

It's no secret that there's a lot riding on this movie, which seems to have anticipated the call for wider representation in Hollywood, but comes with the added pressure that one bomb is all it takes for skittish development executives to nix future projects featuring nearly all-Asian casts. Don't worry: "Crazy Rich Asians" won't bomb, and while it won't beat "Black Panther" either, the film is every bit as exciting in the way it takes an ethnic group that is seldom given more than one or two supporting roles per movie and populates an entire blockbuster with memorable, multidimensional Asian characters.

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At New York's Serendipity 3 café, money-is-no-object customers can order a $1,000 sundae that's garnished with gold leaf. Like plunking a cherry atop such an extravagant dessert, the delirious sugar high that is " Crazy Rich Asians" ends with fireworks exploding along the roof of Singapore's Marina Bay Sands hotel - one of the world's most expensive buildings.