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I think this is really going to give me an edge because I am able to compare this to what i know about Females.

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Asian American men in real life and in the media suffer from a perverse double standard. We are emasculated as meek, small penis, nerds who are the worst sexual/romantic partners (both straight This is the current status of Asian American men and women that needs to be changed, both in the media and real life. The bestselling success of Crazy Rich Asians novel series and the current blockbuster success of the movie are an important examples of the progress that we need. and gay A quick note to those fellow Asian American brothers who are against Crazy Rich Asians: don't be swayed by angry Reddit posts. Kevin Kwan and the cast and crew of the movie are on our side. Others have complained about the casting, such as Henry Golding benefiting from colorism and Ken Jeong's previous stereotyped roles. I hope that you can realize it is impossible for the cast and crew to make a perfect movie fighting against an industry and audience that are biased against Asian Americans. The representation of Asian men by Crazy Rich Asians is imperfect, but is much, much better than what was available before in literature and Hollywood. Yes, Henry Golding (this was his first movie) wrongfully took away a spot from a fully-Asian American actor who worked hard all his life and endured more discrimination by Hollywood. But Henry Golding also suffered discrimination as a Hapa man who has mostly "Asian", not white-looking body. Just remember that the movie also will make the career of many full-blooded Asian American actors - if you do not support Crazy Rich Asians you are also not supporting Harry Shum, Jr., Chris Pang, Nico Santos, and many others. Some guys complained As an Young Adult/New Adult/romance novel author, I always find it ironic - and troubling - that so many of the bestselling books contain Crazy Rich Asians series is revolutionary for a romance novel/rom-com not just because it presents Asian men as desirable, but also as romantic heroes who actually treat women with respect. Nick Young is not a toxic Asian man nor the cliche romance novel romantic hero; the only things he have in common with Christian Grey is that both are billionaires who pilot helicopters. Instead, he is actually have some "unmasculine" traits - he behaves rather passively and actually listens to, respects, and defers to his mother and grandmother. Nick also treats Rachel Chu well (i.e. he's not forcing her to sign BDSM contract in order to whip her). In fact, Nick's father (unfortunately cut from the movie for time), his best friend Colin, and Charlie Wu are also Asian men who are not abusive to their girlfriends/wives. Such male heroes are rare in the YA and romance genres - remember that both Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey also spawned literally hundreds of copycats novels. Stories about princesses finding and marrying princes are the antithesis of feminism - but Crazy Rich Asians is as (intersectional) feminist a fairy tale The men of Crazy Rich Asians may have great abs, but that obviously should not be the only consideration a straight woman (or gay man) should have when picking a partner. Asian fathers, Of course, I'm not arguing that abusive Asian/Asian American men doesn't exist. But The Crazy Rich Asian series depict many non-abusive Asian husbands and fathers, but the one I especially like is, bear with me, Ken Jeong's character. He plays Goh Wye Mun, the Singaporean father of Rachel Chu's college roommate Goh Peik Lin. At first, he seems to be just the eccentric comic relief, but with more careful viewing you recognize that Goh Wye Mun might be the most positive portrayal of an Asian father in Hollywood history. Mun is "new money", born poor but found success in Singapore after attending Cal State Fullerton. He doesn't marry a young fashion model trophy wife - instead he is happily married with an old, darker skinned, chubby woman. Mun is generous (if too gauldy) with his riches - not just splurging on his family but also lending a helping hand to Rachel. Mun also makes a great case that being a "Tiger Dad" - instead of being problematic as Tiger Parents are usually depicted by American media - is actually quite positive for their children - especially for daughters. After meeting Rachel and discovering what she does for a living, Goh Wye Mun praises her for her educational and professional success and criticizes Lin for not following suit. He is a man who values smart and ambitious women and wished that his daughter was better educated and had more professional ambition - that is very feminist and progressive! real life crime data Like Batman, Crazy Rich Asians is not the perfect novel series/movie we Asian Americans deserves - but it is the movie we (especially us men) needs. It is not the cure-all for Asian American representation in media - but it is an important part of the long, hard-fought battle to get our equitable share. Crazy Rich Asians will not end the sexual discrimination against Asian men (straight or gay) by (Asian or non-Asian) Americans, but it will provides medication to counter our terrible media image and might just get us a few more swipe rights on Tinder/Grindr. The movie will not resolve the dating/desirability conflict between Asian American males and females, but at the very least Crazy Rich Asians fosters actual When I walked out of my advanced Crazy Rich Asians screening, my head is held higher. Not only I am proud of the dedicated work and care to make such a movie possible, I am ecstatic about finally seeing women who look like my sister get represented as full human beings - and men who look like me depicted as full human beings who deserve love and respect from others just like any other men. That is the power of Crazy Rich Asians - and that is why we have to make it the huge success it must be. mainstream media discussion of the sexual discrimination we face from both non-Asian and Asian American women and non-Asian gay men. - and basic common sense - demonstrates that just because a man have "yellow" skin doesn't make him inherently more violent or more sexist than a white man. What we Asian American guys are protesting is that this "yellow peril" Asian father/husband trope is the often only media representation that we have to an American audience - and made even more "accurate" in the eyes of non-Asian Americans when the creators are Asian American women). When Asian or non Asian American females only see such negative depictions of Asian - or other POC men - it adds another false and damaging stereotype against Asian men. if they are presented at all, are not depicted as great parents. This is especially a point of contention for Asian American men, as many of the Asian American creators who are achieve mainstream success happens to be females who write/make jokes about abusive Asian fathers while promoting yellow fever/AFWM narratives. as it gets. The movie made it very clear that it celebrates self-made female success (how many romance novels or rom-coms exist that features the heroine - not the hero - as a super smart and successful economics professor) while presenting nice, attractive Asian guys who actually finishes first. Behind the camera, it should be noted that the author of the book series and the director are both Asian men - while the creators of Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey were women. They are proving that Asian American men can actually be more progressive/feminist than even American women. problematic male romantic heroes and romance plots. These characters are produced by an industry dominated by females - as authors, agents, editors, and readers - many of whom proclaim themselves to be progressive and feminist. Yet by writing, publishing, and promoting glittering vampires and Seattle billionaires (who are never Asian men and only occasionally black or Latino men) glorifies abusive relationships and hurts, not helps real women in our society. that the series is a "minstrel act" by portraying Rachel as an Asian American women who (initially) refused to date Asian men or the "white worshipping" by the other Asian characters. If you read the series, you would realized that these "transgressions" are actually the point - Crazy Rich Asians is addressing, not promoting, the problem of Asian/Asian American internalized racism. For what it is worth, the movie adaptation didn't include these scenes where Rachel realizes her mistake of discriminating against Asian men - for which also caused complaints by Asian American guys (folks, it's impossible to please everyone!). ) by non-Asian Americans. Conversely, we are portrayed by a significant minority of Asian American women as the epitome of toxic masculinity - abusive husbands and demanding, misogynist "Tiger Patriarchs" whom Asian women should escape from by partnering with (supposedly more progressive and less abusive) white men. This bizarre, logically impossible dichotomy (how can a man have toxic masculinity if he doesn't even have masculinity in the first place? that's like saying somebody is a bank robber when the bank was actually not robbed) not only hurts Asian American men, it also prevents them from fighting against these stereotypes. When Asian American guys tries, for instance, by attempting to play leading/romantic roles in Hollywood, they are discriminated against by non-Asian Americans. When Asian Americans guys complain about their misrepresentation by prominent Asian American women, they are quickly gaslighted and dismissed as sexist men. Of course, when Asian or non-Asian American women creators depict Asian women as submissive love interests who needs rescuing from bad Asian men by non-Asian (usually upper class, white) men, they are promoting harmful stereotypes against Asian American women as well.
"I Do Not Find Asian Men Attractive - They Look Like My Ugly Cousins"

Sane Rich Asian Men as Ideal Romantic Heroes

Crazy Rich - and Progressive - Fathers

"To All the (Asian) Boys I (Haven't) Loved Before"

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Why The Movie is Revolutionary for Asian American Men Asian American men in real life and in the media suffer from a perverse double standard. We are emasculated as meek, small penis, nerds who are the worst sexual/romantic partners (both straight and gay ) by non-Asian Americans. Conversely,

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For Constance Wu, ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ is more than a pop culture hit, it’s a movement

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For Constance Wu, ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ is more than a pop culture hit, it’s a movement

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this is helping me show intersectionality through out my paper and giving me good incite.

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Constance Wu has found herself on the front lines of change in the entertainment industry. In 2015, she earned critical acclaim for her leading role in ABC's "Fresh Off the Boat," an adaptation of Eddie Huang's biography, which became the first television comedy centered on an Asian American family in more than 20 years.

"It's funny, we didn't talk about the drought of Asian American content for 25 years," Wu says. "It wasn't really a big news story, and the reason it wasn't is because we weren't talking, and there wasn't a voice of defiance the way Eddie Huang's voice was a voice of defiance that really kick-started 'Fresh Off the Boat.'"

If "Fresh Off the Boat" started a rallying cry for more Asian American diversity in Hollywood, then "Crazy Rich Asians," an adaptation of Kevin Kwan's popular novel, may have turned that cry into a roar. The Jon M. Chu directed romcom defied all box office expectations last summer, becoming a cultural phenomenon with more than $238.5 million worldwide. Wu says that what's cool isn't just that the movie has meant so much to Asian Americans but that they are surprised by how much it means to them.

"Because their normative standards were just the status quo of Hollywood, right? It's like what I thought when I saw 'Wonder Woman.' I started crying the second I saw that little girl running on screen," Wu recalls. "In theory, I was like, 'Oh, a woman's feature would be great, blah, blah, blah.' But then when it actually happened, it was amazing to me. I was so surprised that it moved me in the way it did."

Wu continues, "I guess there was a hunger for it inside me that I didn't even know I had, because it was something I'd never tasted, I guess. So, that's what I think is happening with 'Crazy Rich Asians' and with a lot of content that's happening right now. And there's still other stories that need to be told."

In the Warner Bros. release, Wu portrays Rachel Chu, a New York professor who travels to Singapore to meet the incredibly wealthy family of her boyfriend Nick, played by newcomer Henry Golding. Rachel is skeptically received by Nick's mother, Eleanor, portrayed by Michelle Yeoh, but their differences are more complex than the familiar storyline of a mother being overly protective of her son. And that was something Wu immediately recognized.

"When I read the script, I even teased Jon about the whole thing. I was like, 'This is more than just a romcom, and not just because it's Asian people,'" Wu says. "This is a statement about identity. It's called 'Crazy Rich Asians,' so, obviously there's the idea of wealth and socioeconomic status. And I thought that it really touched personally my own middle-class roots. I had been accustomed to people underestimating me or people not totally including me as American, but they're not totally including me as an Asian, either."

One of the most impressive scenes in the film finds the two women making their cases to each other as to why or why not Rachel should marry Nick. Chu set the scene in an open-air mah-jongg parlor, where each move in the game corresponds to a point one of the women is trying to make. There was little time to rehearse, but Wu says she did a ton of preparation to build up an emotional backstory as the game plays out.

"When I arrived to the set, I was like, 'Just shoot the scene.' My brain, my heart, everything was buzzing, because I knew that this was it, I knew that this was the voice of the movie, and also the voice of a lot of things that I cared about in my life," Wu says. "And I'm glad it turned out the way it did. I think a lot of that should be credited to Myron Kerstein, the editor. I mean, the way he edited it, the choices he made, I think that's a really big part of it. So, I'm grateful to him."

Her hard work has been rewarded with not only a Golden Globe nomination for lead actress in a comedy or musical, but also a SAG Awards nomination for ensemble - all part of a string of accolades the film has received at year's end.

"I've been saying that for a lot of this, this wasn't just a movie or a job or a tool in our career, it was a movement. It was a movement that's trying to open up a wider, more inclusive, more intersectional breadth of storytelling," Wu says. "We're all lucky to be in this work anyway, that's a gift in and of itself, and I think the best thing that curation of nominees for awards can do is bring light to things that matter to humans in the current climate."

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For Constance Wu, 'Crazy Rich Asians' is more than a pop culture hit, it's a movement

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"Crazy Rich Asians" defied all box office expectations this summer becoming a cultural phenomenon with over $238.5 million worldwide. But for Constance Wu, the coolest thing hasn't just been that the movie has meant so much to Asian-Americans but that they are surprised by just how much it means.

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‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Review: Romcom Is Crazy Representative, Frothy Fun

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‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Review: Romcom Is Crazy Representative, Frothy Fun

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This article is going to help with getting others thoughts and how people see the movie differently then I do.

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'Crazy Rich Asians' Review: Romcom Is Crazy Representative, Frothy Fun

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'Crazy Rich Asians' turns bestseller about Chinese-American dropped into Asia's high society into fun, frothy romcom - our four-star review.

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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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I think this is going to help me gain insite for what this movie did foe the average person and how it affected them in a positive way.

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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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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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I really love how this article describes the movie and the cast, i love how it references the book and the things in that background. I think the article is really going to help me explain the movie better.

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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.

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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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The Stakes Are High for 'Crazy Rich Asians' — And That's the Point

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The Stakes Are High for 'Crazy Rich Asians' — And That's the Point

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This is going to help me see what was on the line when this movie came out and how much was at stake to make sure this movies was done the right way.

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The new film's creators turned down a "gigantic payday" at Netflix to ensure the first Asian-American-focused studio movie in 25 years would be seen in theaters and, if all goes well, reshape the Hollywood landscape: "The biggest stage with the biggest stakes - that's what we asked for."

Kevin Kwan's heart was pounding. It was a Friday evening in October 2016, and the author of the breakout 2013 novel Crazy Rich Asians was in his Manhattan home, on a conference call with the producers of the planned film adaptation - Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson and John Penotti - and its director, Jon M. Chu, along with their respective legal teams, about 22 people in all. They had a massive decision to make.

Behind one door: Warner Bros., which had outbid other traditional studios with a distribution offer for Crazy Rich Asians a week earlier. Behind the other: Netflix, the great disrupter, which had come in hot the following Monday, dangling complete artistic freedom, a greenlighted trilogy and huge, seven-figure-minimum paydays for each stakeholder, upfront. Now Warners had come back with not so much a counteroffer as an ultimatum, giving the filmmakers just 15 minutes to pick an option. Jacobson spoke up: "We're going to go with whatever Kevin and Jon want to do."

Kwan's lawyer, Peter Nichols, was pulled over on the shoulder of Pacific Coast Highway texting his client furiously. Kwan and Chu had already tried to rationalize the cash grab: "Maybe we donate a percentage of our extra income to great causes," Chu recalls the two having discussed the night before. "But where does that money go? Right back to trying to get to this position of getting us [Asians] on the big screen."

No wonder Kwan, 44, was nervous. "I could sense every lawyer on the call shaking their heads: 'Ugh, these stupid idealists.' Here, we have a chance for this gigantic payday instantaneously," he says. "But Jon and I both felt this sense of purpose. We needed this to be an old-fashioned cinematic experience, not for fans to sit in front of a TV and just press a button." Adds Chu: "We were gifted this position to make a decision no one else can make, which is turning down the big payday for rolling the dice [on the box office] - but being invited to the big party, which is people paying money to go see us."

And so the director and the novelist passed on the crazy rich offer - "I could have moved to an island and never worked another day," says Kwan - and said no to Netflix. After more than a dozen advisers hung up in disappointment, Kwan called Chu. Both were in tears as Kwan asked, "What just happened?"

This is what happened: A major studio was throwing its weight behind an all-Westernized Asian cast and creator in a theatrical film release for the first time since 1993, when Disney made The Joy Luck Club, until now the only Hollywood studio movie to feature an entirely Asian-American ensemble. That multigenerational drama - a film its executive producer Janet Yang says isn't "commercial" enough to be made today - earned $33 million ($57 million adjusted for inflation). Unlike 2000 foreign-language Oscar winner Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and 2005 novel adaptation Memoirs of a Geisha (both released by Sony), Crazy Rich Asians centers on contemporary characters. The Meet the Parents-type tale - a Chinese-American professor accompanies her boyfriend to Singapore, not realizing that he's heir to a richer-than-God fortune - is a romantic comedy, another first in the tiny canon of Asian-American studio films, and a format that has struggled to find its way at the box office in recent years.

So even with the runaway success of Kwan's novel, which became an international best-seller (more than a million copies sold in more than 20 languages), Warner Bros. - whose chairman and CEO, Kevin Tsujihara, happens to be the first and only studio chief of Asian descent - is rolling the dice too. Early tracking has the film's five-day opening weekend at around $20 million, a solid number that's ahead of most recent rom-coms - and the industry is watching closely. "I don't think any movie wants to have to carry the weight on its shoulders in terms of, 'If this movie doesn't work, is this a big stumbling block for this kind [of film]?'" says box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian, of comScore. "But I think studios are learning that the biggest risks can reap the biggest rewards. To have that biggest punch, you want that wide theatrical release where everyone is talking about it."

For all of Netflix's reach and riches, it won't give films an exclusive theatrical window, which means major cinema chains won't play its movies - and the streamer doesn't offer proof, at least publicly, of a film's performance. "You can look at Get Out, you can look at Black Panther - it changes the whole economics of the business when movies like that succeed," says Jacobson. "It meant something to us to become a 'comp' for somebody else."

Crazy Rich Asians was almost made by Wendi Deng Murdoch, Rupert's China-born ex, after Graydon Carter gave her an advance copy of the novel. "She was the first person that came calling and, of course, she knows this world," says Kwan, whose book is a satirical take on his own Singaporean upbringing. "She had a vision for the movie that completely jelled with what I saw."

The deal didn't pan out, partly because of timing (Murdoch was in the midst of her high-profile divorce from Rupert), but UTA, representing the adaptation rights, was fielding plenty of interest. "I met with, I think, six producers in one day," says Kwan. "It was like a beauty contest." Many had renminbi signs in their eyes. "They were interested in getting into the Chinese market, and I was like, 'This is a movie with worldwide and domestic potential - that just happens to star Asians.'"

Color Force's Jacobson and Simpson, known for the Hunger Games franchise, saw it the same way. "It feels so mainstream and accessible - anybody can relate to being rejected by in-laws," says Jacobson. She and Simpson vowed to secure financing from a company with Asian ties, and UTA steered them to Ivanhoe Pictures, Penotti's then-brand-new company with offices in Singapore and Hong Kong. While Kwan had lucrative offers, he optioned his book to Color Force and Ivanhoe for just $1 (with triggers in place for him to earn more as the project got made) in exchange for the right to remain involved with development decisions - a rare opportunity for a first-timer. "To say, 'I'm going to do this for a dollar,'" says Simpson, "the only other person I know who does that is Stephen King."

The team decided to package the project with a script and a director before going out to studios. "You don't want to just be another piece of development. With a movie like this, people are never going to have to make it, and it could get lost," says Simpson, who adds that in 2013, two years ahead of #OscarsSoWhite, Hollywood was "sort of pre-this moment of, 'Let's have more representation.'" (Before going with Color Force, Kwan fielded pitches that included turning his heroine into a white woman; "It's a pity you don't have a white character," he was told by one producer.)

By 2016, the team had a working screenplay by The Proposal's Peter Chiarelli and was ready to bring a director on board. Jacobson and Simpson approached a few contenders, all of Asian descent. Chu, then 36, had just completed production on Now You See Me 2 and was looking for his next project. He'd had success with action sequels (2013's G.I. Joe: Retaliation scored $376 million worldwide), dance and music films (Justin Bieber documentaries) and movies that are both (the Step Up franchise), but none of the eight films in his 10-year career had explored his own Chinese-American identity. "Something in me shifted during those Twitter-sphere protests of Whitewashed Out and Starring John Cho," he says, referencing two hashtags decrying Asian underrepresentation in Hollywood that were trending at the time. "I was like, 'I have this power to do something, but what is the story?'"

He took a few meetings in China, but nothing connected with his experience. Then his sister called, nagging him about a book she'd urged him to read a year earlier. He phoned his agent, UTA's Rob Carlson, to ask about Crazy Rich Asians. "How did you know?" Carlson replied - he'd been sent the script from Jacobson and Simpson that very day.

Chu's presentation to the producers began with old photographs of his parents, immigrant restaurateurs who bought him filmmaking books in high school, and his four older siblings, who personally catered his first short-film screening at USC. The pitch then segued to a multimedia vision board for "a way we haven't ever seen Asians before," Chu explains. "Contemporary, stylish, at the top of art and fashion, emotional, funny, sarcastic and unapologetic. Confident." He also offered up a dream casting sheet, "the Avengers of fucking [Asian] actors," which included Fresh Off the Boat star Constance Wu, The Daily Show correspondent Ronny Chieng, Silicon Valley breakout Jimmy O. Yang, martial arts cinema legend Michelle Yeoh and Brit beauty Gemma Chan. Wu met with Chu about playing Rachel, but her ABC sitcom conflicted with his shooting schedule, so she was out. Then a month or so later, Wu was on a flight and "I guess I was feeling dramatic or something," says the 36- year-old star. She wrote Chu an email: "Dates are dates, and if those are unmovable, I understand. But I would put all of my heart, hope, humor and courage into the role. What all this could do means so much to me. It's why I advocate so much for young Asian-American girls, so they might not spend their life feeling small or being commanded to be grateful to even be at the table."

The letter convinced Chu, who pushed production about five months to accommodate Wu; soon after, Yeoh, 55, joined as Nick's fearsome mother, Eleanor. The Chinese-Malaysian Crouching Tiger star, who had looked into acquiring Crazy Rich Asians' option herself, made it clear she was not interested in playing a tiger mom stereotype. "Eleanor was very representative of some of the most beautiful women I've met in Asia who take a second seat, because that's how you manage your husband's position in the society," she says. "And I don't think it's just Chinese women - I think it's very universal to be self-sacrificing, first to your husband, and then to your children."

Nailing that nuance in Eleanor's character was required before Yeoh would commit, so Chu brought in Malaysian-born TV writer Adele Lim, who worked with Chu to incorporate not just more cultural specificity into Chiarelli's script, but also emotional authenticity. Resolving the face-off between Rachel and Eleanor without villainizing the latter required a deft touch and a new third act, original to the movie. "This hold that parents have on their children is a specifically Asian thing," says Lim. "It presents itself in really aggressive ways sometimes, but it comes from a place of deep devotion."

Finding the film's male lead was, unsurprisingly, the toughest challenge. The character of Nick Young was "the type of human being that walks between the raindrops," says Terri Taylor, who scoured the globe with fellow casting director PoPing AuYeung. "The list [of contenders] always remained fairly short. It was probably a vast difference in volume compared with if we were trying to cast Ryan Gosling's [role] in The Notebook."

The talent agencies scoured their rosters, and some drama schools in the U.S. and U.K. told the casting directors that they hadn't seen anyone who fit Nick's type - as in, an Asian leading man - in a long while. Just days before the team had to deliver a candidate to Warners, Wu was set to read with four finalists in L.A. and four in China. But none felt quite right to Chu.

Then the director received a tip from an accountant in the production's Malaysian office who remembered watching a travel video years earlier that was hosted by a handsome young Asian man with a British accent. Intrigued, Chu and Taylor began cyber-stalking the social media accounts of Henry Golding, a Singapore-based presenter for travel programs on the BBC and Discovery Channel Asia.

"Jon started following me on Instagram, and I was like [ gasps], 'What does this mean?'" says Golding. Shortly thereafter, Chu reached out via a mutual friend and Golding, 31, sent a self-tape for what he figured would be a bit part. That led to a 17-hour trip to L.A. for a chemistry read with Wu, then, days later, a screen test with the studio that required the newly married Golding to cut short his Cape Town honeymoon.

"He's like John F. Kennedy Jr. in New York, cooler than any of these [other] guys we were reading, and he's not even trying," Chu says, adding that Warner Bros.' film chair, Toby Emmerich, was likewise charmed. "We showed Toby and he was like, 'Is there even a choice to be made here? Obviously that dude.'"

The surprise casting was a coup for Chu, but after it was announced, there was a bit of backlash in some corners of the internet (the Malaysian-English actor is biracial, while Nick is Chinese-Singaporean)."What is the level of Asian-ness you need to be to be profiled as Asian?" says Golding, who has since booked two more films, including Paul Feig's September mystery A Simple Favor, opposite Blake Lively. "Spending my childhood in England, I was always labeled as Asian. I'm Asian. I was born in Asia, I've grown up most of my life in Asia. Jon would not have chosen me if he didn't think I was right for the role."

With the casting team still hustling to fill 76 speaking parts, nearly all of them Asian, the eight-week shoot commenced in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in April 2017. (The $30 million production would move to the more-costly Singapore for its final three weeks.) For its cast - hailing from the United States, England, Australia, the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia - the experience was somewhat surreal. "We've all been 'that Asian' on set at one point. That dynamic didn't exist here," says Chinese-Korean-American rapper-actress Awkwafina, 29, who plays Rachel's best friend. Adds Korean-American actor Ken Jeong, who plays her father (earning the 49-year-old the affectionate off-camera nickname "Papafina"): "We've gotten to a point where it's accepted to have Asian-American supporting roles in major movies, and I've been a beneficiary of that. But when all the participants are Asian, it's even more joyous to support the story and each other."

Everyone was on the lookout for potential blind spots and cultural cliches. Wu convinced Chu to remove dialogue from the book wherein Rachel boasts about never dating Asian men. Yeoh, touring Eleanor's kitchen set, pointed the finger at a packet of MSG. "You can't have that on the table!" she exclaimed, but Chu reassured her that no one would notice. (She was later vindicated when the director sent a snapshot of the pair on set to his father - owner of the deceptively old-school Silicon Valley power spot Chef Chu's - who ignored the film icon next to his son and instead complained about the MSG in the background.)

The cast forged out together nearly every night for street food and karaoke, led by the ensemble's local natives, who included Golding and Chieng, who was raised in Malaysia and Singapore. ("When I read about the movie, I called my agent and said, 'If you can get me an audition, I swear I can book this one,'" says Chieng, 32, who plays one of Nick's snobby cousins. "In fact, this is the only one I can book, because there's no other movie that's going to ask for this kind of accent.'") Although many of the actors had never met prior to production, "everybody was on the same page," says Silicon Valley's Hong Kong-born Yang, 31, who plays an obnoxious playboy in the Singaporean high-society scene. "We all kind of grew up the same way, so there was no convincing, like, 'Oh, hey, we're going to Chinatown for Asian food, but don't worry, it's not that adventurous.' Like Gemma and Sonoya [Mizuno], they're basically models, but we're always on the same page about eating. Nobody's vegetarian."

The actors stay connected via a massive WhatsApp group text, and several made it to Chu and graphic designer Kristin Hodge's July 27 wedding in Napa (Golding was a groomsman). "I'm so used to being the token that I forgot how much it meant to have your people around you," says Nico Santos, the Filipino-American star of NBC's Superstore who plays another of Nick's cousins. "I didn't have an Asian crew I rolled with until I found Crazy Rich Asians."

Ahead of the film's Aug. 15 opening, Warner Bros. has embarked on a unique marketing campaign befitting its unprecedented film. In April, an unheard-of four months before release, the studio hosted a tastemakers screening at downtown L.A.'s Theatre at Ace Hotel for 1,200 people, most of them Asian-American. Audible sniffles were heard throughout the darkened theater as the romantic comedy played out onscreen.

"When they do screenings, a lot of Asian-American people have this overwhelming urge to cry. And they don't know exactly why," says Awkwafina. The Ocean's 8 breakout can perhaps relate, having teared up one evening during the shoot when Chu showed her some of her dailies. "I've never seen myself as a character in a movie," she told him.

More advance screenings have been held in major cities including San Francisco and Washington, D.C. On July 26, designer Prabal Gurung and several of fashion's Asian stars hosted one in New York. Warners also is working with Asian-American community organizations to arrange theater buyouts and develop outreach strategies to a demographic that, according to the MPAA, registered the U.S. and Canada's second-highest per-capita theater attendance (behind Hispanic/Latinos) last year. Still, Asians represent just 6 percent of the American population, so for Crazy Rich Asians to be a success, it will have to play broadly - as, in fact, its sole studio predecessor did in 1993.

"There was no point in thinking about whether Joy Luck Club could succeed on an Asian audience alone," recalls producer Yang. Like Crazy Rich Asians, Amy Tan's novel "was not just an Asian thing," she adds. "Nobody even thought about Asians as a distinct demographic group back then." But that film's resonance with generations of Asian-Americans has obscured its wider reach, which Warners is betting on for Chu's film. "I really believe it will work on a broad basis," says production president Courtenay Valenti. "It's a story with rich themes about identity and culture and where do you belong, which are so universal, especially in terms of the conversation that's resonant today worldwide." The film will have a staggered international rollout in dozens of markets, from Australia to Italy, although a make-or-break China release is not yet confirmed. "We're all praying to the China gods right now," says Ivanhoe's Penotti. "From my colleagues in Beijing, it looks like we're in strong consideration."

It has taken a rapid succession of undeniable hits - Hidden Figures, Get Out, Girls Trip, Black Panther - for Hollywood to warm to the concept that culturally specific stories can lure wide audiences by offering novel takes on well-worn genres. "When people get to see either themselves on screen or fresh faces who aren't the same old lineup, reshuffled, we're seeing breakout success," says Jacobson. Still, the creatives behind Crazy Rich Asians know that the marketability and near-future prospects of an entire community's body of work likely hinge on their perceived success or failure. "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," says Chu. "To be on the biggest stage with the biggest stakes, that's what we asked for."
A version of this story first appeared in the Aug. 1 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

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The Stakes Are High for 'Crazy Rich Asians' - And That's the Point

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The new film's creators turned down a "gigantic payday" at Netflix to ensure the first Asian-American-focused studio movie in 25 years would be seen in theaters and, if all goes well, reshape the Hollywood landscape: "The biggest stage with the biggest stakes - that's what we asked for."

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Portrayals of Asians in Film and Television

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Portrayals of Asians in Film and Television

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I think this is going to give me a good idea of what Asians in film looked like before Crazy Rich Asians came out. I think this will be a good source because it will help me understand the background information.

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LibGuides: Portrayals of Asians in Film and Television: Get Started

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This guide focuses on portraylas of East Asians in film and tv

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THE BEAUTIFUL CULTURAL COLLISION IN CRAZY RICH ASIANS

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THE BEAUTIFUL CULTURAL COLLISION IN CRAZY RICH ASIANS

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This is proving my point in intersectionality and how it plays a role in this film and brings more of it to the light. I love the way they talk about bringing the cultures together.

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Jon M. Chu's hit film "Crazy Rich Asians" based on the bestselling novel by Kevin Kwan features something more than a stellar all Asian cast--it features the realistic clash that so many face within their own cultures and families. It is the first Asian led studio film to premiere in theaters in over two decades. Since its release there have been countless posts praising not only the film itself but the fact that it is the first time many Asians and Asian Americans get the opportunity to see a film on the big screen that pays homage to their culture with a cast that looks like them.

Culture is something that unites us. It is beautiful traditions, languages, and styles that are woven through us like invisible DNA. As Gloria Anzaldua stated in her book Borderlands, " others having or living in more than one culture, get multiple, often opposing messages. The coming together of two self-consistent but habitually incomparable frames of reference causes un choque, a cultural collision."

"Crazy Rich Asians" highlights the cross cultural clash between traditional and the Westernized ideals. Carlos Aguilar's review for "the Wrap" aptly describes how the film manages to achieve such through heartfelt comedy. He writes, "Through Rachel, "Crazy Rich Asians" aims to bridge the gap between Asians living on the continent and the Diaspora, between those born into fortunes and the ones who struggled for success, and between ancient conventions and capitalist philosophies." It is not just a look into Asian culture but the intersectional experience of an Asian American compared to those who remained on the continent. This film is the epitome of #WeAreInclusion and it is only the beginning.

With the help of AAFCA and I Will Harness, NALIP was able to host a screening of the film to help share this story. To see the viewers' heartfelt reactions to this amazing story and hilarious film check out the video at NALIP Instagram

'Crazy Rich Asians' Film Review: Constance Wu Stands Out in Culturally Rich Rom-Com
Photo Courtesy of Warner Bros.
"All Americans think about is their own happiness," asserts affluent Chinese mother Eleanor Sung-Young (Michelle Yeoh) in a belittling tone when scrutinized about the overpowering influence family has over her son's future. Her severe declaration encapsulates the critical ideological duel in director Jon M. Chu's lavish film "Crazy Rich Asians" (based on Kevin Kwan's best-selling novel), where the pursuit of individual gratification is confronted with the notion of sacrificing one's desires for the survival of tradition.

Those rousing cross-cultural observations, however, are displayed not in a hardboiled drama but in an utterly sumptuous romantic comedy that aesthetically lives up to its Hollywood pedigree.

Gallant Nick Young (British-Malaysian TV host Henry Golding) and NYU Economics Professor, Rachel Chu ("Fresh Off the Boat's" Constance Wu), are two lovebirds setting out to meet his family in the thriving city-state of Singapore on the occasion of his best friend Colin's (Australia's Chris Pang) wedding.

Unaccustomed to excessive luxury, Rachel learns that Nick comes from a "comfortable" lineage once onboard a first-class aircraft with plenty of amenities. By now, everyone in the elite circles of Singaporean society, include Nick's mother Eleanor, is fully aware of Rachel's shortcomings: she has no money, no connections, and she is American. Jaw-dropping, postcard-like vistas of the multicultural and finance-driven Asian nation - captured in eye-popping fashion by Croatian cinematographer Vanja Cernjul - welcome her to an ordeal she is not prepared for.

At the extravagant soirées leading up to the main ceremony, Rachel is bombarded with blunt inquiries in regards to her bloodline. Nick and his family resemble royalty here, so she is now part of every conversation among aunties, suitresses and relatives that poured in from Taiwan, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. Employing Singapore as converging ground serves the narrative well since English is widely spoken and an array of specific ethnic groups inhabits the island, which mirrors the cast's eclectic origins and offers them a common language.

Conflict arises for Rachel in full form during her initial encounter with stern Eleanor, who carries herself with politeness but doesn't mince words expressing her disdain for the Western ideals the young woman represents. Elegant as ever, Yeoh is convincingly subdued in the role of a woman bound to the status quo, and overprotective of her shinning heir. Early on in the film, she is also radiant in a scene set in 1995 battling racism with grace.

Read more at: TheWrap.com

A leading advocate in inclusion in the industry, NALIP is providing more resources to aspiring filmmakers every year with events such as the NALIP Media Summit, the Latino Media Fest, and the Diverse Women in Media Forum, and events such as the Latino Lens Workshops and the Latino Lens Incubator Shorts.

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The Beautiful Cultural Collision in Crazy Rich Asians

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Jon M. Chu's hit film "Crazy Rich Asians" based on the bestselling novel by Kevin Kwan features something more than a stellar all Asian cast--it features the realistic clash that so many face within their own cultures and families. It is the first Asian led studio film to premiere in theaters in over two decades.

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What “Crazy Rich Asians” tells us about the current struggle women face in work, love and family

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What “Crazy Rich Asians” tells us about the current struggle women face in work, love and family

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This article is going to help support my view on the movie when it comes to the women and everything they are dealing with and how it connects to women in real life.

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What "Crazy Rich Asians" tells us about the current struggle women face in work, love and family

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The box office hit Crazy Rich Asians has proven to be a massive success, with a $34 million domestic haul over five days, with estimates projecting an eventual domestic take of more than $100 million. The film stretches beyond it's rom-com roots, showcasing female leads exploring the complexities of

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The complex history of Asian Americans in movies, from the silent era to ‘Crazy Rich Asians’

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The complex history of Asian Americans in movies, from the silent era to ‘Crazy Rich Asians’

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I think this article is going to help me figure out the history of Asian Americans in film and be able to connect that to the movie I am studying.

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Director Jon M. Chu hopes his film "Crazy Rich Asians," above, can spark a movement for greater Asian American representation in Hollywood. (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Months before "Crazy Rich Asians" premiered, the film was already being celebrated for being a rare Hollywood studio film in which all the main actors are of Asian descent. Adapted from Kevin Kwan's best-selling book, the glitzy romantic comedy stars Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Awkwafina and Michelle Yeoh.
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But director Jon M. Chu has said that his goal is for "Crazy Rich Asians" to be not just a landmark film, but to start a movement for greater Asian American representation in Hollywood.

It's a daunting task, especially considering that Asian Americans (and Pacific Islanders, who are often included to create the broader category "Asian Pacific American") embody a vast array of cultural, religious, linguistic and economic backgrounds. And Hollywood movies have had a rocky history when it comes to its portrayals of Asian Americans, from the early yellow-face roles to the still-present examples of whitewashing. But there has also been much to admire. Here's a timeline of some of the milestones and setbacks that have led up to "Crazy Rich Asians."

1918: Sessue Hayakawa creates a film studio

Silent film actor Sessue Hayakawa is considered the first Asian American movie star, and, arguably, there hasn't been a bigger one since. By 1918, he gained enough clout to start his own film studio, Haworth Pictures Corp., prompted by his frustrations over Hollywood's offensive and inaccurate depictions of Asians. While he was running Haworth, he produced 23 films and was one of the highest-paid actors of his time. He left Hollywood in 1922 because of rising anti-Asian sentiment, eventually returning after World War II. In 1957, he received an Oscar nomination for his role in "The Bridge on the River Kwai."

1935: Anna May Wong loses Chinese American role to Louise Reiner

Wong was a silent film star in the 1920s, but she often found herself limited to stereotypical Asian roles. When Pearl Buck's novel "The Good Earth" was released in 1931, Wong made public her desire to be cast in the film adaptation, because it was a rare opportunity to play a Chinese character in Hollywood. She later learned she was never considered because the producers wanted a white male actor for the Chinese lead, and anti-miscegenation laws prevented a nonwhite woman to be cast opposite a white man. Wong was instead offered the role of the concubine, but refused. Luise Rainer would win an Oscar for her portrayal of the Chinese woman. This was also the decade that brought us the yellow-face characters Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan, which were stereotypical Asian roles played by white actors and were products of Western imagination.

1961: "Flower Drum Song" is the first Hollywood movie musical with Asian Americans as leads

At the time, it was a risky choice to make a movie about Asian Americans; this was the same year it seemed perfectly acceptable for Mickey Rooney to play a bucktoothed Japanese neighbor in "Breakfast at Tiffany's." For many years, Asian Americans had mixed feelings about film version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical, because it was made by non-Asians and featured Asian stereotypes, including a docile picture bride and a gold-digging showgirl. But in recent years, the musical (which was nominated for five Oscars) has been more embraced, in part because, 57 years later, we've still never seen Asian Americans singing and dancing on this grand of a stage in Hollywood.

1973: "Enter the Dragon" makes Bruce Lee a posthumous icon

After starring as Kato in the TV series "The Green Hornet," Lee struggled to find leading roles in Hollywood, even developing a TV project for himself that allegedly was lifted and retooled as "Kung Fu," starring David Carradine. He left for Hong Kong, where he filmed three hit movies, before getting the attention of Warner Bros., which offered him the lead in "Enter the Dragon." Sadly, Lee died six days before the film was released, just as his career in the United States was about to take off. That said, not only has Lee become a global legend, but he set the stage for martial arts stars such as Jackie Chan and Jet Li.

1983 and 1985: "Gandhi" and "The Killing Fields" win big at the Oscars

The Mohandas Gandhi biopic won eight Oscars, including best picture, and best actor for Ben Kingsley (who's half-British, half-Indian). Two years later, "The Killing Fields," about two journalists' escape from Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime, won best supporting actor for Haing S. Ngor. Kingsley, Ngor and Miyoshi Umeki (who won for 1957's "Sayonara") are still the only three Asian actors to ever win Oscars for acting. Later, "Slumdog Millionaire" (2008) would be another British film about India that was celebrated at the Oscars.

1993: "The Joy Luck Club" finds success as a film

Director Wayne Wang had gained some recognition with 1982's "Chan Is Missing," which is considered the first independent film directed by an Asian American to resonate outside of the Asian American community. But "The Joy Luck Club," based on the book by Amy Tan, was his first mainstream Hollywood film and became a commercial and critical success.

1993: "The Wedding Banquet" kick-starts Ang Lee's Hollywood reign

Lee's comedy "The Wedding Banquet" became the most profitable film of the year when measured by percentage of cost, earning $23.6 million from a budget of $1 million. He would later make history as the first nonwhite filmmaker to win an Oscar for best director, for 2005's "Brokeback Mountain," and he'd nab a second one for 2012's "Life of Pi." His 2000 martial arts film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" is still the highest-grossing foreign-language film in America.

1998: "Mulan" is the first Disney animated film with the leads predominantly voiced by Asian Americans

The Chinese legend of Hua Mulan is about an aging warrior's daughter who disguises herself as a man to take her father's place in battle. For its adaptation, Disney hired a Chinese American writer (Rita Hsiao) and hired mostly Asian Americans for the voices, including Ming-Na Wen, B.D. Wong, James Hong, Pat Morita and George Takei. Disney would later score more hits with Asian American and Pacific Islander stories, such as "Lilo and Stitch," "Big Hero 6" and "Moana," A live-action adaptation of "Mulan" is in the works for 2020.

1999: "The Sixth Sense" is a cultural phenomenon

Haley Joel Osment saying "I see dead people" is etched into the memories of a generation, and the director M. Night Shyamalan's name is now synonymous with a certain type of supernatural horror film that ends with a jaw-dropping twist. Although he's had some setbacks - most notably the failure of "The Last Airbender," for which he was widely blamed for whitewashing the Inuit and Asian characters in the original animated series - he's been finishing up his successful "Unbreakable" trilogy, which will end with "Glass" in 2019.

2004: "Harold & Kumar" is first Hollywood franchise led by Asian American actors

When "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle," a stoner comedy starring John Cho and Kal Penn, premiered in 2004, it was not a huge box office hit. But as the film came out on DVD, it gained a cult following and gave birth to two more sequels, 2008's "Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay" and 2012's "A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas."

2009: Justin Lin helps turn "Fast and the Furious" films into an international moneymaker

After Justin Lin scored an indie hit with "Better Luck Tomorrow," he directed 2006's "Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift." None of the original stars were even in it, other than a quick cameo by Vin Diesel, but by Lin's next movie, 2009's "Fast & Furious," Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster were back, and now, the series has raked in more than $1.5 billion. Lin took a break from the franchise for a few years, but he'll be back for No. 9 and 10, expected to be the final two installments.

2016: Dwayne Johnson becomes the highest paid actor in the world

Many still know him as "The Rock," from his years as a professional wrestling champion, and some underestimated him when he moved to acting in 2001's "The Mummy Returns." But 15 years later, he became the highest-paid actor in the world, in part through "Moana," in which he wore his Polynesian heritage proudly as the voice of the demigod Maui.

2017: "Ghost in the Shell" whitewashing controversy

Asian American activists have been speaking out against Hollywood whitewashing for years - "Short Circuit 2," "21," "Aloha," "Dragonball: Evolution," "Dr. Strange"; the list goes on - but the controversy around Scarlett Johansson's casting as Major Motoko Kusanagi in the film adaptation of the Japanese manga "Ghost in the Shell" seemed like the first time Hollywood listened. Paramount executive Kyle Davies admitted that the whitewashing criticism was bad for business.

2017: "The Big Sick" makes a star out of Kumail Nanjiani

Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon penned a script based on their real life romance that eventually earned an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay - a first for a story that delves into the Asian American experience. Despite its acclaim, the film received criticism for its stereotypical portrayal of South Asian women. ("The Joy Luck Club" was also criticized for its portrayal of Asian men.) This critique highlights the impossible task of having one story represent an entire community - and the array of stories that remain to be told.
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How 'Crazy Rich Asians' star Gemma Chan defines 'true equality'

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The complex history of Asian Americans in movies, from the silent era to 'Crazy Rich Asians'

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Fourteen milestones and setbacks that led up to today.

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WHY CRAZY RICH ASIANS IS GROUNDBREAKING FOR PEOPLE LIKE ME 

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WHY CRAZY RICH ASIANS IS GROUNDBREAKING FOR PEOPLE LIKE ME 

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I love that this article talks about how the actors felt not being fully Asian and weather or not they were qualified to play this role. I think this is going to give a really good perspective on the actors point of view.

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SEEING IS BELIEVING: WHAT THE RISE OF CRAZY RICH ASIANS SIGNALS FOR THE FUTURE OF HOLLYWOOD

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SEEING IS BELIEVING: WHAT THE RISE OF CRAZY RICH ASIANS SIGNALS FOR THE FUTURE OF HOLLYWOOD

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I want to use this article to show how this film is affecting all the people watching it. i like how it goes into specifics and also talks about the book. I also really like how it picks apart the film and breaks it down.

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This article is all on the women in the movie. It talks about the challenges they faced leading up to the film and how they felt that they were seen. This article also gives us incite of how big this film actually got.

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I really like this article because it is breaking down some things that i did not notice the first time watching the film. It also goes into deeper thought about the director and choices that he made that affects the film.

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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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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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I would like to use this source to help open my eyes and look at this film through someone else perspective. I like it is written by someone 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. 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.