Crazy Rich Asians Review

Summer season is winding down and mid- to late-August is often more of a dumping ground than anything as studios typically save their more anticipated releases for earlier summer months or holiday/awards seasons at the end of the year, leaving general audiences in a bit of an awkward position in searching for quality movie trips during this in between phase. When I was preparing my August movie preview at the beginning of the month, I wasn't exactly sure what I personally was wanting to go see. I even considered taking this weekend off since I wasn't super interested in seeing a romance film in "Crazy Rich Asians," nor was I super interested in "Mile 22," which seems like a generic action film, or "Alpha," which has bounced around the schedule for a long time and seems destined to fail. With "Crazy Rich Asians" specifically, I knew the book had a huge following and so I was content to let said fan base run out to see their romance movie, which I assumed would be good enough to satisfy them, but to me it didn't look like anything super special. A been there, done that romance movie that didn't seem like it would bring anything new to the table, so why bother when I'm not really a part of the target audience? I mean, romance films aren't exactly my cup of tea.

Yet here I am reviewing "Crazy Rich Asians" anyways after seeing it on opening night, which in this case was Wednesday, August 15, instead of Friday, August 17. Why the change of heart? Easy. The reviews. This movie was standing at 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes after the initial reviews came in. As I'm currently typing this, it's officially certified fresh at 93 percent with 115 views counted. That could fluctuate a bit as the weekend moves on, but that number of reviews is enough to make me confident that it'll remain in that region when the dust completely settles. So that moved me from uninterested to curious. This is still a genre that I'm extremely harsh on, so I wasn't fully convinced that I would love it, but I do try to maintain an open mind. If the reaction to a movie is positive, I try not to be the type of person who ignorantly skips a movie anyways just because I didn't like the idea or the trailers didn't grab me. It's good to give movies a chance and formulate your own opinion after having seen the movie rather than before. So with nothing else interesting on the schedule, especially since "Mile 22" and "Alpha" don't even open until Friday, anyways, I thought, what the heck. I'll give this a shot. And I'm glad I did because this is the new gold standard for romance films.

The first thing that I have to say about this film is that it is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The plot, which I'll get to more in a second, revolves around a super fancy, high-class Chinese family living in Singapore who are celebrating a wedding that's essentially the event of the decade there. It's akin to a son or daughter of the Queen getting married, like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in real life earlier this summer. Because of this, I feel that director Jon M. Chu had the desire to make this movie look as high class and fancy as possible in order to set the stage for the story. If this was the goal, then mission accomplished. Once we get over to Singapore, where I'd say around 95 percent of this movie takes place, I was bedazzled. There was sheer brilliance in every single set design as it felt that every single set piece of this movie was carefully crafted in order to look absolutely perfect. Along with that, I'd say the costume designs, the makeup and the hairstyling were also crafted to perfection when it came to each individual person, whether they were the main star or simply an extra who was in the background for a second or two. The attention to detail was very noticeable as it had me awestruck the whole film, which helped me become more invested in the story itself.

On top of that, the brilliant design of the film was matched by beautiful cinematography and visual effects to the point where I'd say every single shot of the film was perfect on a technical standpoint. If it were up to me, I'd say this makes the film immediately worthy for five Oscar nominations: production design, cinematography, costume design, makeup and hairstyling, and visual effects. Actually getting Oscar nominations requires a lot of campaigning and awards seasons politics, so I don't know if the movie will get any of those nominations, but it's certainly deserving of them. And finally, the icing on the cake for this is that every Asian actor cast in this movie is extremely attractive. Granted, said makeup, hairstyling and costume design certainly helped with this, but I felt that there was a lot of natural beauty that made for a lot of eye candy for both males and females watching the movie. This also set the stage for this movie because perfection in terms of physical appearance also seemed to be required or expected as a part of this family, especially those joining the family through marriage, so that the family could maintain their high class status and appearance for the rest of the world.

Then of course we have the plot of the film. With the stage set perfectly, I felt like it became easy for the plot to just fall in place. Given that I'm not well-versed in Asian drama, nor do I follow romance movies to closely, my mind instead reverted to Disney's "Aladdin" as a plot comparison. In "Aladdin," we have Jasmine living as a part of the royal family, but she's kinda tired of that life, so she disappears into the village, dressing up as a common woman, and sparks a relationship with Aladdin, a street rat. Drama ensues when Jasmine is finally forced to reveal that she is in fact a princess. This is how "Crazy Rich Asians" unfolds, but with a bit of role-reversal as it's Nick Young, the male in the relationship, who essentially belongs to this royal family, but he doesn't really like that life, so he goes off to New York and lives a normal life where he falls in love with Rachel Chu, an Econ professor at New York University. After their relationship builds strongly over the course of the year, with her having no idea who he really is, something that he personally enjoys because it makes him feel normal, he decides it's finally time to take her home and show her off to his family just in time for the big wedding. This means Rachel is in for quite the culture shock when they arrive.

I suppose this plot is a fairly common one with a romance involving one partner from an upper class background and one partner from a lower class background. You might call me crazy for thinking of "Aladdin" first, but so be it. I also thought of fellow Disney movie "Cinderella," but specifically the 1997 Rogers and Hammerstein's version starring Brandy and Whitney Houston because that one has a heavy focus on the Asian prince who is not super stoked about this palace life gig. And the third movie I thought of was the relationship between Jack and Rose in "Titanic," with Jack coming from rags and Rose coming from riches. In fact, I'll just concede and say this specific story probably has heavy origins from "Romeo & Juliet," a story of forbidden love between two lovers from two different families and classes. So yeah, this plot has probably been done a thousand times and the movie doesn't steer very far from your classic romance film formula. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall madly in love. Drama happens that almost permanently separates boy and girl. Boy and girl somehow reconcile their differences and live happily ever after. Unless you're Jack and Rose and you stubbornly decide that two people can't fit on the floating door, so you decide to let one freeze to death.

Yet despite the familiar formula, "Crazy Rich Asians" proves that you can take a familiar idea and still craft an excellent movie if your execution is done to perfection. There's a reason why this formula is used so often and that's because it works. Yet on the flip side of things, the fact that this formula is used so often is a big part of the reason why I'm so picky with this genre. There's a lot of lazy Nicholas Sparks style of teenage romance films that seem like they wrote the screenplay in an hour or two, then lazily threw together a quick film in order to please the target demographic of teenage girls who will swoon and scream at the mere sight of an attractive male lead. But again, "Crazy Rich Asians" proves to me that I'm perfectly allowed to be super picky because you CAN do this right. There's a lot of things going in this movie's favor regarding the plot, but a big thing propelling it forward is that the two leads are just oozing in chemistry. It's much more than two attractive human beings put together on screen. The way their characters are written make you feel like these two belong together and the strong performances from Henry Golding and Constance Wu are able to make your heart melt every time they look at each other because they're simply perfect.

These strong performances leads into a lot of genuinely powerful emotion as they get to Singapore and Rachel feels like a fish out of water. She confidently tries to act like she belongs, but she simply doesn't. And none of this has anything to do with Nick himself as he's the most charming and loving partner, but the culture is too different. The family ideals are completely opposite to her's. This leads to a lot of pain and suffering on her end, especially as she's thousands of miles from home in Singapore with few people to lean on for comfort and support. When Nick's mother flat-out says to her face that she's not good enough for Nick and never will be, I felt like I got stabbed in the heart. As she ran of in tears, I was practically in tears myself because I felt the heavy weight of all this emotion. I wanted to hate Nick's mother as much as she did as she felt like the Wicked Witch of the West or like Cinderella's step-mother. Although at the same time, I couldn't hate her too much because it was a mere clash of two opposing cultures rather than someone being evil and mean just because the story needed drama. Thus when push came to shove, it all felt real. I was fully invested in every story arc and every piece of drama as I became attached to every character.

Speaking of other characters, there's a lot of excellent supporting cast here, but none better than Rachel's one friend in all of this, Peik Lin Goh, played by Awkwafina, who is quietly having a great acting year after both this and "Ocean's 8." Peik Lin is the main source of comedy in this movie and she is on point as the crazy, blunt friend who is just what Rachel needs. There's a point in the movie where she randomly disappears without the movie telling us exactly where she went, but whenever she shows up in the movie she is comedic gold. The other side character I liked most was Nico Santos' character of Oliver. It's Oliver and Peik Lin that help Rachel the most when she decides to move forward with a certain idea of her's and the three of them together just cracked me up. I could keep name dropping here as there were a lot of great side characters, but I think it's sufficient to say that I was super impressed with the entire cast. Everyone who was in this movie came in and played their role to perfection, whether that role was minor role for just a scene or two, or was a major role that greatly impacted the plot. I can't think of a single weak link in the entire movie when it comes to the cast. They all came in and gave 100 percent to this project, so a round of applause is due.

So yeah, this movie really got to me in ways that I didn't expect it to. I'm extremely impressed and shocked that a movie that I wasn't even planning on going to before seeing the reviews ended up being one of the most pleasant and emotional films I've seen this year. This coming from someone who is often hard to please when it comes to these romance films. And yeah, I don't know if you've noticed until now, but I've specifically made an effort to classify this is a romance film rather than saying chick flick or even romantic comedy. I've learned to avoid the term chick flick because everyone has a different idea of what that is. And I've also avoided romantic comedy because there's a lot of romcoms that I realize I've enjoyed specifically because of the comedy element, with "Hitch" being a classic example of that. The movie itself is hilarious. The romance element is a bit generic. But "Crazy Rich Asians" is good specifically because of the romance story itself, all of the characters involved, and the emotional journey that they all went through. The comedy was simply the icing on the cake. Thus when you ask me what my favorite romantic movie is, honestly "Crazy Rich Asians" might be one of my go-to responses. I'm going to reward the movie with a very strong 9/10.