The kind of romantic comedy that Crazy Rich Asians is attempting to be is something that Hollywood hardly makes anymore. It’s the kind of romance that depends on the audience’s familiarity with the story, its uniqueness coming from its characters and how they co-exist within these narrative structures. The film is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Kevin Kwan, a book the author would call a satire on stereotypes both outside and within the Asian community. The adaptation, directed by Jon M. Chu, is instead a sincere, big-hearted story of a young Chinese-American woman, Rachel (Constance Wu), who teaches economics at NYU and is dating Nick Young (Henry Golding), a devastatingly handsome, English-accented Cambridge grad who decides to invite Rachel to a wedding in Singapore (he’s the best man). After dating for a year, Nick sees this as an official step toward legitimizing their relationship and introducing Rachel to his mother Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh).

What Rachel learns before arriving in Singapore is that Nick is the most sought-after bachelor in Asia, the son of a Chinese real estate mogul whose wealth spans several generations and goes beyond what Rachel could ever comprehend. Eleanor, the much-respected and much-feared head of the family, has been waiting for Nick to return East, to accept his inheritance of his father’s company. When Nick returns instead with an American girl and seemingly little interest in staying in Singapore, Eleanor’s demeanor turns hard and she becomes the first person to make Rachel feel unwelcome. There is also the multitude of cousins who, not at the front of the line like Nick to accept major riches, resent his apparent attempt at modesty in America with the daughter of a Chinese immigrant. Rachel finds herself on the receiving end of glares from various family and assorted members of the Singapore elite, unsure who to trust as she continues to meet more and more people living under Eleanor’s strict circle.

Rachel does have a few allies. Nick’s cousin, Astrid (Gemma Chan), an obscenely wealthy mogul in her own right, is the only major member of the family who empathizes with Rachel’s plight, offering to take Rachel under her wing despite her own issues with her own husband, Michael (Pierre Png). There’s also Nick’s second cousin, Oliver (Nico Santos), the self-described “rainbow sheep” of the family, too charming to keep out but seemingly too gay to give an official position. Noticing Rachel’s feeling of otherness, Oliver is quick to remind her of the hypocrisy within the Young family. There’s also Rachel’s college friend, Goh Peik Lin (Awkafina), an eccentric woman perfect for comic relief, who happens to now reside in Singapore near where the wedding is taking place. Despite this support, Rachel still finds it difficult to work herself within Eleanor’s good graces, learning quickly that anything less than Nick’s complete return to the family business will be acceptable to her.

The relationship between Rachel and Eleanor is Crazy Rich Asians‘ most central conflict, a battle rooted in years of pain and sacrifice, with one person who’s struggling to catch up on all the history and another person who simply doesn’t have the time or patience to teach it. These stories, ones where families pass down their hang-ups as well as their wealth, always seem to stick with me, and it seemed studios like Warner Bros (the distributor of this film) was no longer interested in producing them in a major way. There was a time when these sort of mid-budget adult dramedies used to get made constantly, often headed by star actors reprising things we’ve seen them do in the past. These types of movies teach us how to be, and while Warner’s fervent back-patting at finally putting their full effort behind an all-Asian cast in 2018 is less than graceful, Chu and screenwriters Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim infuse Crazy Rich Asians with a very heavy but healthy dose of sentimentality that truly melted me.

So sure, Crazy Rich Asians is comprised of hackneyed rom-com archetypes, benign dialogue, blasé film directing – and it occasionally dabbles in the kind of female competition (more than one woman seems interested in sabotaging Rachel’s place in Nick’s life) that would get a lesser film called misogynist. But it has an understanding of these screenwriting concepts and knows how to use them. On top of that, with the exception of an opening scene in which Eleanor quickly dispatches of a racist hotel manager in London, Chu’s film has little interest in Asian interaction with whiteness. In fact, once the film goes to Singapore, there isn’t even a glimpse of a non-Asian person. Crazy Rich Asians instead seats itself within the Hollywood Romantic Comedy enterprise and subtracts all of the whiteness these movies so often feel they need to succeed. It’s defiance in the face of what American movies so often decide is elegant and lavish is one of the main things that makes Crazy Rich Asians such a delight to watch.

 

Directed by Jon M. Chu