When I first heard that they were making this movie with Asian people called Crazy Rich Asians, I was not excited. I don't care about the stories of rich people and I really didn't think long about what it would mean to see this all Asian movie. After all, I've seen plenty of films from China and Hong Kong. But as the buildup to the movie spawned more dialogue, I realized I loved its concept - whether I loved the movie itself would depend on its execution.
I loved the movie. It is shocking to me how much this New York - Singapore rom com story resonated with me, how many different scenes directly and viscerally engaged my memories. I walked out shaking my head, wondering if they'd made the movie for me, a Chinese American who has experienced both "normal" Asian American life, stepped into rich circles in Asia, and roomed with a Singaporean. At times I identified with Constance Wu's character, at time with Henry Golding's, at times with various other members of the all Asian cast. I've never experienced anything like that before, seeing people who looked like myself on the movie and wondering if I could've auditioned. I realize now that I had been conditioned to accept that movies were not made for me, that Hollywood was serving what they were serving and I would have to learn to enjoy it. Seeing this, and realizing that other people have been experiencing this their whole lives, I'm honestly jealous.
And naturally, I have a LOT of thoughts and I'm going to spit them out in bullet form, because I got too much going on to organize. If you haven't seen the movie yet, there will be lots of spoilers, go see the movie:
I loved the movie. It is shocking to me how much this New York - Singapore rom com story resonated with me, how many different scenes directly and viscerally engaged my memories. I walked out shaking my head, wondering if they'd made the movie for me, a Chinese American who has experienced both "normal" Asian American life, stepped into rich circles in Asia, and roomed with a Singaporean. At times I identified with Constance Wu's character, at time with Henry Golding's, at times with various other members of the all Asian cast. I've never experienced anything like that before, seeing people who looked like myself on the movie and wondering if I could've auditioned. I realize now that I had been conditioned to accept that movies were not made for me, that Hollywood was serving what they were serving and I would have to learn to enjoy it. Seeing this, and realizing that other people have been experiencing this their whole lives, I'm honestly jealous.
And naturally, I have a LOT of thoughts and I'm going to spit them out in bullet form, because I got too much going on to organize. If you haven't seen the movie yet, there will be lots of spoilers, go see the movie:
- Awkwafina killed it. It's a bit weird that she is cast as a wealthy Singaporean who went to college in the US, but really she is playing herself, a not wealthy girl from Queens. There has been some criticism that she's appropriating from black culture, but she is just playing herself. You can't entirely control the way your environment affects you, and how she speaks is genuinely how she speaks. She makes no effort to act like a Singaporean, but is absolutely hilarious and steals the show. I really want to hang out with her now.
- The opening scene in Singapore, at the Newton Hawker Food Centre, was amazing. It reminded me of the meal I had when I visited my former roommate Francis after he'd moved back. I think they could've lingered longer and named all the roti canai, the chili crab, the laksa, the char kway teow etc. but this movie wasn't about explaining Asian culture. Director Jon Chu has a great quote about this, that explains how his vision is almost the opposite of Wes Anderson's (which I heavily criticize): “We didn’t want to give people an excuse to think of this world as some kind of obscure, exotic fantasyland — this is a real place, with real culture, history and tradition, and instead of just giving them answers to their questions, we want them to have conversations.”
- When I was 23 I went from living on a mattress in a shared attic of a house in DC to starting a career in Hong Kong, being welcomed by aunts and uncles, a few of whom are quite rich (not crazy rich). I found myself often at fancy dinners in country clubs and members-only restaurants, and for me it was definitely a surreal experience trying to look presentable and not say anything uncouth. Rachel's experience takes this to another level.
- The whole movie I kept thinking what is the actual national and ethnic background of this actor/actress, and who are they portraying. Brits and Aussies play Americans all the time, but the cultural and linguistic abilities at stake make this trickier in Crazy Rich Asians.
- Michelle Yeoh is cast perfectly. She is Malaysian Chinese from Ipoh and speaks great Cantonese, and does so throughout the film, which is believable for her character (who reminded me of many of my aunts). She doesn't speak with a Singlish accent, but her English accent is believable for someone of her wealth who studied in the UK and would want to present as higher class.
- Henry Golding is an interesting casting decision, and my thoughts on this are, no pun intended, mixed. With a white British father and an Iban Malay mother, his portrayal of the Singaporean Chinese lead was criticized from the beginning. There is something to be said for making a statement that Asian men can be sexy leads and to authentically portray the part. But as a mixed-race Asian myself who has resented being considered "not Asian enough," I will defend Golding's Asian chops. He spent the first 7 years of his life in East Malaysia, and the last 7 in Singapore, speaks Malay (which he shows briefly in the hawker stall scene), and seems culturally quite Asian. I totally bought his portrayal as a rich Singaporean heir (in his first ever acting role!). He has a couple Mandarin speaking lines in it, and while his first one is kinda scary, he does a respectable job on the longer ones. However, his mixed visual appearance was impossible to overlook, and was completely not addressed in the movie. His mother is shown to be Michelle Yeoh, and his father is in my opinion very deliberately not shown, in hopes that this would ignore the topic. There are plenty of wealthy Eurasian families in Singapore, and it would not have been difficult to write this into the movie adaptation (the book's Nick Young is not supposed to be mixed).
- Constance Wu excellently plays an American-born Chinese, which she is. Now... I'm not in the business of shaming second-generation immigrants on not speaking their "mother tongue," and my own Mandarin accent has been called "freakily jarring," .... but I had no idea her Chinese was so bad. Her lines with the paternal grandmother were distractingly painful, and considering her character in Fresh Off the Boat, I had just assumed she spoke fluent Mandarin. Like her Mandarin is bad for an American-born Taiwanese. For her role in this movie, it's fine, but I think Constance Wu could benefit greatly from a tutor.
- Also the grandmother speaking Mandarin is not believable. The matriarch of a family like that in Singapore would probably speak English, Hokkien and not Mandarin. It's an odd juxtaposition to Michelle Yeoh, who famously phonetically learned her Mandarin lines in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
- Ronnie Chieng, born across the causeway in Malaysia's Johor Bohru and graduated high school in Singapore, is believable in his role but totally overacts.
- There are a lot of non-Chinese Asian actors/actresses playing Chinese roles, including Ken Jeong, Nico Santos and Sonoya Mizuno. This can sometimes feel whitewashing-ish. We Asians complain that white people can't tell us apart, but then we cast roles like we can't tell each other apart? In my opinion, this is not a problem right now. White people play characters from European countries they are not from all the time, and there is so much variation in how people look that all these roles visually pass. I'm focused on how good it is that this movie can create so many roles for Asian actors/actresses.
- There are lots of great Singapore scenes. The shots of the Merlion, the party at the Gardens by the Bay, the hawker stall, the Helix Bridge, the shophouses - visually I think they make Singapore look really cool. There are several images shot out of focus or very quickly that brilliantly portrays how overwhelming the experience can be for an American landing in Singapore for the first time. The last scene on top of Marina Bay Sands overlooking the infinity pool reminds me of a crazy night I had freeloading on some rich business school student's bottle service in the club where that scene is shot.
- However, Crazy Rich Asians does not do Singaporean culture justice. There are very few Singaporean actors/actresses in the film, and one of them, Tan Kheng Hua, plays a non-Singaporean role. There is very little Singlish in the film, and while there is plenty of discussion of Chinese culture, almost none of it is Singapore-specific. It's super clear the film is targeted for the Asian diaspora in the Western world, particularly in America. I am curious as to how this film will be received in Singapore.
- In addition, there is basically no portrayal of Malay or Indian Singaporeans. While the film can't be everything for everyone, and the Chinese dominant friend group is believable, it would have also been believable and not too difficult to have written in a Malay or Indian Singaporean character into the wedding parties. And it would have made a big difference in how this film depicts Singaporean society.
- One last note for the Singaporeans, I'm surprised there wasn't at least a cameo of a recognizable Singaporean like JJ Lin or Joseph Schooling in the wedding.
- There is also very little service towards mainland China. I figured that since China's market is so big, the film would try to kowtow towards mainlanders, possibly by casting a major star from there, but I'm glad to see they stuck to making the movie they wanted.
- I dated someone in college who is from India, and while I knew she was wealthy, I was shocked to visit her in India and discover that her family is so well known in property development that their last name is immediately recognized throughout India. So I immediately identified with Rachel.
- I've also dated an Asian-American in Hong Kong from a working immigrant background, and brought her to fancy dinners with my family, so I also identified with Nick.
- The most intriguing part of the movie is stated by Eleanor, Michelle Yeoh's character, about how Asian culture demands putting the family first, and how Americans put themselves first. The scorn she shows towards Rachel pursuing her passion isn't just relatable, it's the reason I drink. I wish the movie could've spent more time on that.
- Even though I know the rules, I totally did not understand the Mahjong scene, which has a shit ton of nuance and subtle imagery
- Besides the opening scene with a racist British concierge, there are almost no white speaking roles. In fact, there is one scene on a boat where white women are in the backdrop, used as eye candy. To someone like me, this invokes an anti-version of a common Hollywood trope of placing pretty Asian women in the backdrop (Social Network, Ex-Machina). Experience had taught me that even in Asian-centric films, there is always at least one white person, written in so that the movie can appeal more easily to a white American base. It makes me think of a line from Rush Hour 2, where in the midst of investigating a Chinese gang, Chris Tucker says, "Behind every big crime, there's a rich white man waiting for his cut." This movie eschews that entirely, and it's refreshing!
- I was pleasantly surprised to see/hear Kina Grannis as the wedding singer. She's a half-Caucasian half-Japanese singer from California whose career I've loosely followed for years.
- On a related note, the soundtrack is amazing. I've been listening to the Chinese version of "Yellow" on repeat. There's a lot of fascinating backstory to its inclusion, an adaptation that the band Coldplay was initially dead set against, afraid the title Yellow would come across negatively. When I first listened to the song, I expected it to be a direct translation of the Coldplay song, and so I was disappointed that I was unable to match any of the lyrics. The word "yellow" - 黄, is barely sang in the song. I've since looked up the lyrics and realize it's nearly a complete rewrite - it's a beautiful adaptation written in 2015 by a mainland artist Cheng Jun 郑钧 that's only loosely connected with the English lyrics.
- I was also told to expect Cantopop, but when Sally Yeh (in her 3rd language!) came on with a Cantonese version of a Madonna song, I was still shocked to hear Cantopop in an English language movie. Again this is due to a conditioning that Cantopop is this tiny, niche medium that should be restricted to certain settings. It's still crazy to me that my white friends who watched this film have now heard Cantopop.
- As a romantic comedy, the story isn't original. There are plenty of tropes, and the main characters are quite underdeveloped. We are never really shown whether Nick and Rachel are actually a good couple. The fact that I hate rom coms and found this movie so enjoyable is a testament to how well they handled everything else.
- I wish there was some sort of body symbol coming out of the film, like the Wakandan salute that came out of Black Panther. I want to have something like that.
- I had no idea who Jimmy O. Yang was. I might start watching Silicon Valley just cause I liked him so much.
This was made possible because of the Asian American creative forces behind this, Jon Chu and Adele Lim. You need that sort of direction from the top to understand what representation really means – not a college brochure of different colored faces, but different people telling their own very different stories. Going forward, I hope they produce the whole trilogy, what I really want isn't more all-Asian movies. Rather, I want Americans of all backgrounds to understand each other's specific issues better and naturally incorporate them more into their stories. Long term, I want this country, this world, to be far less segregated so that no group needs to feel culturally marginalized.
I'm excited for what's to come.
