"These people aren't just rich, they're crazy rich."

-Peik Lin













Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), is a successful economics professor who grew up in a poor, single parent home. Her boyfriend, Nick Young (Henry Golding), asks her to come with him to his home in Singapore to attend a wedding and meet his family, but she doesn't learn until arriving that Nick's family is one of the wealthiest in Singapore and that the wedding they are attending is akin to a royal wedding. Rachel is thrust into the world of the crazy rich and discovers she doesn't fit in the slightest. Most of Nick's old friends think she is a gold digger and Nick's mother, Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh), doesn't think she is good enough for her son. Rachel has to stand her ground and find a way to earn the respect of Nick's family.









What Works:





I'm usually not one for romantic-comedies/dramas. It's not that I dislike them, it's just that the subject matter usually doesn't interest me. I happened to see Crazy Rich Asians by chance and even though I don't love the genre, I really liked the movie. This film works because we are given an interesting conflict in meeting the other person's family for the first time. This storyline has been used before and will be used it again, but it works. It's interesting to see someone like Rachel, who most of us can relate to, experiences this world of excess for the first time. She's a great lens to watch the film through. The amount of wealth is absurd and even nauseating at times, but Rachel prevents the film from losing itself. It focuses on her character and her struggles with Nick's family and that makes for an interesting story.





Both of the lead characters are super likable and we're actually rooting for them to make it through this trip. Like I said above, Rachel is easy to identify with and Nick is a nice, genuine guy, even though he does excuse too much of his family's behavior, which leads to our conflict. He's a flawed character, but we're still rooting for them to stay together.





Michelle Yeoh is fantastic as Nick's mother. It's a subtle performance and the movie is all the better for it. She never makes a show of her distaste for Rachel in public, instead being very passive-aggressive, but when it's just the two of them she brings out the big guns. She may be the main antagonist of the film, but she is a developed, complex character and you actually feel kind of bad for her at some points. I've always loved Michelle Yeoh and this is an different role for her, but she nails in.





The other stand-outs of the cast are the comic relief characters. Awkwafina plays Peik Lin, Rachel's best friend from college, and Nico Santos plays Oliver T'sien, one of Nick's cousins. Both of them are much more over-the-top characters and they are a blast. Peik somehow speaks with a southern accent and is willing to do anything to help Rachel fit in with Nick's family. Later, she teams up with Oliver, who is one of the only sane members of the family and is also willing to help. They have tons of great and hilarious moments as they help put together an outfit for Rachel to wear at the wedding.





Finally, this movie has some very cool stylish moments. The wedding itself, the reception, and the bachelor party all look fantastic and are standouts of the film, but my favorite part is the sequence where the wealthy, Asian community discovers Nick is bringing a date to the wedding and how fast the news spreads. It's a hilarious sequence as they try to figure out who this nobody is and the editing tricks the filmmakers use make the sequence even more hilarious.









What Sucks:





The only real knock I have against the movie is that it's a pretty generic story. It hits all the story beats you would expect and it never really does anything out of the ordinary for this type of movie. It doesn't really do anything new.









Verdict:





Crazy Rich Asians is a surprisingly good movie, especially for someone who typically avoids these kinds of films. The lead characters are likable, the comic relief is hilarious, and the antagonist is actually a complex character. It's a generic story, but the execution is solid and stylish. Plus, even though the characters are all Asian, anyone (who isn't crazy rich) can identify with Rachel and this proves that protagonists don't always have to be white for audiences to identify with them. Crazy Rich Asians is a solid movie and definitely has got it going on.





8/10: Really Good











