Adapted by screenwriters Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim from Kevin Kwan’s best-selling novel of the same name, endearing romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians sets a familiar princess storyline in a world that’s probably unfamiliar to most viewers: The realm of Singapore’s upper class.
Upon visiting Singapore for the first time, New York University economics professor Rachel (Constance Wu) discovers that her adorable boyfriend, Nick (Henry Golding), is heir to a fortune and that his fierce mother, Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh), disapproves of Nick marrying a woman who was born in America, even though Rachel has Chinese roots.
As with all the best romantic comedies, the fun isn’t in discovering whether Rachel and Nick will end up together, but in exploring the ways they grow as individuals and as a couple while overcoming the obstacles life puts in their way. And as with all the best princess stories, the special thrill is imagining that Rachel’s “happily ever after” would be a life of unimaginable privilege. Done right, movies of this type make us want the best for their protagonists, and Crazy Rich Asians succeeds mightily in creating that desire.
What sets Crazy Rich Asians apart from similar films is the way cultural identity courses through the storytelling: This is a specific story about specific people occupying a specific world. Therefore, the mainstream success of Crazy Rich Asians reinforces a fundamental storytelling principle — the idea of using a specific story as a window into universal truth about the human experience.
Lodging a complaint
The film opens with an effective prologue set in 1995. While traveling with her children in London, Eleanor arrives at a posh hotel and tells the concierge she has a reservation. Obviously appalled at the notion of foreigners sullying his establishment, the concierge pretends that Eleanor’s reservation is missing and that no rooms are available. He then twists the knife by suggesting Eleanor “explore Chinatown.” Confronted with overt racism, Eleanor replies with grace and steel. She asks to use the house phone, but even that courtesy is withheld.
Cut to Eleanor cramped into a phone booth with her kids, the London rain pounding down on her. Then cut again to the hotel lobby, where the owner scurries downstairs to greet Eleanor — and to inform his employees that Eleanor’s husband just bought the hotel.
Beyond providing a crisp introduction to Eleanor, the scene is a tremendously satisfying opener that tells the audience what to expect from the movie — wish fulfillment. Beneath these surface textures, however, the scene conveys something layered.
When white people won’t give her the respect she deserves, Eleanor buys their subservience. This gets at the most interesting aspect of Crazy Rich Asians; an exploration of the relationship that wealthy persons have with wealth. Some are obnoxious monsters who use money to demean others, and some are like Eleanor; pragmatists who recognize that money — and the power it represents — is a tool for cutting through obstacles. Getting that hotel room doesn’t eradicate the racism confronting Eleanor, but it neutralizes it. So even as Eleanor luxuriates in her triumph, we know that she realizes another battle awaits her tomorrow, and yet another the day after that.
Great movie scenes do many things at once, and this Crazy Rich Asians vignette, which hides a tinge of melancholy underneath a sugar rush of instant karma, is a great movie scene.
Takeaway: A crowd-pleasing moment doesn’t have to be a simplistic moment
The good life
The reason for Rachel and Nick’s trip to Singapore is the wedding of Nick’s best friend, Colin (Chris Pang). Colin and his fiancée, Araminta (Sonoya Mizuno) meet Rachel and Nick at the airport. What follows is a gleeful montage sequence during which the foursome consumes spectacular-looking street food and zooms around Singapore in a convertible. Although some useful plot elements get wedged into dialogue, the sequence feels a bit like a travel commercial. Unlike the rest of the movie, however, it’s a commercial for attainable travel. That distinction serves a narrative purpose.
Later in the movie, catty women (wrongly) accuse Rachel of being a gold digger, expressing disbelief that she didn’t know Nick came from money. If we, the audience, saw Rachel fall in love with the experience of Singapore because of her first exposure to great wealth, then we might form the same impression. Instead, we see Rachel embrace the joys of everyday Singapore; she revels in new food, new friends, new sights, new sounds.
A guiding principle of mainstream storytelling is to cut the narrative to the bone; thus maximizing the speed of the storytelling and, in turn, the efficacy. But not every necessary scene is obvious.
The entire bonding sequence with Colin and Araminta could have been replaced with a simple moment. For instance, if Nick asked Rachel where she wanted to eat and suggested a fancy restaurant, she could counter with a request to go someplace cheap and convenient. That alternative scene would have conveyed the same character point, but it wouldn’t have done so in the voluptuous idiom of the movie. It wouldn’t have achieved the same subtle impact.
Takeaway: Luxurious storytelling is not incompatible with narrative economy
Pride and prejudice
While many characters in Crazy Rich Asians are beautiful, young people — one of many reasons why the film unapologetically belongs to a subgenre known as “lifestyle porn” — a formidable woman of a certain age reveals the film’s most intriguing personality.
Eleanor, personified perfectly by the glamorous and indomitable Malaysian-Chinese actress Yeoh, exhibits equal measures of integrity and intolerance. The aforementioned prologue underscores her character’s grit, and the way she treats Rachel underscores something else.
Throughout the picture, Eleanor drips contempt for Rachel not because Rachel is from a lower social class, but because Rachel was raised in the West. Eleanor therefore assumes that Rachel has Western values and an inability to understand the ways of the East. In particular, Eleanor is scornful of Rachel’s devotion to her teaching career; in Eleanor’s eyes, the pursuit of a personal passion is selfish, whereas the higher path involves duty and sacrifice.
During a party at Eleanor’s mansion, Rachel, overcome with nerves, accidentally spills wine on Nick’s shirt. Nick retires to his old room to change clothes, and Eleanor follows him there. She draws him into a pointed conversation while selecting a shirt that matches his suit. Once he’s dressed, Nick asks how he looks and Eleanor replies, “perfect.” The implications are myriad.
At once, this fierce mother is nurturing and smothering. She wants the best for her son, but only if she gets to decide what’s best. Based on the evidence of the life she’s built for herself, she’s clearly not wrong — but based on clues about distance in her marriage to Nick’s father, she’s clearly not right, either. While the impending Crazy Rich Asians sequels (based on Kwan’s two follow-up novels) will undoubtedly contain more laughs and more lifestyle porn, one hopes the films will delve into Eleanor’s mysteries, especially since she takes a profound step toward humility at the end of this first installment.
Takeaway: Great characters have great contradictions