When they said Crazy Rich Asians, they meant it. Truly, they did. Crazy? Yeah, somewhat. Asian? Very much so. And rich? ABSOLUTELY.
The families in this film are wealthy in a way that I’d never even imagined people could be. They have an incredible abundance of money and they know just how to spend it.
Crazy Rich Asians follows Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), a university professor of economics, and her boyfriend, Nick Young (Henry Golding), as he takes her on a trip to meet his family. Rachel had always believed the two of them to be a regular couple from New York, that is, until she and Nick fly to Singapore for his best friend’s wedding and she discovers just how far from normal they (or at least, her boyfriend), truly are.
Somehow, Rachel dates Nick for over a year without ever discovering that his family are real estate moguls in Singapore and some other parts of Asia. As Rachel’s friend Goh Peik Lin (Awkwafina) puts it, the Young family are basically Singaporean royalty. Rachel is entirely unprepared for the cruel and contemptuous way in which Nick’s family and friends treat her, and though there are a meagre handful of kind ones amongst the bunch, the majority are simply out for blood.
Crazy Rich Asians is a modern take on romance and though the storyline is the same as most other rom-coms, there is a unique freshness to it that makes it one I’d like to watch again. Director Jon M. Chu draws the audience in with clever camerawork and allows us to really experience the film alongside the characters. Nick’s mother, Eleanor Young (Michelle Yeoh) displays the most growth throughout the film and is in complete contradiction to Rachel’s own mother, Kerry Chu (Kheng Hua Tan).
The extravagance of the wedding, the parties, the dinners, the houses and even the cars in Crazy Rich Asians is aesthetically captured and inspires envy within those of us who may never know such luxuries. All I know is that Singapore is now on the list of places that I’d definitely like to be visiting in the near future.
Fun Fact:
The first Western-produced film with an exclusively Asian cast in more than 25 years.
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