Dave-El's Weekend Movie Post: Crazy Rich Asians

 

Hello and welcome to our 2nd edition of Dave-El’s Weekend Movie Post. 

 

This week I’m writing about a relatively recent movie from 2018, Crazy Rich Asians.

 

This is a romantic comedy about Asians who are not just Rich but Crazy Rich.

 

Well, actually it's about Rachel Chu, a young economics professor who is an expert in game theory but she is totally gobsmacked to find out her boyfriend Nick Young is the scion of a super rich Chinese family and gets thrown into their orbit when Nick brings Rachel along to attend his brother’s wedding in Singapore.  

 

It’s a multi day event of conspicuous consumption. 

 

An aircraft carrier is rented out for the bachelor party.

 

A private island is the setting for a bachelorette party.  

 

It’s kind of a big deal.

 

Rachel is not exactly comfortable with all this excessive expressions of excessive wealth. 

Also she is not exactly welcomed.

 

When it becomes clear that Rachel Chu is not the progeny of a super wealthy Asian family, the buzz on her presence becomes nasty, assumptions being made she is a gold digger looking to climb her way into an upper level of society through Nick.  

 

Who cares that only a few days prior, Rachel had NO clue that Nick was rich, let alone crazy rich.  

 

And there is the matter of Eleanor Young, Nick’s mother.  She had decided early and most emphatically she does not like this Rachel Chu person.

 

Given what happens to Eleanor in the film’s prologue, you would think she would be less judgement about others.

 

The film opens in the 1990s where Eleanor and her family have arrived at a posh hotel in London on a very rainy night.

 

They have a reservation. The concierge looking at this group of wet disheveled Chinese people doesn’t think they do.  

 

One phone call later and Eleanor’s family now owns the post hotel in London. 

Having been discriminated against in the past, you might think Eleanor would not be so judgmental against others.   

You might think...

But instead Eleanor is a strict hide bound traditionalist who is not prepared for the scandal of her son being involved with a woman of an obviously lower status in her society.  

And it doesn't help that Eleanor discovers a secret about Rachel's heritage that even the Rachel didn't know about. 

Eleanor forbids Nick to marry Rachel.  

Nick is all "screw that" and proposes to Rachel anyway. 

Who declines.

What...?

Before she leaves Singapore, Rachel has one last meeting with Eleanor in a mahjong parlor and during a game of mahjong, Rachel effectively demonstrates how Eleanor's victory in getting Rachel to leave creates a whole set of new problems. Even while "losing", Rachel has the upper hand.   

It's more clever than I'm making it sound. Suffice to say a game of mahjong has never seemed so intense. 

Eleanor is a formidable opponent to the romantic happiness of Rachel and Nick and their "happily ever after" feels elusive as we barrel towards what appears to be a devastating end.  Rachel's take down of Eleanor is cool and clever and plays to Rachel's strengths as an economics professor and an expert in game theory.  Rachel gets her victory not from dumb luck or an out of nowhere change of heart but through skill and determination.  

Long story made short and really, it's a romantic comedy so not really a spoiler but Nick and Rachel end up together.

Crazy Rich Asians checks off the boxes of a standard issue romantic comedy centered around class differences but it does so with style, humor, heart and intelligence. 

Next week, the Weekend Movie Post looks at a movie that came out this year.  

Written and directed by John Kraskinski, it's IF.