Butler's Cinema Scene

Henry Golding, Constance Wu

“CRAZY RICH ASIANS” My rating: C

120 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

“Crazy Rich Asians” is an utterly conventional and largely indifferent wedding-weekend rom-com made noteworthy by just one thing:

It’s the first Hollywood movie since who-knows-when to feature Asian actors in virtually every speaking role.

Culturally speaking, this is a step forward.  Artistically it’s dead in the water.

Jon M.  Chu’s film centers on Rachel (Constance Wu), a professor of economics at Columbia University in a deepening romance with Nick (Henry Golding), a Singapore citizen of Chinese descent who works in finance.

What Rachel doesn’t realize is that Nick is the heir to one of the biggest family fortunes in Asia.  The Youngs own real estate, hotel chains, you name it (if you think Trumpism with all its attendant tackiness, you’re not too far off the mark). But Nick has kept all this from Rachel; he wants to be loved for himself, not his staggering wealth.

Once in Singapore to attend the nuptials of one of Nick’s many cousins,  the secret is out.

Rachel is stunned by the display of unfettered prosperity before her.  “Crazy” in the case of this film means wildly profligate, for the Youngs are not shy about parading their buying power, from vast estates surrounded by a private army to a wedding ceremony in a church decorated to look like a jungle complete with running stream through which the bride wades to meet her groom.

The big problem, though, is less about money than about cultural prejudice.  The Young clan — especially Nick’s mother Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh) — cannot conceived of an outsider joining their ranks. Thus Rachel is targeted for humiliation and alienation initiated by aunties and cousins who at first seem civil and even friendly but who are just waiting the opportunity to pounce.

Michelle Yeoh

(At this point you’ve got to ask if “Crazy Rich Asians” doesn’t harbor a misogynistic streak.  The male characters seem far more egalitarian, accepting Rachel as Nick’s chosen one, while the women are mostly coldly calculating back stabbers.)

Screenwriter Peter Chiarelli and Dele Lim (adapting Kevin Kwan’s novel) introduce so many peripheral characters, most with their own issues, that it’s hard to keep track of them all, much less become emotionally invested.

And periodically the film stops in its tracks to provide a widescreen travelogue of Singapore.  The chamber of commerce must be thrilled.

The cast is wildly attractive, but there’s not much depth here. Wu has a girl-next-door quality but spends most of the film as a quiet sufferer; Golding is hunky as hell but rather bland. Yeoh, at least, scores as his diamond-hard mom.

Drector Chu, whose biggest effort to date was the stage magicians/espionage thriller “Now You See Me 2,” fails to find a tone for this sprawling, shapeless yarn.  Ostensibly “Crazy Rich…” is a comedy, but we’re 40 minutes into the movie before getting the first big laugh (provided by perky Awkwafina as Rachel’s ditzy college roommate and Ken Jeong as her manic papa).  The humor here is less laugh-out-loud than meh.

Nor is the romance particularly swoon-worthy.

For all the hoopla surrounding it, “Crazy Rich Asians” has the feel of a Lifetime original movie. If the same plot and dialogue had coupled with the usual American romantic comedy stars it wouldn’t generate a ripple in the zeitgeist.

| Robert W. Butler