Crazy Rich Asians [2018]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  RogerEbert.com (3 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (B+)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. McAleer) review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (M. Castillo) review
AVClub (C. Siede) review


Crazy Rich Asians [2018] (directed by Jon M. Chu, screenplay by Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim based on the novel [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by Kevin Kwan [wikip] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) is a fun all Asian cast romantic comedy that tells a story that anyone who's attended a major university in the United States in the last generation or two (or, heck, gone to see even _one_ true "Bollywood" movie in one's lifetime) would know -- there ARE plenty of _crazy rich Asians_ in this world.

Sure, there are also plenty of poor Asians as well (as there are poor North Americans / Latin Americans, Africans, etc).  But one of the joys of this movie has been that it's A NORTH AMERICAN MOVIE about ASIA that _doesn't_ focus on "Calcutta" or "the mean streets" of Manila, Shanghai, Tokyo or Hong Kong).  This film unabashedly declares -- hey, a lot of us Asians today do actually have _a lot_ of money.

Now we Christians aren't supposed to be focused so much on money.  On the other hand, if Western Christians continue to pretend that "the only people with money are North Americans or Europeans" then we simply choose to walk away from reality.

Indeed, the film begins with a fascinating quote attributed to Napoleon: "Let China sleep, because when she wakes up, she'll roar" and then after a bitingly funny first scene that sets up the story, the opening credits roll to a great (and absolutely true to contemporary global culture) Chinese cover of the Barrett Strong song "Money, that's what I want" ;-).

To the film ... Rachel Chu (played by Constance Wu) a young, clever first generation American / NYU economics professor is invited by her economist approaching two years boyfriend Nick Young (played by Henry Golding) to attend his best friend's wedding "back in Singapore."  Her first guess of what she's in for is when the two board the plane and instead of finding their seats (where the rest of us would sit) "somewhere back in coach" they're escorted to a first class suite that most of us would only have heard rumors about (but do exist on ... mostly Asian airlines).  "Sooo, you're rich ...?" "We're comfortable." "THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT SUPER RICH PEOPLE WOULD SAY."  

And the rest of the story unspools from there... ;-)

The display of wealth (and competence, every member of Nick's family seems to be running something major / big) could perhaps begin to get irritating after a while ... But what then to say of all those, indeed _generations_ of "Jane Austen" inspired movies?

So, recognizing certainly that there are hundreds of millions, arguably BILLIONS of people living in poverty in Asia, why not remind ourselves that there are also millions, tens of millions of Asians who are "quite wealthy thank you" indeed, "SUPER wealthy, thank you" as well.  Otherwise we'd remain with a 19th Century "Rule Britannia" mindset that's simply no longer true ...

Now if we could ALL learn to share ...


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