Funny, fluff and even some substance

Number one at the box office for the second week in a row, I sauntered out on a whimsical – and hot – Sunday afternoon to catch, of all things, Crazy Rich Asians. As the old Mad magazine cartoon had it, it wasn’t because of the movie but to get inside air-conditioned comfort! Just kidding. Crazy Rich Asians turned out better than expected. It has crisp direction by Jon M. Chu, interesting enough characters, and a story almost as serious as it is funny and fluffy. And if for no other reason, the sumptuous setting of Singapore is almost enough to make you want to book a seat on the next flight and check out the city-state itself. But, come to think of it, few other North American films have had as their subject matter Asian-Americans. Yet, with more than a 20 million population, they’re the third largest ethnic and racial group in the U.S. They’re grossly underrepresented in film, television, advertising, and popular media altogether. Still, I wondered if this movie was stereotyping in, you know, a negative way. Yes, it is stereotyping, but in the best of fun, just as other movies have stereotyped Blacks, Irish, Italians, and even Greeks. Based on the somewhat autobiographical novel by Kevin Kwan, Crazy Rich Asians depicts (some) Asians as possessing vast wealth, of a kind even the richest non-Asian Americans have hardly touched. Opulence in clothing, cars, homes, parties and indeed weddings - the focal point of this film – may have no equal. Of course, the movie is a love story and arguably a chick flick, but it’s an enjoyable ride for anyone who’s watching.  The central characters are Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) and Nick Young (Henry Golding). They’re young Americans in New York, he from a fabulously wealthy Singapore family, she from a lower middle class Chinese broken home. On the occasion of his best friend’s wedding, Nick asks Rachel to accompany him to his ancestral home and meet his family. She has no idea what she’s getting into, and that’s the fulcrum upon which the plot rests. At turns hilarious, exhilarating, outrageous, heart breaking and sad, Crazy Rich Asians introduces us to a cast of characters in a roller coaster ride through the upper echelons of the Malaysian elite, with a wedding ceremony that may be the most ostentatious you’ve ever seen. But it’s not all fluff. There is drama, class consciousness and, yes, outright discrimination that no society seems to be without. For mass entertainment Crazy Rich Asians wasn’t a bad way to spend a couple of hot summer hours.