Not my Asia

I have never seen as many Asians at a movie theatre in the US as I did at the screening of Crazy Rich Asians in a leafy suburb in Philadelphia. “Why did it take Hollywood so long to make such a dumb guilty pleasure aimed at the Asian diaspora?” was what I asked myself while the audience was chuckling.

The first part of the hilarious trilogy written by Kevin Kwan is about a Chinese American, Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), who teaches economics at New York University, and what transpires when she realises her boyfriend, Nick Young (Henry Golding), is from a family that is treated like royalty in Singapore. The hilarity that ensues is the reason why this movie has raked in a whopping $86 million worldwide so far.

Is the movie really that good, though? First, it doesn't do any heavy lifting for Southeast Asians. All the domestic help is either Punjabi or Tamilian. The Young family is made to look like Singaporean Trumps. Maybe it’s too much to expect from one movie, but its muddled politics could be forgiven if the plot was any good. The conflict is straight out of an 1980s Bollywood B-movie: the mother (Michelle Yeoh as Eleanor) doesn't think the girl is a good fit for the family.

The film has raked in $86 million worldwide

The slick production values do nothing to obscure the plain fact that the movie is long and tedious. The real scene stealer is Awkwafina’s gleeful turn as Rachel’s friend, Goh Peik Lin, who has the best lines and makes the most of them. “Eleanor just thinks you’re some, like, unrefined banana. Yellow on the outside, and white on the inside,” she tells Rachel.

Director Jon Chu has stayed faithful to the source material but his protagonist is a one-dimensional, saccharine guy who could easily double as one of the more annoying characters in Nicholas Sparks’s books. A bunch of secondary characters don’t contribute to the narrative at all. There’s a cousin who is going through a torrid marriage. There’s a best friend’s wedding and accompanying bachelor parties thrown in for the express reason of showing off how provincial Las Vegas is when compared to parties in Singapore. It's not for nothing that Singapore and Hong Kong are much more unaffordable than Manhattan. Too bad we don't get any insights on the marginalised in these mega cities.

Also, the movie didn’t include my favourite line from the book, where Rachel says, “Changi Airport makes JFK look like Mogadishu.”

Apart from a scene involving mahjong, a Chinese tile-based game, the movie doesn’t have any solid references to Asia. Crazy Rich Asians is not the movie the rest of the world needs to improve its understanding of Asia. I found a tiny Netflix-produced movie far more representative of Asian culture. To All the Boys I've Loved Before, adapted from a young-adult novel by Jenny Han, is about a Korean-American teen, Lara Jean Covey (Lana Condor), whose love letters to her crushes get sent to them, much to her embarrassment.

Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo) is one of them and asks Lara Jean to be his “fake girlfriend” in order to win back his girlfriend who broke up with him. The movie subverts rom-com rules even within the limited framework. There are references to everything from Bon Iver to Fight Club and that makes the movie a giant laughathon.

There's a long scene where Lara Jean and Peter come up with rules to keep their fake relationship going and it embodies the phrase “perfect indie rom-com confection”. The bubblegum awesomeness of the lead couple is already a minor sensation on the internet. Their on-screen pas de deux is quite possibly the best lead chemistry of 2018.

Anna Cathcart as Kitty, Lara Jean's younger sister, is a true find. Her chipper, ridiculously cute disposition is the perfect antidote for my brain, which was addled with the glut of superhero movies, including the latest Mission Impossible, this summer. In an interview Han said that only one of the 20 studios agreed to have a Korean-American protagonist, which says a lot about how much scope exists for Hollywood to evolve.

It's not for nothing that the Netflix stock has doubled in the last 12 months.

jagan.520@gmail.com