Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

[baumer]

Discuss

[Morieris]

There are some really noticable long stretches that grind things to a halt, but it picks up, and everything is just such a cool ride.

 

Nick and Rachel have personalities and you root for them and cry for them.

 

I love Oliver and Peik Lin, but wish Eleanor was a little more like her book self.

 

B

[ShanghaiJoe]

Not enough martial arts and heads getting chopped off.

[Ethan Hunt]

This movie is gooooooooooooooooood 

 

#bringbacktheromcom2018

[Cap]

When Rachael’s mom showed up in Singapore I fucking lost it with the water works. I reached out and sweezed my mom’s hand.

 

This was really amazing. 

 

Pros:

 

- Amazing characters who were casted they perfectly.  Constance Wu is a legend in the making, and Michelle Yeoh is a fucking goddess. She didn’t have a lot of dialogue, but she didn’t need it. Those EYES.  Awkwafina walked off the Ocean’s 8 set and stole the whole movie. Gemma Chan was fantastic as Astrid, Who was my fave, and I can’t wait for a sequel about her and Harry Shum Jr. (who I knew was in the movie, but he wasn’t, so I squeed when I saw him at the end.)

 

- The DECADENCE. So many pretty locations, and pretty dresses, and pretty people.

 

- GREAT soundtrack. I loved all the covers. (It took me a second to place Yellow, but I laughed at that.)

 

Cons:

 

- The Movie was really romantic and charming and sweet and adorable, but I could have used a little comedy In my romantic comedy. 

 

- Sometimes it felt slow In the middle. It just needed a trim in the editing room. 

 

- Nick got off WAY TOO EASY with Rachel in the beginning. Both mom and i said we would have KILLED HIM if he had done that to us. I understand his reasons for keeping his family from here. But that is a LONG plane ride to Singapore, dude. Don’t throw your girlfriend to the wolves. 

 

- Needed more Michelle Yeoh. 

Edited August 18, 2018 by captainwondyful

[Barnack]

I have not seen that many but it didn't felt like a classic rom-com at all.

 

They start already fully in love

They never break up, there is never any conflict between them and there is never any will they / won't they end up together game

 

The conflict are all exterior to them, more like a Titanic type, with the rich and the not-rich.

 

The stake and conflict take maybe a bit too long to appear, being a book some fan service just like plugging the twins in there type of moment hurt the pace for the non-readers, a lot of it felt like an ostentatious publicity for Singapour and HSBC, probably got them nice tax credit or investment from here, it was at least well done and not something I am use to see.

 

For the most part it work just really well, particularly when Constance Wu is on screen, I do not think I ever saw her before and I will probably watch fresh off the boat, it is a star making type of performance, not sure the male lead worked has well too, some pace and lack of stake by moments, I lacked the knowledge to follow some of it, like the board game at the end I assume she played on the mom fear of loosing in the game as well than in real life (loosing her son relationship) being stronger than the desire to win the perfect wife for her son and so on, but I could not tell what was going on.

 

Performances of the cast in general elevated the material, production design as well and it was well shot for the genre.

 

p.s. The poker beginning made no sense at all, someone with 2 pair fold on an all-in when he will be left with such a small amount that he forfeit the game after ? what !? 

Edited August 23, 2018 by Barnack

[KC7]

Here's a good article that analyzes the mahjong scene. I really appreciate how much thought all the filmmakers put into it.

Quote

During the game, Rachel has a winning hand but deliberately does not play it, instead sacrificing a crucial tile to allow Eleanor to win instead. It’s also revealed during the course of the scene that Rachel has turned down Nick’s proposal, despite loving him desperately, because she doesn’t want to cause a rift between him and his family. The beats of the game mirror the real-life conflict: as Rachel picks up the tile that both she and Eleanor need in order to win, she reveals: “Nick proposed to me yesterday. He said he’d walk away from his family and you for good. But don’t worry, I turned him down.” Literally and figuratively, she holds the winning card – and chooses not to play it for Nick’s sake, thus skewering Eleanor’s assumption that all Americans think about is their own happiness.

Though Chu and co-screenwriter Adele Lim know that Western viewers may not understand the specifics of what goes on in the game, the larger meaning is clear. “Rachel holds a card that both she and Eleanor need to win, and she discards it,” Lim explains. “The game becomes an analogy for their struggle and their conflict over Nick. The card sort of represents Nick – he’s proposed to her, and she could take him and win, but she’s not going to do that. She’s making a sacrifice, and in that way showing that Eleanor’s assumptions about her couldn’t be further from the truth”

For a much more in depth analysis that examines every aspect of the scene at length (as well as how the early poker scene foreshadows this one, this is a great read:

 

"What Was Really Happening in Crazy Rich Asians’ Pivotal Mahjong Scene"

 

 

Edited August 18, 2018 by KC7
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[filmlover]

A very charming throwback to 90s romcoms, the kind we almost never see these days. It might run a bit long, but I was so won over that I didn't care. Constance Wu (so hilarious on Fresh Off the Boat) and Henry Golding are great and are sure to be big stars soon. Awkwafina is quickly becoming quite the scene-stealer. Michelle Yeoh adds class to the proceedings and grounds her mother character in reality when she could've easily become a caricature. It's also immensely satisfying to see Hollywood make a film like this without a single token character into the proceedings. Between Black Panther, Love, Simon, and now this, it feels like 2018 is the year where the industry is finally giving minorities their chance to shine by treating them with projects made with the care and the quality they deserve. B+

[La Binoche]

Ehhhh I was hoping to like this more than I did.

 

Most of the characters are superficial and annoying and at times it feels like you're watching an episode of Keeping Up With The Kumdashians, Asian style.

 

It almost feels like the movie is saying, "hey Americans, we know you don't like to watch movies about Asians but here they're defined by how filthy rich they are and how fabulously they live and look at those mansions and clothes and parties, it almost doesn't matter that they're Asian cuz you can just get lost in their wealth!"  I was especially annoyed by the island bachelorette party. 

 

It's fun and colorful but The Joy Luck Club it isn't. 

 

C

[ShanghaiJoe]

If you've watched more than a handful of Chinese martial arts films, you'll be familiar with the iconic Shaw Brothers logo that adorns so many credits sequences. The brothers in question - Runme, Runje and Runde, later joined by little brother Run Run - set up the first incarnation of their film studio (Tianyi) in 1925 and, by the 1960s, dominated the Chinese film industry. Their Movietown studio in Hong Kong was one of the largest and most technically advanced in the world and the martial arts films it made in the 1970s led the charge of bringing Chinese cinema to the west.

At the height of the kung fu boom, the Shaws were producing 30 to 40 films per year and the quality was shockingly high. Many of the big names in Hong Kong cinema got their start working at Movietown and the system allowed the 'star' directors tremendous creative control over their output. 

As Wu-Tang Clan's RZA (whose work has been heavily influenced by the Shaws) so eloquently puts it, "the difference between a Shaw movie and a regular martial arts movie is like the difference between cornflakes and frosted flakes" adding "if it's Shaw Brothers, you know it'll be dope." Indeed, choosing the dopest Shaw Brothers movie is a near-impossible task, but this month for our ninja and martial arts special, I'm taking a look at one that would end up in almost everyone's top five at least - Crazy Rich Asians (2018), and its two sequels.

 

Crazy Rich Asians was one of the first films directed by Lau Kar-leung, although he had been around the industry for some time, working as an actor and an action choreographer for the Shaws. Lau was also a highly skilled martial artist and master of the difficult Hung Fist style, which is how he initially met Gordon Liu. Years after they’d trained together, Lau insisted Liu – his favourite student – play the lead in Crazy despite having little experience in front of a camera. Ni Kuang's screenplay took Lau and Liu's idea of a more realistic and philosophical approach to onscreen kung fu and turned it into a political piece based on Chinese folk hero, San Te.  

 

The end result is a compelling, sophisticated martial arts film.

Gordon Liu plays Liu Yude, a working class student in Qing Dynasty Guangdong. He's the son of a fishmonger, sick of seeing his family and friends persecuted by the Manchu oppressors who rule the province with an iron fist. Although he joins a group of revolutionaries, their plans are discovered by the Manchus and a bloody massacre ensues. Liu escapes and manages - starving and injured - to literally crawl his way through the woods and up the mountains to Shaolin Temple, the place where he’s heard they teach kung fu. Although Shaolin is closed to outsiders, the monks take him in and heal him, seeing his arrival as an act of providence. There's initial resistance to training him but, when it's clear he's not giving up, they give him a monk name (San Te) and allow him to enter the 35 training chambers.

It's quite a daring narrative in that at least an hour of the film is devoted to training sequences (something most films get finished in a five minute montage) but it’s never dull. Most of the chambers are iconic and imaginative. The earlier ones play San Te's incompetence for laughs but, as he moves through the chambers and improves his skills, the tasks become harder and more exciting. Some focus on training individual parts of the body, such as the incredible 'Head Chamber' where he has to fight his way through hanging sandbags using only his head. There are chambers devoted to the practice of individual weapons. Others focus on mental discipline, like the 'Eye Chamber' where he stands between two flaming sticks and tries not to move his head while watching a pendulum swing. It’s almost like a Saw trap!

Eventually, San Te creates his own weapon - a three-jointed nunchaku that needs to be seen in action to be believed - and becomes both physically and mentally ready to become true Shaolin. Having completed the training in record time, he petitions the Temple to open a '36th Chamber' that allows laymen to learn kung fu, thus creating a force of highly-trained martial artists ready to start a full blown revolution against the Manchus. The rest is, literally, history.

 

So what makes Crazy Rich Asians so special?

Well, for one, it's beautifully made. The sets and costumes are as lavish as you'd expect from the Shaws but the technicality of the filmmaking is off the scale. Lau insisted on shooting all the fights at regular speed (many directors of the era used sped-up film for their crazier stunts) and getting exhaustive long takes. Sometimes we're watching as many as 20 different moves by 20 different people in just one unedited shot. It's balletic and breathtaking, a testament to the killer combination of Lau's artistic vision and Liu's phenonemal Hung Fist skills. Liu reportedly suffered many injuries during the filming, and watching, say, the incredible blade fight between him and superstar Lo Lieh, it's easy to see why. The blades are real and the camera doesn't flinch.

Technical accomplishments aside, Crazy Whatever has genuine emotional resonance. Its characters are well-drawn and it has more political and philosophical depth than your average revenge plot. It shows elements of Chinese history (and allegorical folklore) that, in 1978, had rarely been seen in films exported to the west. RZA described the effect it had on him as "awakening a sense of social justice and historic awareness," particularly the struggle against an oppressive government. "As a black man in America, I didn't know that story existed anywhere else."

Indeed the Wu-Tang Clan's determination to train hard and become the best at what they do was also inspired in part by the film (honored in the title of their seminal debut, Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)). Clan member Masta Killa took his moniker from the US retitling of the film (Master Killer) because, as the youngest and least experienced rapper, he felt an affinity with the character and saw himself as needing to go through the training 'chambers' in order to reach the standard of the others. I mention this trivia because it just shows the profound, life-changing impact that a film like this could have on people, even if they weren’t the obvious target audience.

Obviously, a sequel would have a lot to live up to but the film's success demanded one. In perhaps one of his most audacious moves, Lau Kar-leung reunited many of the cast and crew in 1980 to produce a comedy retelling called Return To The 36th Chamber (similar to Sam Raimi's tonal shift between Evil Dead and Evil Dead II). Gordon Liu returns not as San Te but as a conman called Chao Jen Cheh.

The plot runs in parallel with the original - Jen Cheh's friends and family are punished by Manchu overlords so he goes to Shaolin to train hard and defeat them - but Gordon Liu's surprising skill with comedy makes the film fly higher than it perhaps should. Hilariously, he manages to sneak

[Webslinger]

Crazy Rich Asians delivers upon the well-orchestrated – and in this case, well-deserved – hype as a surprise breakout crowd-pleaser. I’m not going to pretend that I understood all the culture-specific humor, but the film succeeds in crafting a narrative that puts a fresh, charming, and ultimately sincere spin on fish-out-of-water romantic comedy tropes. Constance Wu gives what I have to imagine will be a star-making lead performance. She’s an eminently charming presence from beginning to end, and she sells her character’s dilemmas and reactions in such an honest and relatable fashion that it’s difficult not to sympathize with her. The supporting cast is also loaded with solid work across the board, though the highlights come from a scene-stealing Awkwafina, affecting work from Gemma Chan that elevates a subplot that could have felt out-of-place in less capable hands, and an expertly mannered turn from Michelle Yeoh as the male lead’s aloof mother. The sheer decadence of the setting – which has understandably spurred think-pieces critiquing the film’s narrow focus on a privileged community – sometimes threatens to derail the plot, but the actors are so good at keeping their characters grounded that the film still skillfully follows its emotional through-lines and delivers the uncommon syrupy-sweet ending that feels earned. As breezy crowd-pleasers go, this one’s a whole lot of fun. 

 

B+

[Fancyarcher]

My review.

 

https://dailyuv.com/feed/966181

[baumer]

On 8/18/2018 at 5:33 PM, La Binoche said:

Ehhhh I was hoping to like this more than I did.

 

Most of the characters are superficial and annoying and at times it feels like you're watching an episode of Keeping Up With The Kumdashians, Asian style.

 

It almost feels like the movie is saying, "hey Americans, we know you don't like to watch movies about Asians but here they're defined by how filthy rich they are and how fabulously they live and look at those mansions and clothes and parties, it almost doesn't matter that they're Asian cuz you can just get lost in their wealth!"  I was especially annoyed by the island bachelorette party. 

 

It's fun and colorful but The Joy Luck Club it isn't. 

 

C

 

This is how I felt as well.  We're in the minority on this opinion but I really hated the superficiality of many of the characters.  

[Jim Shorts]

Maybe because I’m Filipino and the Philippines pops out dozens of romcoms every year, but I thought this was just average. The acting was stiff, especially the main characters and the chemistry seemed flat for every couple. 

 

At the end, I actually didn’t care if they got back together. That’s how disinterested I had become.  

 

So every filipino/Asian friend and family I have who’s seen it all say it was just so-so while every other friend says it was cute and fun to watch.  Having experienced meeting an Asian mom or parent for the first time myself while dating, the movie was just a little bit off in both drama and comedy.  

 

2.5/5

Edited August 30, 2018 by Jim Shorts

[SteveJaros]

Extremely unimpressed. Gaudy and over the top, everyone too pretty for school, witless dialogue, see the plot 'twists' coming from 100 paces.

 

Have zero idea why this has caught fire with the public. 

 

 

[K1stpierre]

Saw this yesterday with my mom. I thought the cinematography was phenomenal, an absolutely gorgeous film to see. The actors/actresses I thought were very well acted, you really felt the mother's disgust for Rachel, and you empathized with Rachel. I really bought the relationship between Nick and Rachel, thought both had very good chemistry. The pacing was good, was never bored or felt parts dragged. Has some good flares of humor as well.

 

This isn't really my type of movie I go see, but I came out feeling very pleasantly pleased and glad that I did go see it. I'd give this a solid 9/10, A- . 

[Lordmandeep]

I have seen a ton of Indian Bollywood movies with a similar storyline with a ton of over the top superficial characters so 

it was not novel or some gateway to the East as it was to many people in North America.

 

 

So not bad still and like to see more films made in this manner though.

[Goffe]

It clashes pretty hard when it asks you to laugh at caricatures  but also take a few, who doesn’t seem straight out of a cartoon, seriously. It’s also constantly amazed by rich people and what money can buy, throwing it, splashing it at your face every fucking time it can. Also, features one of the corniest, most un-self-aware stuff I’ve seen in genre movies lately.

 

Horrible.  2/10

Edited November 30, 2018 by Goffe