Crazy Rich Steemians

So the other day I jumped on the bandwagon to watch Crazy Rich Asians. It's been getting many positive reviews, and my friends were all pretty excited about it. (There are no spoilers in this post)

I'll just say right away that I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Coming in, I had found out some fun facts, that

1. The movie has an all Asian cast. This wasn't really a big deal in my mind, but it comes in contrast to the tendency in Hollywood to favor white actors. The other point to make here is that the cultural identity of the role in question is pretty critical to the story, so it would have been pretty bizarre barring some sort of magical makeup or computer magic. But why bother with that, when you have so many talented Asian actors?
2. For distribution they declined a very good offer from Netflix with high pay and creative freedom because of the cultural impact of a theatrical release.
3. The cast was found through an international casting call and there are some interesting choices, including the lead who prior to this role was a biracial Malaysian television show host with no prior acting experience. Apparently casting biracial actors caused quite a stir as well, but at this point I stopped paying attention.

Building up to the movie was watching the co-stars interviewing with various late night show hosts and describing the movie, and so I went in knowing that it was a romantic comedy. The funny thing is that other folks we watched the movie with did not realize it would be a romantic comedy and had to quickly adjust their expectations as the movie progressed.

It was fun to see a variety of reactions to the movie. As I said, I enjoyed it. The production quality is what you'd expect from Hollywood, and while the plot is nothing too special I'd say it fills that special mushy romantic comedy hole that some people have for their guilty pleasure they don't want anyone else to know about. I also liked the fun animations they used to show how fast gossip travels in the social circles in the movie.

One of us disliked it so much she wanted to walk out of the theater, but sat through it uncomfortably. We were going to eat dinner afterwards anyway. This was one who thought the movie was not going to be a romantic comedy. I did read from the Wikipedia article that the marketing was intentionally vague so that people would not know what to expect, so that fits.

My wife, who grew up in Taiwan, was not impressed. She thought there were many elements that were too "American", among other deficiencies, such as the main male character being boring, which I could see as well. The most interesting part after all was the interaction between the female main character and the mother, which they consciously made the focus of the movie. The movie emphasizes the gap between Asians and Asian Americans, which not many people may know exists. Indeed, in some cases Asian Americans are looked down upon by the Asians for "forgetting who they are". And what do you know, it's amusing to see this difference in opinion concerning the movie between my wife and me (I'm Asian American).

The final point is that reading the book plot synopsis from Wikipedia, unsurprisingly the book plot and character development is much richer than the movie. Makes you wonder whether the Netflix 3-part format would have been a better format for the story. Probably so, but I can see how a theatrical release would generate much more buzz, as much as it did. (Well at least around where I live, not sure about you).

Anyway, any of you see this movie? What did you think about it? And will the world be ready for Crazy Rich Steemians?

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