For Some Viewers, ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Is Not Asian Enough

In the United States, “Crazy Rich Asians” has been celebrated for its all Asian and Asian-American cast. But in Singapore, where it was shot, some residents said the movie is not representative.CreditRozette Rago for The New York Times

HONG KONG — “Crazy Rich Asians,” a romantic comedy that opened in the United States on Wednesday, is a rare commodity: a Hollywood film with a majority Asian cast. For many Asian-American viewers, that is a positive, if sorely belated, development.

But ahead of the film’s release next week in Singapore, where much of the action is set, some residents there have questioned whether “Crazy Rich Asians” is the panacea of diversity that its proponents suggest.

A primary worry is that the Warner Bros. film focuses on Singapore’s Chinese, the dominant ethnic majority, at the expense of Malays, Indians and other ethnic minorities who collectively account for about a quarter of Singapore’s 5.6 million people.

“Part of the way that this movie is being sold to everyone is as this big win for diversity, as this representative juggernaut, as this great Asian hope,” said Sangeetha Thanapal, a Singaporean Indian writer and activist who is researching a doctoral dissertation on the concept of Chinese privilege in Singapore.