Movie Review: Crazy Rich Asians

Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

Directed by John M. Chu

Written by Adele Lim, Peter Chiarelli 

Starring Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, Awkwafina

Release Date August 15th, 2018

Published August 15th, 2018 

Crazy Rich Asians stars Constance Wu, star of the hit series Fresh Off the Boat, as Rachel Chu, an Economics Professor who is in love with Nick Young (Henry Golding). What she doesn’t yet know is that Nick’s family is crazy rich. The Young family has made billions of dollars and are a big deal in their home country. So big a deal in fact, that when Nick’s best friend is getting married much of the speculation and attention surrounding the ceremony centers on Nick and his family.

Rachel is about to get a crash course in Asian high society when she agrees to go as Nick’s date to his best friend’s, Colin (Chris Pang) and Araminta (Sonoya Mizuno), wedding. They will travel around to the other side of the globe, be immersed in the kind of glamour only the super rich understand and Rachel will have to deal with Nick’s disapproving mother Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh, glamorous as ever), while navigating the choppy water of being the girlfriend of the most wanted man in Asian high society. 

On the bright side, Rachel’s pal from college, Peik (Awkwafina) is on hand to help, as is the one member of Nick’s family that Rachel has met, fashion icon Astrid (Gemma Chan). Rachel will need all the support she can get, especially when she’s thrown to the wolves at a bachelorette party where it appears that only women who’ve failed at dating Nick in the past are on the guest list and each has their eye on taking down Rachel the outsider. 

Crazy Rich Asians is a relatively basic romantic comedy when you take away the social politics at play in having a mainstream romance with an all Asian cast. What director John Chu gets right however, is not relying on the tired romantic comedy plot requirements. The best modern rom-coms are aware that we know everything about their plot mechanics, what we want are great characters who stand apart and above stock stories. 

Constance Wu’s Rachel is just the kind of character we need to get passed all of the overly familiar elements of Crazy Rich Asians. Wu is a wonderful comic actress with smart instincts and a terrific face, brilliant eyes that communicate as much as any dialogue might. She’s a wonderful comic player and yet down to earth enough to ground the story of Crazy Rich Asians in something we can relate to and invest in. 

Henry Golding is terrific as well, if a little more eye-candy than his co-star. Golding’s shirtless scenes are plentiful in Crazy Rich Asians and the the beefcake is rarely necessary. Thankfully, he’s also given a few normal scenes where we get a sense of how much he loves Rachel and the sacrifices he’s willing to make to show her how much he loves her. He is an active part of the plot rather than a function of Rachel’s half of the plot, opposite Michelle Yeoh’s scheming Eleanor. 

Another thing I must commend Crazy Rich Asians for is creating realistic stakes surrounding Rachel and Nick’s relationship and the class warfare at play. A lazier movie might ask us to simply accept that class is a reason why two people who love each other would be pushed apart, but Crazy Rich Asians digs into the emotions at play and makes them part of the game of chicken that Rachel is forced to play with Eleanor. 

It’s not a revolutionary plot but it’s done well enough and with enough laughs that I really enjoyed Crazy Rich Asians. That the film has an all Asian cast is the most notable thing about the movie but the creators didn’t rest on history or novelty, they hired a brilliant cast and gave them rich characters and emotions to play within a familiar plot circumstance. We’ve seen much of this before but not with this racial twist and not with these wonderful characters. 

John M. Chu is greatly improving as a director. His previous feature outing was Now You See Me 2 and while many critics didn’t care for it, I found it to be a heck of a lot of fun, the work of a playful director. With Crazy Rich Asians that playfulness is on display once again and again, I found it charming. Chu has a great eye for set design when he has a good budget and he takes full advantage of his significant budget here, showing us all of the glamour and excitement having money can bring. 

The lavish setting serves to help further put us in the mind of Rachel who is completely overwhelmed by the surroundings and is reeling emotionally from the aspects of Nick’s life that he was hiding from her and the family that is not accepting of her as an outsider. It’s a whirlwind of emotions and Constance Wu is incredibly sympathetic but also feisty and intelligent, able to cut through the nonsense and stay true to herself. 

Again, all of that is pretty standard culture clash, fish out of water, romantic comedy stuff. It’s just greatly elevated  by one of the best comic actresses to come along in some time. Wu is a real winner and because of her and the fun direction by John M. Chu, I’m eager to recommend Crazy Rich Asians. 

Movie Review Hustlers

Hustlers (2019) 

Directed by Lorene Scafaria 

Written by Lorene Scafaria 

Starring Jennifer Lopez, Constance Wu, Julia Stiles, Keke Palmer, Lizzo, Cardi B 

Release Date September 13th, 2019

Published September 12th, 2019 

On the one hand, the strippers of the new movie Hustlers are criminals, unquestionably, they are criminals. However, it’s fair to also state that they are not the villains of this movie either. Hustlers operate in a most amazing gray area where we are able to sympathize with criminals and lustily boo the victims who are stand-ins for the real criminals who tanked the American economy in 2007 amid the housing crisis. 

Hustlers capitalizes on some of the tastiest schadenfreude you can imagine by positing a story wherein: too rich for their own good Wall Street criminals get taken for thousands of dollars of the money they stole from others by those who would otherwise be on the other end of the economic spectrum, a diverse collection of women and specifically single mothers in J-Lo and Constance Wu’s characters. 

It’s hard not to take pleasure in watching these skeevy, criminal pigs get taken by the very people they intend to victimize with their ill-gotten gains. It’s not justice that would be found in creating a just and fair economic system free from the kind of thumb on the scale manipulation that these men have championed, but it’s a tasty bit of minor karmic retribution that feels good, like a cookie for the soul. 

Constance Wu stars in Hustlers as Dorothy or, on stage, Destinee. Dorothy is struggling to get by as one of the new girls at a high roller strip club in New York City. Her commute is barely worth the pittance in tips she walks away with after management and the rest of the support staff take their cut. Then, Dorothy meets the club’s Queen Bee, Ramona Vega (Jennifer Lopez). Ramona has the place wired to the point where she merely has to point her prominent backside in any direction and the room rains with money. 

Dorothy dreams of being like Ramona and after introducing herself, the two become inseparable. Ramona takes Dorothy under her wing, they perform together, and they begin making incredible amounts of money together. Dorothy and Ramona start living an extravagant life off of the money tossed at their feet by Wall Street jerks for whom such money is meaningless compared to the horrific lies they tell to earn it. 

Then, the housing crisis hit in 2008 and the gravy train came to a screeching halt. The club, once wall to wall with Wall Street money, is now nearly empty. Dorothy leaves to have a baby and get married, only to find her baby daddy is nearly as worthless as the Wall Street bros she once danced for and both she and Ramona are on the streets trying to find jobs in a real world that doesn’t exactly fit their very specific skill set. 

Then, Ramona hits on a plan: what if there were a way to get what’s left of the high rollers back to the club? Her idea? High end, designer drugs that ease the inhibitions and open the high rollers to suggestions such as allowing a stripper to run your credit card unmonitored. Using her vast connections, Ramona, with Dorothy in tow, recruits two other struggling dancers, played by Lily Reinhart and Keke Palmer, to drug rich men, carry them to the club, take their credit cards to the limit and send them home with the bill. 

That’s the premise of Hustlers but the payoff you will have to see for yourself. It’s not the destination that really matters in Hustlers, it’s the execution and the execution of Hustlers is top notch. Writer-director Lorene Scafaria has just the right touch for this material, lightly comic at times, self-serious when necessary, with just the right mix of dark comedy, sex and drama. It’s not a perfect movie, but it gets a strong point across. 

Jennifer Lopez has not been this great in a movie in years. Playing the heavy support to Constance Wu’s more meaty lead role, Lopez’s megawatt star power hasn’t been this notable since her pre-Gigli, pre-Jersey Girl, Jenny from the Block days. It’s refreshing to see Lopez so confident and relaxed on screen after suffering through years of her downplaying her remarkable beauty and presence in forgettable romantic comedies. 

Constance Wu, if she can get out from under her own ego,- note her tantrum over her TV show not being canceled and ugly demands on her place on the Hustlers promotional material- will be a big star one day. She has dramatic chops that can turn quickly and wittily comic. She’s a natural screen presence and quite a beauty when she gets out from under a bad wig. She’s overshadowed plenty by Lopez but few actresses would not be. That said, she doesn’t get lost in the glare of Lopez’s star power and proves herself as the dramatic lynchpin of this incredible and well told story. 

Hustlers is better than I expected from a movie that, in the wrong hands, could have been merely titillating. Instead, Hustlers is weighty, satirical, dramatic and quite funny, often within the range of a single scene. Don’t believe me? See Hustlers and watch the Usher Raymond cameo and you will get what I am saying about the remarkable range of this diverse and exciting movie. Hustlers is the great surprise at the movies in 2019.