Crazy Rich Asians

It’s rare to see a film like Crazy Rich Asians, adapt­ed from Kevin Kwan’s gild­ed, gos­sipy con­fec­tion of a nov­el, so full of pur­pose. It sees pep­py New York­er Rachel (Con­stance Wu), one year into her rela­tion­ship with the kind­ly Nick (Nick Gold­ing), jet out to Sin­ga­pore for the wed­ding of Nick’s best friend. When she arrives, Rachel dis­cov­ers her boyfriend’s wealthy her­itage and the cul­tur­al quag­mire she has inad­ver­tent­ly become ensnared in.

Con­stance Wu and Hen­ry Gold­ing are charm­ing in the lead roles, the for­mer fur­ther cement­ing her sta­tus as a star on the rise, while Gold­ing show­ing he has the whole­some, clean-cut chops to front roman­tic come­dies for years to come. Then there’s Michelle Yeoh as Nick’s moth­er, Eleanor, an icy light­ning rod of a matri­arch, all pursed lips and pok­er face. Yet Yeoh nev­er lets her char­ac­ter stray into drag­on lady ter­ri­to­ry, Chu art­ful­ly feed­ing in enough moments to human­ise Eleanor. Her respect­ful enmi­ty with Rachel is so com­pelling it could fuel its own spin-off movie.

Chu works won­ders with the mod­est bud­get at his dis­pos­al – just when you think they’ve sure­ly run out of cash the film tran­si­tions to anoth­er jaw-drop­ping moment of visu­al splen­dour. Take the finale, where the dra­ma comes to a head at a lav­ish wed­ding, Chu effort­less­ly sell­ing the ​‘rich’ part of the title. With its heady mix­ture of bright, com­ic book aes­thet­ic and a toe-tap­ping, authen­ti­cal­ly Asian sound­track, this is a film that wants you to have fun and doesn’t let up from the get-go.

If you were break down Crazy Rich Asians to its barest bones, the sto­ry might not seem quite as inspired as the jokes or the cast­ing, but even with­in the usu­al rom-com trap­pings the film is bound­less­ly cre­ative. The time-hon­oured makeover sequence, neat­ly sound­tracked to a Can­tonese ver­sion of Madonna’s ​‘Mate­r­i­al Girl’, feels dif­fer­ent because of Rachel’s rea­son for chang­ing her look. She’s not super­fi­cial­ly beau­ti­fy­ing her­self in pur­suit of self-worth, but strate­gi­cal­ly com­ply­ing with the opu­lent cul­ture around her.

Even when the film does bran­dish a genre trope here and there, its very trans­gres­sive exis­tence – an all-Asian rom-com set in Sin­ga­pore – allows it to nat­u­ral­ly sub­vert expec­ta­tions. It may fall prey to the odd awk­ward joke or sac­cha­rine moment, but Crazy Rich Asians is a blast from start to finish.