Crazy Rich Asians

How exciting to watch a film about people so rich and powerful they can pay to have GPS systems "forget" the location of their family compound.  Crazy Rich Asians (2018; dir. Jon M. Chu) is basically a Cinderella story. Despite the title, little of it depends on the ethnicity of the main characters.  Most of it depends on the assumption that you will be dazed and transfixed by the glamour, and spectacle of the filthy rich.  It does draw a distinction between Asian Americans and native-born Asians, but that distinction matters mostly to the mother of the leading male character and a few others.  It’s mainly an excuse for the plot. The film depends on your eagerness as a member of the middle class in America to observe the doings of the rich with their beautiful houses and luxurious cars and swank bachelor parties held on immense ships.  The plot involves a young Asian man, Nick Young (Henry Golding) who has fallen for an Asian-American woman, Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), raised in modest circumstances in New York.  (Both are professors at New York University). He invites her to his home in Singapore to meet his family and attend his best friend’s wedding. But he doesn’t tell her that he is heir to one of the largest fortunes in the world.  I can’t remember the reason why.  Maybe he didn’t want to frighten her off, or maybe he wanted to be sure she fell for him rather than for his money. When they arrive, Nick’s mother (played effectively by Michelle Yeoh) pretends to be friendly but finds opportunities to tell Rachel how unfit she is to marry her son.  The grandmother, who also at first seems welcoming, also warns Rachel that she can never marry her grandson.  His friends, some of whom had designs on him, trash her room. She runs away, humiliated and set on returning to the United States.  Various complications follow, but ultimately everything works out.  This plot is hardly unique.  The film isn’t unique either.  Much of the acting is good, the locales are bright and gaudy and deliberately exotic in a sort of corporate and high fashion way, but I didn’t find the film entertaining or enlightening. Mainly it provoked in me deep economic envy.