CRAZY RICH ASIANS

CRAZY RICH ASIANS is an epic romantic comedy. It has some of the tropes and expectations of a traditional rom-com, but it's scale and achievement makes it epic. Set mostly in Singapore, it has some local critics saying the movie doesn't get their city state, and the mix of its inhabitants, correct. But watching it, I felt like others have reacted, I actually welled up, overwhelmed by the reality of an all Asian cast getting to light up the screen with joyful charisma unfettered by martial arts displays or any of the usual Hollywood Asian movie cliches (well, for the most part).

As others have pointed out, one of the breakthrough aspects of the movie is the leading men, all Asian, and mostly hunky and handsome and totally holding the screen as movie stars. If I had my choice for the next James Bond it would be Idris Elba, but if not him Henry Golding (the leading male in CRAZY RICH ASIANS) or Harry Shum Jr. (Golding's character's best friend in the film).

And any one of the women in the movie could carry their own film as a lead, including the marvelous Awkwafina who stole OCEAN'S EIGHT and would almost steal CRAZY RICH ASIANS if she wasn't up against such powerhouses as the iconic, legendary Michelle Yeoh, and the younger stars Constance Wu and Gemma Chan.

Sitting in the theater, moved by the magnitude of a genre movie's impact in normalizing what Hollywood generally marginalizes, I remembered sitting in a crowded theater on the other coast back in the day watching an audience respond to the Irish movie THE COMMITMENTS and thinking, this is a game changer, the real Irish culture and landscape is being not just accepted but celebrated. And though CRAZY RICH ASIANS is mostly limited to the class the title refers to, it still represents an acceptance and celebration of real individual Asians in a movie unrelated to the non-Asian perspective of almost any other Hollywood movie to date.