• Rich Crazy Asians

5/12/26 (Tues)

A typical poor-girl-meets-rich-boy-with-snobby-family tale dressed in Singaporean guise. A Chinese-American woman, a respected professor of economics, accompanies her fabulous Singaporean boyfriend to his country to attend the wedding of his best friend and, as it happens, meet his family for the first time. She realizes when she arrives that her low-key lover is actually the scion of one of the country’s wealthiest and most aristocratic families. He is in fact expected to return from New York to take over the massive family conglomerate. That comes as news to his unsuspecting girlfriend, who had planned to continue in her own career back home. The situation is complicated by the fact that she is looked down upon by the uber-rich society in which her boyfriend belongs and positively hated by the mother, who has her eyes on more appropriate women for her son. Though the boyfriend remains unwavering in his loyalty, the girlfriend decides that she’s not meant for this high-end world and decides to leave. It’s no spoiler to reveal that the mother comes to accept the woman in a sappy conclusion.

Mush from start to finish, though no better or worse than other films of this ilk. The unrealistically over-the-top wealthy family, cold disapproving mother, and the usual misfits (fat woman, quippy gay man, etc) are all there in conventional Hollywood fare. Michelle Yeoh is great as always as the imperious mother, and the handsome lead and his best friend are appropriately hunky. Great music, including several of the Grace Cheng numbers (like 我要你的愛) used years earlier in The Hole. Bummer about the standard-fare closing theme song, which has none of the feel of the Chinese numbers used otherwise. Why does every closing film theme sound the same these days?

Harmless entertainment, enjoyable for what it is. But is this really what Asian-Americans aspire to when they cry for representation? They’ve been reduced to cartoon versions of white performers. As an aficionado of actual Asian films, I don’t see that as progress.