WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — In January 2017, the director Jon M. Chu announced an open casting call for Asian and Asian-American actors for his movie adaptation of “Crazy Rich Asians.” Recorded in the kitchen of his West Hollywood home (you can see his fridge in the background), the online plea instructed anyone interested in joining his all-Asian cast, from aspiring actors to “cool personalities with hidden talents,” to post a two-minute video of themselves on social media. “We are looking for you,” he beamed.
The call was an enticing one. The romantic comedy was going to be a major feature film, with a reported budget of $30 million; its inspiration, the best-selling novel by Kevin Kwan, had already sold millions of copies. And then there was the sheer singularity of it all. How often did a Hollywood filmmaker go looking for a whole bunch of Asians for anything? The last time a major Hollywood film set in the present day showcased a majority Asian cast was a whopping 25 years ago, with “The Joy Luck Club” in 1993. Many of the folks Mr. Chu was seeking now weren’t even alive then.
For Asian and Asian-American viewers, the film, which opens on Aug. 15, is important not just as something of a cinematic Halley’s comet — before “Joy Luck Club,” there was “The Flower Drum Song” in 1961, and then, what? There’s also an eager hope that if this movie succeeds, it just might stave off another quarter-century drought. Producers use something called “comps” — recent films similar to the ones they’re pitching — to help sell studios on their ideas and budgets. For the producers of “Crazy Rich Asians,” there weren’t any. For scores of Asian-themed films to come, the hope goes, “Crazy Rich Asians” could be that comp.
When Mr. Chu made his online pitch, the film seemed a godsend for Asian actors, aspiring or otherwise. Forget a few token parts here and there; in this one film, Asian actors would play everything: the romantic leads and sympathetic sidekicks, the comic foils and cads, the faces in the crowd. With more than 4 billion Asians on the planet, how hard could it be to cast this thing?
Ms. Chan was called to Los Angeles from Britain to audition for the role of Astrid, Nick’s glamorous cousin. “There have been lots of times, maybe less now, where I’d be called in, and the character’s race was very much part of the story line,” she said. “Or I’d be told, you have a lovely English accent, but can you sound a bit more Asian? Or somebody else’s idea of Asian. And I just really knew that that wasn’t going to be the case on this film.” The experience went far beyond the casting process. “It made me realize how often I’ve been the only person of color, and certainly the only Asian actor, on a film or TV set. It was wonderful to look around and see people from all over the world.”
Jimmy O. Yang
Early on, Mr. Yang (“Silicon Valley”) thought he might go for the role of Nick, until his manager, ever so gently, set him straight. “He goes, ‘Jimmy, I don’t know how to tell you this, but they’re looking for a good-looking guy for the leading role,” he said. Later, undeterred, Mr. Yang read for the role of Colin, Nick’s equally good-looking friend. About a month after the audition, Mr. Yang’s manager sheepishly told him that the role of Colin had gone to someone else, but would he be interested in playing Bernard, the spoiled, good-for-nothing billionaire in Versace everything? “I was like, dude, yeah!” he said. “Bernard is the most obnoxious, filthy rich, throwing his money around guy, just the worst type of person. Which is just so fun to play.”
Watching Crazy Rich Asians, the film adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s bestselling novel, I found myself wondering how I’m supposed to read the title. Is it “crazy rich” as in, “they’re crazy rich”? Or is it “crazy rich” as in, “they’re crazy and they’re rich”? Jon M. Chu’s film certainly delivers on the lavish trappings of the former interpretation, but if the latter is meant to be the mood of the film, it falls a little short. I wanted things to be a little crazier, I guess, wild high-society intrigue staged with the satisfying bite of mean, wicked satire.
But that is maybe not the movie Warner Bros. and its producing partners wanted to spend $30 million on. What we get instead is smoother and brighter, a fairy-tale romp full of direct Cinderella references that has some muddied messaging about wealth. Mostly, it just whisks us away on a whirlwind tour of an almost fantastical world. Crazy Rich Asians is breathless fun—rather weightless, too.
The movie isn’t without consequence, though. It’s the first major American studio release since 1993’s The Joy Luck Club to feature a predominantly Asian and Asian-American cast, starring Chinese and Chinese-American actors alongside performers from Malaysia, the Philippines, Japan, and beyond. The broadness of the film’s casting—with actors of different backgrounds all playing ethnic Chinese people—has drawn some criticism. But Crazy Rich Asians has also been greeted as an exciting, if distressingly rare, event. Watching the film and its lively ensemble, one gets frustrated thinking of all the time Hollywood has spent saying it would hire diversely if only it could find the talent. If I may gesture broadly at this film.
Leading the pack is Constance Wu, breakout star of ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat, here putting a funny spin on a familiar fish-out-of-water romantic ingenue role. (An ingenue who’s an economics professor at N.Y.U., no less.) She plays Rachel Chu, a Chinese American who’s been wooed by Chinese-Singaporean heartthrob Nick Young (the jaw-droppingly dashing TV presenter-turned-first-time actor Henry Golding—make him a movie star, please). They’ve been serious for a while now, and Nick thinks it’s time she met his family back in Singapore, where he’ll be the best man at a friend’s wedding. Rachel agrees and off they go, on what Rachel assumes will be a fairly standard meet-the-parents trip, albeit one requiring an extra-long plane ride.
The giddy joke of the film, of course, is that Nick Young is in fact the beloved chosen son of one of Singapore’s wealthiest families, and that Nick is something of a celebrity back home. As someone who Googles every Tinder match (and all his exes) before we’ve even made a date, I don’t quite believe that Rachel has never looked up her boyfriend of a year and found out that, holy shit, he’s loaded—with cash and with obligation. But maybe Rachel’s just that admirably unplugged. Whatever the reason, her dawning realization about with whom she’s coupled up gives a giddy zap to the first half of the film. I’m revealing a lot about myself in this review (hell, in this paragraph), but as someone who has seen and enjoyed The Prince & Me many times, I was easily won over by Crazy Rich Asians’ version of this fantasy discovery.
It’s easy to get lost in it. The more one thinks about the movie, though, it’s a bit troubling how wishy-washy Crazy Rich Asians is about its depiction of extreme wealth. The journey of the film is Rachel and Nick agreeing to love each other on their own terms, family expectations be damned, while Nick’s coolly domineering mother, Eleanor (an effectively icy Michelle Yeoh), must come to accept this American interloper or risk losing her son. So there’s a lot about class being considered here, and a bit of a comment on how having too much money can corrode your sense of propriety (while thinking it’s been sharpened). But the film also revels in its material abundance, even going so far as to have a B-story (involving the fabulous Gemma Chan as Nick’s kind but unhappy cousin) that asks us to see righteous empowerment in inherited wealth. Cinderella stories are one thing if they are about someone being magically, bogglingly lifted out of terrible circumstances, a reward for all their suffering. But Rachel is an economics professor at N.Y.U.! How much should all this opulence really matter to her, and to us?
As this summer’s sleeper hit Succession showed us, depictions of monstrously rich people in these difficult times are tricky to assess. Obviously the means that led to Singaporean wealth, and the mechanisms that sustain it, are different than those that keep the American machine churning along. Crazy Rich Asians is novel for being an American studio movie that shows us a different horror of excess. But it’s still excess, and the movie’s wan barbs are not enough to counter all the celebration. The film gives you the odd opportunity to feel swoony and gross at the same time, carried away by the lavishness while also knowing it’s wrong.
Still, plenty of white Americans have been able to enjoy all that stuff guilt-free on film for a century—so why shouldn’t some other people get to join the orgy? There’s a sense of reclamation, or maybe it’s assertion, to Crazy Rich Asians, adamantly illustrating Singapore’s place in the oligarchic narrative of the world. (We even get a little history and geography lesson in the film, delivered by the elastic and ever-welcome Awkwafina.) There’s power in that, in reflecting that heritage (and current reality) onscreen to audiences who recognize it, as well as to those learning it for the first time. If that kind of cultural exchange can also include some good-lookin’ men who are shirtless a lot and Michelle Yeoh in a series of terrific outfits, well, what’s the harm in that? I only wish that if we were going to venerate the ludicrously monied, it had been done with a bit more venom. They can take it. They’re really rich, after all.
The release of the new movie Crazy Rich Asians this weekend, featuring an all-Asian cast, is an important milestone for people who care about diversity in pop culture. As a recent Vanity Fair headline declares, it could be a “watershed moment for Asian representation in Hollywood.”
It’s also a noteworthy moment for a much smaller and less important group: economists. (This story contains no spoilers.)
At the center of the movie, adapted from Kevin Kwan’s best-selling 2013 novel, is Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), an economist who teaches at New York University. Much of the plot is centered on the tension between Rachel—who discovers that her boyfriend, Nicholas Young, is the scion of one of Singapore’s richest families—and the Young family, who fears that she is a gold-digger. Nicholas is quick to dismiss such concerns. “She may be an economist,” Nicholas declares of Rachel in the book, “but she’s the least materialistic person I know.”
As a near-economist myself—I have a Master’s, while Rachel has a PhD—I found the choice to make Rachel an economist an intriguing and peculiar one. Economists are rarely represented in books and film. In fact, I can’t readily think of any other examples. That’s why, although Kwan’s thoroughly enjoyable Crazy Rich Asians is full of juicy subplots, my attention kept wandering back to Rachel’s professional life in New York. I was happy that economists were finally getting their moment in the pop-culture sun. But was Rachel Chu good at her job?
Here’s my analysis, based entirely on evidence from the first book in Kwan’s trilogy. (I haven’t read the other two books or seen the movie—yet.)
Signs that Rachel Chu is, indeed, a good economist
Rachel has an exemplary academic background. As an undergraduate , she went to Stanford University, ranked the third-best school by US News and World Report for studying economics and business. (Some people can’t be satisfied: Nicholas’s mom is disappointed Rachel didn’t go to Harvard.) For her PhD, Rachel attended Northwestern University, another top-ranked school for economics.
she went to Stanford University, ranked the third-best school by US News and World Report for studying economics and business. (Some people can’t be satisfied: Nicholas’s mom is disappointed Rachel didn’t go to Harvard.) For her PhD, Rachel attended Northwestern University, another top-ranked school for economics. Rachel is a professor at New York University, which also has one of the best economics department in the world. In one of the few mentions of her work in the book, a minor character says she had a discussion with Rachel about the “importance of micro-lending in sub-Saharan Africa.” Another person notes that her specialty is economic development. Perhaps Rachel joined NYU to collaborate with noted micro-lending expert Jonathan Morduch.
Throughout the book, other characters refer to Rachel as “smart,” “analytical,” and “accomplished.” All good signs of Rachel’s quality as an academic.
Rachel is a woman in a field that’s dominated by men. Less than one-third of economics PhD students are women, and a recent analysis of a prominent economics jobs site laid bare the misogyny faced by women in the field (paywall). Rachel’s ability to succeed despite this toxic environment suggests she has to be very good at her job.
Signs that Rachel Chu may, in fact, not be such a good economist
The main reason to suspect that Rachel is not a very good economist is that she never really says anything analytical or intelligent in the book. She spends most of her time in shock about the wealth of her boyfriend’s family, and taking in the splendor of her surroundings. She displays little insight about her experiences, and isn’t particularly witty. I know a number of successful development economists, and they are a thoughtful bunch of people who enjoy discussing their work. Rachel does not remind me of them.
Crazy Rich Asians takes place over a summer when Rachel is not teaching. Nicholas suggests that she vacation with him in Asia over the period since she had the time off. Given that Rachel does not yet have tenure, it is shocking that she would take off for an entire summer without spending at least some time on her research. Her choice is not indicative of a very dedicated researcher.
Still, my verdict is that—based on the evidence we have—Rachel is almost certainly a good economist. I doubt she is on her way to a John Bates Clark Medal, but her credentials are far too strong for her not to be at least solid in her field. Sure, her conversations in the book tend to be a bit vapid. But I’ll assume that she has some very smart stuff to say that just didn’t make it into the book.
