I think Rotten Tomatoes is crazy to give Crazy Rich Asians a rating of 93%. The movie was just plain boring! If I wanted to watch a shitty Channel 8 or Channel 5 drama, all I'd have to do is turn on the television. I can't believe I sat through the entire movie without throwing up out of disgust, then standing up and walking out. (At the start I already felt like leaving the movie theatre. I should've done so, just like how Pierre Png got out of his car) There was nothing good about the movie. The entire plot (if there even was one. For the first half of the movie, I felt like nothing was going on) was so cliche. Come on. The rich dude's family doesn't approve of his girlfriend. Okay. We've seen that in a million Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, and Hong Kong dramas. Basically, most Asian dramas. So what does the movie Crazy Rich Asians do to make itself stand out? Absolutely nothing, apart from spending their budget on crazy and rich stuff. Yeah, okay, I get it. That's the title of the damn movie. But can't you at least have an interesting plot as well?
And yeah, okay, it's an all Asian cast. I GET IT. SO WHAT? Black Panther was praised for its cast too, but it also had a wonderful plot. It was exciting. I didn't feel like killing myself while watching it. In fact, I wouldn't mind watching it again because it was that good! But this movie? No thanks. And in the first place, it shouldn't be called Crazy Rich Asians. I mean, the only Asians in this movie were Chinese people. The movie started with a quote from Napoleon. "Let China sleep, for when she wakes she will shake the world." I immediately turned to my boyfriend and asked, what's the point of this quote? Well, apparently there is NO BLOODY POINT. The movie producers are giving all other Asians a big and loud, "Fuck you! Chinese people are the only Asians to us, and all Chinese feel a sense of belonging to China!" Why the fuck are we talking about China anyway? For the last fucking time, Singapore is not in China, okay?
As if the plot wasn't bad enough, the acting was worse. Okay, there are still dramas with cliche plots. To be more specific, there are a whole bunch of dramas about the exact same thing. Rich man. Poor girl. Rich family disapproves. Conflict. Love conquers all. Happily ever after. Okay, sure. Some people like that shit. There are people who watch these cliche dramas or films and cry because the acting was good and they felt moved. But in this movie? I just felt like punching the male lead in the bloody face. First of all, he doesn't even tell his girlfriend about his family. Which motherfucker does that? And Rachel, the female lead, informs her mom about this fact casually. Somehow, her ASIAN mum is okay with her daughter flying all the way from America to Singapore with a creep who doesn't even tell her anything about his family. Are you kidding me? Then, as if that wasn't a red flag, Rachel later finds out that Nick didn't tell her about his ex. Excellent communication skills, Nick. The worst part about Nick is that he thinks he's Prince Charming because he spews out cliche one-liners like, "I think I just fell in love with you for the second time." EW! SLAP HIM, RACHEL!
Rachel has good mahjong skills, I'll give her that. But if I was Rachel, I'd be utterly horrified if Nick proposed to me at the Singapore River. After all that shit, Nick thinks that a proposal would magically solve everything. Gross! At that point, I was internally screaming, "PUSH HIM INTO THE FUCKING RIVER, UGH!" I would have loved to see an ending where Rachel just rejects Nick in the plane, and flies off to New York. I don't need an expensive party at the roof of MBS with synchronised swimmers. That's so stupid.
There are so many unnecessary party scenes in the movie, and Rachel doesn't even seem to have any emotions about anything. Okay, at first, when she finds out that she's flying business class (or first class or whatever) and gets a glass of champagne and all that atas stuff, she is amazed by how rich her boyfriend is. (Which is strange, because you'd think that after one and a half years of dating, he would have at least pampered her in some way or another, or, I don't know, tell her about his family. See above) Then after that, when she's on some island, she watches girls fight for branded clothes and bags like it's the most normal thing in the world. She doesn't even judge them, and she doesn't even look disgusted. If she was indeed from a single parent family, she would have had quite a rough childhood. Why on earth isn't she judging these idiots? At no point in the movie did she show her disgust about the extravagance of it all. I would have liked a more relatable protagonist, please. Even superheroes with unrealistic superpowers are more relatable than this character.
Oh, and there are some side characters. Astrid is super gorgeous but the relationship she had with her husband aka Pierre Png was the dumbest shit in the world. She finds out that he's having an affair through the most cliche way possible: accidentally reading his texts. Wow, how original. And if that wasn't clear enough to the audience, they get Astrid and Rachel to sit down at the beach and they make Astrid state that her husband is cheating on her. Yeah okay okay, we get it! How stupid do you think the audience is? The movie has time for this nonsense but it had no time to show us what Nick's mother said to Nick after her mahjong session with Rachel. Ugh. And when Astrid tells Rachel about her sad news, Rachel doesn't react like a normal human being. She doesn't say things like, "Are you sure? What happened? How did you find out?" No. Rachel just accepts the news, like she had always known that this would happen. Erm, okay. Why are you so quick to judge Pierre Png but not the other girls who ended up calling you a gold digger?
And Pierre Png's character is so stupid. He was the one at fault but he gets to walk out of the car (such a coincidence, they stopped at a lovely bridge and not on a highway) and let his wife attend a disgusting wedding on her own. He says that he wishes for Astrid to raise her voice and fight with him. He doesn't like the fact that she didn't wanna cause a scene. Well, newsflash, loser. You don't need to fight to be in a healthy relationship. You're the one who's bringing toxic waste into the relationship, not her. This guy is indeed crazy and I'm glad Astrid ended the relationship on her terms, not his. But I still don't really care much for these characters. What's their point in the movie? To make sure that the story isn't too boring because the lead characters are? Nope, I was still bored. I had the urge to take out my phone and play some mindless mobile games, but I resisted because I had to be considerate.
You know what this movie should be called? "How Some Weird Chinese People Don't Tell Each Other Shit". If Pierre Png's character and Astrid talked about their problems, he might not have had an affair. If Rachel's mum told her the truth about her Dad and if Nick told Rachel the truth about his family and his ex, none of this would've happened. No stupid misunderstandings. I don't understand why they even kept the truth from their loved ones in the first place! Don't you think that your daughter deserves to know about her parentage? Don't you think that the woman you plan to marry would eventually find out about your crazy rich family? It's so ridiculous.
Nick and Rachel attend a wedding but the couple doesn't even speak Singlish. They are supposed to be Singaporeans, right? Why do they speak perfect English? Why does the bride keep screaming about everything? And why are they driving a car without the hood up? It's Singapore, and it's hot. And every time the actors try to speak in a language they aren't familiar with, I cringe. They either overdo it, or they just can't. But somehow, the servants can speak almost perfect English. Oh my gosh. Does no one in this movie have a Malaysian or Filipino accent? And the jokes? They all just fell flat. The theatre I was in was silent throughout most of the movie. When Rachel's mum flew over to comfort her daughter, there was a scene where they were just lying down on the bed, sharing a moment. Then the creep (Rachel's best friend's brother) arrives and takes not-so-sneaky pictures of them. The ladies laugh. Erm, ok. "Am I supposed to laugh with them?" I wondered. No one in the theatre laughed. I was laughing to myself because of the fact that no one laughed. They actors were trying so hard. It was just terrible. Lastly, Chinese people do not just listen to old Chinese songs okay! I thought this goes without saying but ugh, this is fucking ridiculous.
After the movie, my boyfriend and I just started talking about how we wasted our time watching a worthless movie, and it even felt like a game. We started saying, "I'd rather be _____ for two hours than watch Crazy Rich Asians." Some of these things included "marking terrible scripts", "in a bumpy jeep", "experiencing turbulence in a plane" and a cliche one, "watching paint dry". It's cliche but hey, at least it works! Unfortunately, the same thing can't be said for Crazy Rich Asians.
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