Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		5.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

Crazy Rich Asians Blu-ray Movie Review

Lifestyles of the Rich and Not-So-Famous

Reviewed by Michael Reuben November 29, 2018

Ten years ago, Joss Whedon & Co. recorded a show business parody entitled Commentary! The Musical, which included a satirical lament about the stereotypical supporting roles to which Asians are relegated in movies and TV ("the goofy mathematician, the computer technician, a wise old healer from Japan, a short but wealthy businessman"). But times have changed. In Crazy Rich Asians, Asians get to play the stereotypical leading roles, in addition to (nearly) all of the supporting parts. Director John M. Chu's film is an adaptation of Kevin Kwan's best-selling novel of the same name, and if nothing else, its success demonstrates that certain tales are timeless, always holding the potential for appealing reinvention by an interesting spin in an unexpected direction.

At its core, CRA is a classic fairy tale of lovers destined to be together, even though one of them is royalty and the other is not. The Cinderella of this story may not have a wicked step-family, but she comes from nothing and nowhere, and she's a self-made woman: an economics professor with a Ph.D. and a specialty in game theory—that detail is important—raised by a penniless single mother who emigrated from China to America. As CRA opens, Rachel Chu (Constance Wu, Fresh Off the Boat) has been blissfully dating Nick Young (Henry Golding) for a year, during which she has somehow managed not to discover that he is secretly a prince. The scion of Singapore's wealthiest family, Nick is the Far East's most eligible bachelor—if one can pass the inspection of his formidable mother, Eleanor Young (Michelle Yeoh). (A prologue borrowed from a Sixties TV show, The Tycoon, shows how Nick grew up watching his mom bend the world to her will.) Rachel doesn't have a chance of clearing the high bar of Eleanor's withering scrutiny, and presumably Nick knows that, which might explain why he's kept their relationship on the down low for so long.

But let's pause for a moment to contemplate the cleverness with which director Chu and screenwriters Adelle Lim and Peter Chiarelli neatly slide this foundational improbability past the audience. Nick is well-known among New York's smart set of Asian jet-setters, and yet CRA asks us to accept that all of them have managed not to notice that he's spent the last twelve months romantically besotted by a woman who isn't one of their own. The awareness dawns suddenly one evening, followed by a blizzard of texts and social media postings that ping their way around the world to Mama Eleanor's smart phone. How has this not happened until now? But Chu so effectively dazzles us with onscreen graphics and warms our hearts with the romantic chemistry between Wu and Golding that the improbabilities go flying by, and we're hooked on the film's key narrative question: How will Rachel survive the gauntlet she's about to run, as Nick brings her home to attend the wedding of his best friend Colin (Chris Pang) to Araminta (Sonoya Mizuno)? We know instinctively that Rachel will emerge victorious, because true love always prevails in a fairy tale. The pleasure is in watching her trials and tribulations along the way.

And what glittering trials and tribulations they are! CRA owes as much to the grandiose fantasies of reality TV as it does to Mother Goose and the Brothers Grimm. (The Bachelor is invoked by name.) Each new event is bigger and flashier, from the engagement party, where Rachel meets her many opponents—not just Eleanor, but Amanda Ling (Jing Lusi), who once dated Nick and still has her eye on him—to the ludicrous excesses of the bachelor and bachlorette parties, and of course the wedding itself. (Seriously, can you imagine any bride willing to let her carefully selected wedding dress trail her through a flooded aisle resembling a babbling brook strewn with flowers?) CRA revels in these camera-ready creations, while Rachel (and, to a lesser extent, Nick) struggle toward the fulfilment of their time-tested love and connection. There are confrontations, revelations, reversals of fortune and moments where all seems lost—standard fare for a fairytale love story, before we arrive at the inevitable happy ending.

In addition to its appealing leads, CRA has an exceptional supporting cast. Akwafina has drawn the most attention as Peik Lin, Rachel's devoted best friend, whose family is wealthy but not royalty like the Youngs (I guess they're considered "noveau riche"). With her cropped platinum hair and irreverent attitude, Peik Lin steals scene after scene, especially when paired with Nick's second cousin, Oliver T'sien (Nico Santos), who somehow manages not to become a mincing cliche. At the opposite end of the scale, though, and just as memorable is Gemma Chan's Astrid, Nick's beloved first cousin, whose poised elegance is matched only by her radiant good nature. She's one of the few family members who instantly sides with Rachel and Nick, although she knows from her own troubled marriage what kind of obstacles await this pairing between a partner born to fabulous wealth and one who had to work her (or his) way up the social and economic ladder. And then there's Nick's enigmatic grandmother, Su Yi (a/k/a Ah Mah), played by the venerable Chinese actress Lisa Lu. Will she bless the match or oppose it? Does it all depend on Rachel's ability to learn how to make Ah Mah's dumplings? Or is there more to it?

Michelle Yeoh has had a long and remarkable career, from the ass-kicking detective of Supercop to the ass-kicking Bond girl of Tomorrow Never Dies to the warrior princess of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to, more recently, the stern starship Capt. Georgiou in Star Trek: Discovery. Her presence is always authoritative, and here she draws an increasingly complex portrait of an iron-willed matriarch who is, in her own way, a self-made woman. In the end, her battle with Rachel over her son's loyalty comes down to a tense round of mahjong that is genuinely suspenseful, even if you don't know the first thing about the rules of the game.

Crazy Rich Asians Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Crazy Rich Asians was photographed digitally by Vanja Cernjul (The Deuce), whose rich lighting the director repeatedly praises in the disc's commentary. According to IMDb, the film was finished on a 4K digital intermediate, but I have been advised by an authoritative source that the DI was, in fact, 2K; still, the disc should make an impressive 4K upscale if the promised UHD disc ever arrives. The image on Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is already exceptional, with superb clarity, sharpness and detail and a velvety texture that makes the most of the film's luxuriously colored production design and eye-popping locations. Blacks are dark and deep, colors are richly saturated (except briefly at the beginning, where the color is dialed down for a flashback), and if there's any noise, interference or artifacting, I must have missed it. No doubt one of the reasons for the disc's superior image is that it is one of the lucky escapees from Warner's "Stupid Disc Authoring" (SDA™), with a healthy average bitrate of 31.95 Mbps and a superior encode.

Crazy Rich Asians Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Although CRA's end credits indicate a theatrical release with Dolby 7.1 sound, the film arrives on Blu-ray with neither an Atmos remix nor a 7.1 track. Still, the disc's lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 track provides ample sonic support to the film's many scenes of crowded events at sumptuous homes, during island retreats, in a magnificent church and, for what may be the film's most extravagant display, on a cargo freighter tricked out for a bachelor party and reached by helicopter. Subtler effects permeate the environment in less showy scenes; the restaurant where we first encounter Rachel and Nick quietly surrounds them with the clinking of china and flatware (foreshadowing the deluge of inquiries that their sighting will trigger), and the mahjong parlor where Rachel and Eleanor square off is alive with the clatter of game tiles being shuffled and played. The English dialogue is clearly rendered and properly prioritized, and I assume the same is true of the subtitled dialogue (presumably in Mandarin). The versatile Brian Tyler (Avengers: Age of Ultron) supplied the understated score, but the soundtrack's more memorable musical accompaniment is the selection of pop songs, many of them familiar tunes in unfamiliar covers (e.g., "Material Girl" or "Money (That's What I Want")).

Crazy Rich Asians Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Director John M. Chu and Novelist Kevin Kwan: Chu and Kwan make an enthusiastic pair, and Kwan repeatedly expresses his delight with the way that his tale has been realized for the screen. Chu points out numerous details of performance, production design and CG enhancement, and he speaks with great affection about both his cast and his creative team. By the end of the commentary, the pair is already planning their next film based on the first of Kwan's two sequels, China Rich Girlfriend.



• Crazy Rich Fun (1080p; 1.78:1; 7:18): A standard-issue studio EPK featuring the director, novelist Kwan and members of the cast.



• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 2.39:1; 12:10): The scenes are not separately listed or selectable. A title card precedes each one.


• Sc 5-6: Karaoke
• Sc 11: Shopgirl
• Sc 24: Exterior Singapore Airport
• Sc B36: Nick and Mom Fight over Rachel
• Sc 53: Arrival at Bachelor Party (Extended Version)
• Sc 61: Medevac
• Sc 77: Wedding Dance



• Gag Reel (1080p; 2.39:1; 1:47): Short and pretty minor, except for the engagement ring gaffe, which is great.



• Introductory Trailers: As usual with Warner, the film's trailer is not included. At startup, the disc plays trailers for A Star Is Born (2018) and Ocean's 8.

Crazy Rich Asians Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Without in any way minimizing the importance of its casting breakthroughs, it's worth noting that CRA exists in a fantasy universe of conspicuous consumption that almost no Asians of any nationality enjoy (and, for that matter, no Americans, Europeans or anyone else). The majority of wealthy people don't throw around their wealth like the Youngs and their social set; they live quietly under the radar, and you could pass them on the street and never know there was anything different about them. The financial excesses of CRA are as much a fictional creation as the sexual fantasies of pornography, and indeed the two "genres" have more in common with each other than either does with reality. But their popularity is undeniably infectious, and Chu and his creative team have effectively used the seduction of "spending porn" to smuggle an entire cast of otherwise unlikely faces into a successful mainstream Hollywood movie. Enjoy this gleaming bauble for what it is. The Blu-ray certainly represents it to best advantage.