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Tuckerscreator (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#26: Sep 3rd 2018 at 3:28:41 PM

[up][up]They don't, but if the film has scenes that are near or in the area, it helps that the extras and setting actually looks like the place. CRA isn't exclusively set among the family mansion, as there are scenes in more casual and lower-class settings, such as an outdoor food court or a mahjong parlour that the rich folk visit incognito.

eagleoftheninth Shop all day, greed is free from a dreamed portrait, imperfect Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: With my statistically significant other
Shop all day, greed is free
#27: Sep 3rd 2018 at 4:50:16 PM

[up][up][up][up] Mmm, having white household staffers would've been... weird and inauthentic, honestly. Plus one of the running themes in the series is the spending asymmetry of the ultra-rich, who can be seriously stingy about the overheads. I think that the best thing the movie could've done was to give the Filipino housekeepers some extra lines and reaction cuts. That's not even strictly a representation move - that's just basic worldbuilding, hinting at a living world outside the main narrative. It also would've been great to show the Gohs' housekeepers dressed casually and lightly joking/arguing with their employers as a way to contrast them to the uptight old money families.

I still kinda have mixed feelings on Oliver, considering the region's record on LGBT+ rights, but... I concur that it's probably a better decision overall, in and outside the narrative, to show him as a happy and functioning member of the family.

And thanks for the links! Yeah, this is pretty much peak "watch with your mum" cinema. Kerry showing up near the end of the movie hits close to home in all the right ways.

I think I caught on more to the inter-generational range of the soundtrack on my second viewing (with my sister visiting). The Chinese covers of the Western pop hits are used for the scenes most focused on Rachel, which illustrates her American upbringing and the Western lenses she sees the setting through. The old swing jazz tracks evoke the Golden Age of Hollywood, '30s Shanghai and (partially) the more modern jazz aesthetics of Wong Kar-wai's movies - and hey, as a swing dancer in Singapore, I'm totally down with this. One of Peik Lin's scenes has a fairly recent Taiwanese hip-hop track, which is the kind of music that Singaporeans her age would've been exposed to. And the first party scene has Teresa Teng's pop classic "Tian Mi Mi", which is not only a mandatory part of every SEA Chinese gathering but also a pretty clever shout-out to the family's immigrant heritage, since it borrowed its melody from a Malay folk song about the arrival of Chinese immigrants in Singapore.

(Actually, there are a lot of ways that the Youngs are coded as Chinese-Malay Peranakan with a cultural heritage just as "mixed" as Rachels's. Man, I'm gonna need a whole new post for this.)

Having an Kina Grannis, an Asian You Tube star, making a cameo actually reminded me again of Awkwafina's You Tube rapper persona, which she also used in Ocean's 8, and how the two are basically different sides of the same coin. I'm not sure if I'll ever warm up to her portrayal of Peik Lin, but I think there's interesting meta discussion to be had on whether the two kinds of You Tube persona are equally valid forms of expression for the Asian community - since they both technically involve cultural borrowing, albeit from different ends of the privilege hierarchy.

@To All The Posts I've Missed Before: So... yeah, the movie actually already features the working class in some capacity. It could've done better to portray them as actual people, though. And the brunch scene could've totally been set in Little India or Arab Street.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Sep 3rd 2018 at 5:24:00 AM

One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.
Tuckerscreator (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#28: Sep 3rd 2018 at 10:43:05 PM

I still kinda have mixed feelings on Oliver, considering the region's record on LGBT+ rights, but... I concur that it's probably a better decision overall, in and outside the narrative, to show him as a happy and functioning member of the family.

I also agree. At least to me, his "swishyness" didn't come off as caricaturing him in exclusion from the rest of the family, because we see other seemingly-straight members like Bernard being really over the top.

windleopard from Nigeria Since: Nov, 2014 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
Tuckerscreator (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#30: Sep 4th 2018 at 7:06:45 AM

O_O

Ah, flashback to 2009 when Ryan Reynolds was just some over-cast face.

Larkmarn Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Hello, I love you
#31: Sep 19th 2018 at 6:10:58 AM

So yeah. Saw it. Could be bias, what with me being an Asian-American whose first visit to Asia was to go to a wedding with the person I was seeing, and also was my first meeting of their family, resulting in my first visit being to a part of the continent I didn't think would go to, but the movie kinda spoke to me. I saw it with my Asian now-wife and it was fun how different parts were more or less relevant to each of us.

It also had what I haven't seen in a while: a good use of Ken Jeong. Love the guy, but damn people don't know how to use him well. By having him be a background character throughout (usually he burns too bright, too fast) he was never "too much" for me.

In a related vein, I really like Oliver. Like, he was a Camp Gay Gay Best Friend and "rainbow sheep" made me cringe, but I really liked him as the movie went on. As someone said before, he was a member of the family. He was at the dumpling scene. And his role at the wedding (getting rid of the starlet Kitty) was badass. I liked the implicit trust between Eleanor and Oliver. She knew he was capable of doing the job and he did it. Honestly, that scene felt like it was out of a Yakuza game and I dig that.

My personal biggest criticism was that I couldn't really figure out where the movie landed on the whole criticism of the crazy rich Asians. I went into the movie worried that it would have a bad case of Do Not Do This Cool Thing but I left it unsure if it even went that far. There were plenty of really flawed people at the top, but it felt like more a condemnation of those people and not the society they make up. It came across as "having money is awesome, being rich is awesome, just don't be a prick about it."

Also, my second biggest criticism was more a Fridge criticism. Man is Nick bland. I didn't notice it that much during the movie due to the actor's charismatic performance, but man, other than "generically nice, super handsome and rich" I really have no idea on who he is. I get it. The movie isn't really about him, per se.

Oh, and lastly: The music was out of this world. I'm buying the soundtrack.

Edited by Larkmarn on Sep 19th 2018 at 10:50:01 AM

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firewriter Since: Dec, 2016
#32: Sep 19th 2018 at 11:50:41 AM

I watched it yesterday, and it had a theme that Black Panther had which is the cultural difference between American born and African/Asian born. It's funny I am comparing a rom-com with a Marvel movie, but a felt that is a theme that they both share and I think should become a more mainstream issue. I wonder if this movie will be popularize more Ethnic rom-coms.

unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#33: Sep 19th 2018 at 11:55:55 PM

[up]To be fair a twetter trend did exactly the same and even ask if that was problematic in general.

As I see it(or I get for all the reviews), the critism of the movie can be held at the fact it sort-of-used singapore as sort of background to tell and Asian-American fantasy of being powerfull,sexy and asertive....while moving away their minorities.

Which as some malay and singapore put it, feel kinda like Asian-American decide to celebrate their own sense of privilage somewhere else.

Is.....kinda awkard to said the least.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
jamespolk Since: Aug, 2012
#34: Oct 2nd 2018 at 3:03:44 PM

Remember how people were ranting about how there were no Singapore migrant workers in a movie called Crazy Rich Asians, and I said someone should make a movie about Singapore migrant workers?

Here it is!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/neither-rich-nor-crazy-film-noir-sheds-light-052125099.html

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