Fresh Off the Boat (2015-20)

Fresh Off the Boat, loosely based on Eddie Huang's memoir. An Asian American family on network TV in a family 90s-era sitcom. That's not nothing. It is a watershed moment in American culture. It paved the way for Crazy Rich Asians. It paved the way for Awkwafina, Lulu Wang, Hasan Minhaj and the plethora of new Asian voices we're seeing in film and TV. Representation matters. You don't fully comprehend how much it matters until it is achieved and you realize what the world has been missing out on. Not only does it normalize your own experience, it exposes white society to broader expectations of normalcy too. While maintaining its cultural specificity, it also clearly demonstrates that we all undergo similar experiences. It was always pleasing to identify my friends and family being represented on screen in these relatable characters. Constance Wu and Randall Park became mainstream stars in their own right. And we watched the kids grow up over the last six years. It has been a good run. Let's hope we don't have to wait long for more Asians on network TV.

Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

I really can't emphasize enough how important representation is. I first came to realize at the Cannes Film Festival a couple years ago where I was first exposed to a large number of Asian films. It's not just about seeing people that look like us, it's seeing them confront the many interesting and mundane things that we all face. It has a real effect on the psyche to see these Asian actors receive such praise and applause. The last major Hollywood production to feature an all Asian cast was The Joy Luck Club 25 years ago, a movie specifically about the immigrant experience. The leading lady of Crazy Rich Asians is the daughter of an immigrant going "back" to Asia for the first time in a bit of a reversal. There is significance that this once in a generation film is a romantic comedy, a refreshing take on a generally cookie-cutter genre featuring pretty white people. It tells audiences that Asian-Americans go through the same typical experiences as everyone else, while preserving the cultural specificity of the story (the central conflict underlines the identity crisis that Asian-Americans face--implicit is the assumption that she is Asian in America but American in Asia, in fact too American, too individualistic and ambitious, for Nick, a valid concern). It shows audiences a leading Asian man that not only gets the girl but is a desirable sex symbol in his own right (Though...there's no sex. It's suggestive but by Hollywood standards it is tame, accessible to younger audiences but not completely fulfilling his sex symbol status). These two messages are not nothing. They are immensely important for our society to digest these ideas.

The movie is good fun. Let's start from the beginning. The movie begins with a Chinese cover of Money (That's What I Want), starting a soundtrack that is full of Chinese covers (including a reclamation of Coldplay's Yellow and Madonna's Material Girl) and jazzy Gatsby-tunes. The Chinese music is a really nice touch, and it's not all Mandarin, there are Cantonese songs too. There is a little language confusion in a country that is language confused. Nick's family speaks Cantonese, except for the grandmother that speaks Mandarin, for some reason. I would have liked to see more Singlish in the movie, to give it more of a local flavor. Though I suppose it is notable that the actors get to use their own accents, no one being asked to use a stereotypical accent like they would for other roles. As a side note, Constance Wu is fantastic but she doesn't sound natural. She sounds like Emma Watson doing an American accent, which is weird because she's from Virginia.

Director Jon Chu does glitz and glamor well. The movie's extravagance is full of brilliant color and riches. The set pieces are beautiful and capture the essence of Singapore in all its gardens, by the bay and bottanical, and plants and rare flowers and trees, real and fake. The texting scene at the beginning of the movie is stylish and could have been perceived as childish from a less skilled director. Chu's boldest choice is the mahjong scene. Paralleling the poker scene from the beginning of the movie, Chu does not bother to explain the rules of mahjong, assuming a familiarity with the game, not talking down to his audience. They do hit you over the head with the "throwing away a winning hand" metaphor just in case you couldn't figure out the rules.

The whole supporting cast is excellent (the fierce Michelle Yeoh is brilliant in everything) but Awkwafina is the breakout star. She is hilarious and I wish there was more of her. I think she has a Tiffany Haddish-like meteoric rise coming ahead in her career. And she raps, the Queens native first rose to fame in the hip hop world. She is genuinely fun, and her personality is allowed to come out in the character of Peik Lin.

Just one final note, the trailer features a joke about Nick being the "Prince Harry of Asia," rather than a Prince William. It was ultimately cut from the movie. My theory is it was cut because it was too true. Prince William courted Kate Middleton for many years before they got married. He prepared her for a life in the spotlight, making a point to prepare her to be the future Queen. Harry on the other hand has thrust Meghan Markle into the spotlight with much less preparation. Nick has told Rachel nothing of his family, and this is cruel because she is simply thrown to the wolves without any warning. Harry wasn't that bad, but the joke may have been in poor taste.