When Crazy Rich Asians was first announced and trailers were released, it quickly caught the attention of many around the world. Based off of the international best seller(insert book name)by Kevin Kwan, expectations for the movie were big and continued to grow as news of the upcoming film spread quickly on social media, especially Twitter. Many were excited to have a movie fully centered around a powerful and wealthy Asian family. This level of inclusiveness and diversity is still something quite rare to find in this day and age, so many people world wide eagerly awaited for the movie to release. The big question is, did this movie rise to the hype surrounding it?

Crazy Rich Asians is a comedy-drama/romance about Rachel Chuu and her boyfriend, Nick Young, taking a trip to Singapore, China to attend Nick’s best friend’s wedding. Before flying over, Rachel requests to finally meet Nick’s family, as she doesn’t know much about them and has yet to meet them . To her surprise, it turns out the Young’s are one of the richest families in China. She’s shocked and still eager to meet them, but that changes quickly after she attends a party where his family is present.  It becomes clear many in his family, especially his mother, are not fond or impressed about the fact Rachel is dating Nick. This is mainly because she’s both American and hasa different lifestyle than they do. Throughout the movie, many of Nick’s family members are showcased, some very likeable like his cousin, Astrid. Other characters are seen more as antagonistic, like his mother and his cousin, Edison. Throughout the story, Rachel begins to doubt her relationship with Nick because of the constant scrutiny and sabotage by Nick’s mother, and after one particular incident, his mother hired a private detective to investigate Rachel, she calls things off. As this is a romance movie however, there is a happy ending that ends with Rachel garnering Nick’s mother’s blessing and the two getting engaged. The movie has a very nice balance of drama, romance and comedy sprinkled in with none of these genres overlapping each other. In my personal opinion, the movie started out slow, and I had my doubts about the quality of the plot, but that changed quickly once Rachel and Nick reached Singapore, and the hijinks commenced into a very entertaining story.

As mentioned, there were many high expectations awaiting this movie before it was released. Many people everywhere were ecstatic to have an Asian-centric movie that showcased the extravagant and beautiful city of Singapore and the Chinese culture.

On social media, I witnessed many say how they wished a movie like this had come out when they were younger, and they felt insecure about their heritage, as there weren’t many cases of good Asian representation in the media when they were growing up. This movie is definitely a big deal to many, rightfully so, and in the future to reach the goal of eradicating stereotypes and representing different races fairly, I think more movies like this should be produced, seeing as it satisfied and made thousands people feel validated.