‘Crazy Rich Asians’ turns rom-com cliches into an art form

Director Jon M. Chu’s (“Now You See Me 2”) adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s best-seller is nearly as in love with rom-com conventions as it is with romance itself. As a result, it’s relatively easy to spot who’s cheating on — and who used to sleep with — whom. But the script by Peter Chiarelli (“The Proposal”) and TV writer Adele Lim is so achingly earnest, so happy to simply exist, it doesn’t make the final product any less exuberant.

New Yorker Rachel Chu (Constance Wu, ABC’s “Fresh Off the Boat”) and her longtime boyfriend, Nick Young (Henry Golding), are headed to Nick’s home in Singapore for his best friend’s wedding. Along the way, Rachel learns Nick isn’t who she thought. The man of simple means who borrows her Netflix password is actually a member of one of the most prominent and decadently wealthy families in Asia. The wedding is Singapore’s $40 million social event of the century. And Nick’s mother, Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh), is destined to look down on her.

Sure, it’s more than a little strange that Rachel has been dating Nick for at least a year by the sound of things, yet she has no idea he’s famous or “crazy rich” — even though the one time we see them in public before the trip, he’s the subject of excited murmuring and frantic texts among nearby strangers. But that’s just one more of the film’s many contrivances you agree to go along with, more or less happily.

“Crazy Rich Asians” walks a delicate line between cultural significance and lightweight froth.

The first major Hollywood release with an all-Asian cast since 1993’s “The Joy Luck Club,” it’s a minor miracle that the movie even exists. And the fact that these actors are getting to do something as rote as attending out-of-control bachelor and bachelorette parties takes on an air of importance.

The disapproving mother is yet another staple of romantic comedies, but here the universal story becomes distinctly Chinese. The very traditional Eleanor gave up her promising career to be a wife and mother. Rachel, meanwhile, finds happiness in hers and doesn’t seem the type who’ll relinquish that to put Nick’s needs first. Rachel sees herself as Chinese — “I’m so Chinese, I’m an economics professor with lactose intolerance,” she says — but to Eleanor she’ll always be only Chinese-American.

If anything, though, “Crazy Rich Asians” feels less like “The Joy Luck Club” than it does another literary sensation. An outsider with a humble background who’s thrust into a world of unimaginable excess because of the man she loves? A movie filled with far more decadence than actual plot? It’s basically the “Fifty Shades” franchise without the S&M and those wooden performances.

Also, the laughter is intentional.

With the way she slyly drops throwaway lines — “You kinda look like a slutty ebola virus.” — Awkwafina is riotously funny as Rachel’s new-moneyed former college roommate. The role is the sort of breakout that her turn in “Ocean’s 8” could — and probably should — have been.

There’s also something sublimely ridiculous about the way that Ken Jeong portrays her blinged-out father. Eat your chicken nuggets, he tells his youngest children, because there are starving children in America.

Despite the comedy, “Crazy Rich Asians” leans hard into the “rom” side, ticking off boxes like a game of rom-com bingo. (Montage of a character trying on dresses. Sassy gay sidekick. Wedding dances. Bingo!)

Still, Chu knows exactly what he’s going for, and he delivers it, masterfully.

While not nearly as scarce as an Asian-led Hollywood movie, a well-made romantic comedy is becoming very rare indeed. “Crazy Rich Asians” just may lead to a surge in both.

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567. Follow @life_onthecouch on Twitter.