MovieMonday: Isn't It Romantic

This movie opens with the Roy Orbison rendition of "Pretty Woman," the song, while a little girl watches, "Pretty Woman," the film, on television.

The girl's mother advises her that the film -- a sweet thing about a handsome rich guy who falls in love with a really fun prostitute -- is not reality.

"There's no happy ending for people like us," says the mother, who disabuses her pudgy daughter of the fantasy that true love comes as easily in life as it does in a Richard Gere/Julia Roberts movie.

Then, 25 years later, we meet the daughter, Natalie (Rebel Wilson), all grown up and living in a dingy outer borough of New York.  Natalie is now an architect assigned to design the parking garage for a larger, glossier project.  In other words, yuck.

Natalie has absorbed her mother's cynicism, and she says so again and again and again until the viewer thinks, okay, we got the point.  When her good sport of a colleague, Josh (Adam DeVine,) suggests her life might be better if she were "a little more open," we glimpse the ending to come.

Then something surprising happens and Natalie finds herself in a new reality -- a rom-com New York where subway stations are bedecked with flowers, where everyone is nice and where a tall, buff billionaire named Blake (Liam Hemsworth) finds her "beguiling" and pursues her ardently.

This sets up most of the film, which apparently draws on various rom-com tropes -- Natalie gets a fancy apartment and great wardrobe, her drug-dealing neighbor becomes her flamboyant gay friend, she becomes a  star at the office while her wimpy work assistant has turned into a snarling professional enemy, and there are luxy parties and so forth.

Natalie is of course confused and suspicious, but things go on and on and on in the fairytale world until she has learned an Important Lesson that she can apply when life returns to normal.

The point of "Isn't It Romantic" seems to be to make fun of romantic comedy films by making a really, really exaggerated rom-com that lets the audience in on the joke.  It's possible there is a sub-genre of less over-the-top films like this ("Fifty Shades of Grey," maybe?) that I have not seen, but except for a few good gags the movie feels overlong even at an economical 86 minutes.

What little I know of Rebel Wilson makes me think she'd be better served if she were more discerning in her choice of scripts.

Alternatives

Either 2017's  The Big Sick is really, really good, or I just associated it with the happy aura of the time I saw it, on the same weekend as a family wedding.  I think both may be true.

A classic screwball comedy, "Bringing Up Baby" was directed by Howard Hawks and featured Cary Grant as a befuddled scientist and Katharine Hepburn as a wacky heiress with a pet leopard named, yes, Baby.  It was made in 1938 and had stood the test of time when I last saw it around the turn of the millennium.

MovieMonday: Crazy Rich Asians

The preview above gives the general dimensions of this romantic comedy with an Asian cast and setting.  What it does not show is how much fun the movie is.  

The setup is this:  A Chinese-American economics professor, Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), is invited by her boyfriend, Nick Young (Henry Goldman), to join him on a trip to Singapore, where she can meet his family and he is to be the best man at his friend's wedding.

Along the way, Rachel gets inklings that Nick's net worth is somewhat greater than she had assumed, given his job as a history professor.  

When they get to Singapore, the lid comes off.   Rachel visits her lively college BFF, Go Peik Lin (humorist Awkwafina), who lives in a fancy family house decorated like Versailles but who is gobsmacked to learn that Rachel's boyfriend is the Nick Young, whose family, she says is "not just posh and snobby, but snoshy."

As Rachel meets Nick's relatives and friends, viewers are treated to the glitzy side of Singapore.  Characters spend lavishly on travel, jewelry and fashion.  There are pre-wedding bachelorette and stag events that make American versions look subdued.  There are many sweeping camera shots of the bright lights of Singapore at night. (Seems clear the country is eager for its star turn here.)

The essential tension of the plot is whether April and Nick will marry.  His severe and duty-obsessed mother, (Michelle Yeoh), is adamant that she does not want a Chinese American daughter-in-law.  This conflict is handled credibly by all the actors and carries the story along.

But back to the fun.  The director, Jon M. Chu, seems to have been given a free hand to adapt a popular novel of the same name.  He and his script writers stripped the story to the basics and loaded it up with humor. Peik Lin's parents and siblings are delightful fun, as are Nick's two ne'er-do-well cousins.   Further laughs also are woven into many scenes -- as when we see what Peik Lin carries in her car trunk and when hilarious distractions arise during Rachel and Nick's pivotal scene toward the end of the movie.  All well done.

The effect is a sincere story wrapped in a wacky package, enjoyable to watch and with plenty of silliness (and, yes, subthemes that say that money isn't everything.)  

Warner Bros. outbid Netflix to make this film and is promoting the heck out of it.  There have been very well-received preview showings in scattered secondary markets, and it is opening this Wednesday -- not Thursday or Friday -- in anticipation of a big, big weekend at the box office.


This movie seems to matter a great deal to Asians in the film industry.  The last Asian-American film story was "The Joy Luck Club," a 1993 film about Chinese mothers and daughters; Disney's "Mulan," five years later, also was about Asian themes.

The difference here is that "Crazy Rich Asians" is a traditional story about family squabbles that happens to have a Chinese cast; Capulet v. Montague conflicts over children's love interests are common across all cultures, after all.  

If CRA finds a big market, as the glossy "Empire" television series has, maybe studios will be willing to finance traditional stories staged in different communities.  About time, I'd say.

Note

Before I saw the film, I started reading the book that was the source material.  I don't say this often, but here goes:  The movie is better.