Crazy Rich Asians is a hit! More than a hit, it’s good: easily one of the best movies of the summer and certainly the best romantic comedy to come along in ages. Its characters are vibrant, its situations fascinating and the entire proceedings couched in a fascinating perspective rarely seen in big Hollywood movies.
Just how rarely? The last time they produced an entirely Asian cast film was Little Women. In 1993. A full 25 years ago.
And although I am shocked that Hollywood pays such paltry attention to the talented men and women of Asian descent working in their industry, I’ll admit to being (at least nominally) part of the problem. Whatever else I might think or feel about it, the fact of the matter is that this issue simply wasn’t on my radar. For my part, I didn’t notice the lack of Asian voices and Asian faces blown up on the big screen. I simply didn’t know what I was missing until something like Jon Chu’s outlandish romcom punched me square in the jaw.
But now that it has, I want so much more than this one film that’s already in the bank. There’s two more books in the series that Crazy Rich Asians was adapted from (the second of which has already been greenlit), but that’s merely a start. I desperately want more Asian-fronted films to make their way through the Hollywood machine: same as has been recently happening with Black-fronted films.
As luck would happen to have it, I’ll be getting my wish sooner than I ever could have hoped for. This weekend will see the release of Searching: a found-footage thriller about a father (played by an uncharacteristically mature-looking John Cho) trying desperately to find his missing daughter via the vantage point of computer screens and smart phone displays.
Now, I’ll admit that I was a little underwhelmed with the movie’s trailer. I can’t say that I was ever really a fan of the Harold & Kumar movies (where Cho cut his teeth as an actor) and the found footage format made it look like some kind of a Hitchcockian Unfriended riff; and while the Unfriended movies were fun enough in their own way, I really didn’t need any more of them in my life.
But early word on the movie is that it’s actually really good. Searching walked away with a few minor accolades from this year’s Sundance Film Festival and is currently tracking with a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes (meaning that, if nothing else, the overwhelming majority of critics at least like the flick). Prominent Geek.com and Escapist film critic Bob Chipman went so far as to take to twitter on the film’s behalf, proclaiming that it is the “slickest, freshest detective thriller in years and inspirationally confident in the newness of its filmmaking.” He even called it the “best film [he’s] seen in 2018, and easily the most original and invigorating.”
If you want to see more movies like Crazy Rich Asians, you have to support films like it when they actually managed to sneak past the usual Hollywood gatekeepers. And when they promise to be this good as a bonus, there’s really no reason why you shouldn’t practice what you preach.
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