Crazy Rich Asians (PG-13)
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This is based on a popular book that I haven't read. It has some humor in it, but I didn't think there was quite enough for me to consider it a rom-com. It begins with a scene in London in 1995, with a woman named Eleanor Young (Michelle Yeoh) and a couple of young kids trying to check into a hotel, where the staff is condescending, dismissive, and racist. So of course it was infuriating to watch, but I guessed what would happen next, and when it did it was amusingly delicious revenge.

The story then flashes forward to 2018 in New York, where we meet an economics professor named Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) and her boyfriend, Nick Young. Nick convinces Rachel to go with him to Singapore, where he's going to be the best man at the wedding of his friend Colin. He wants her to meet his family, and she also wants to visit her old college friend, Peik Lin (Awkwafina). It's not until they board the plane and get their very own first-class suite that Rachel learns that Nick's family is rich. (Peik Lin's family is also rich, but not nearly as rich as Nick's family.) And... there were a lot of people for Rachel to meet once they got to Singapore, most of whom I couldn't keep straight who they were, who they were related to or whether they were related to anyone, but they were all rich to one degree or another. The most important of these people is Nick's mother, Eleanor, who is fairly polite to Rachel early on, but doesn't really approve of her as a match for Nick, which later becomes painfully obvious. There's also Nick's grandmother, who raised him, and she seems to like Rachel more than Eleanor does, at least for most of the movie.

Rachel also meets Nick's cousin, Astrid (Gemma Chan), who is herself married to a "commoner" named Michael, who feels unimportant because of his wife's wealth. Astrid is one of the few people in Singapore who are truly nice to Rachel. There were also a couple of familiar actors, including Ken Jeong as Peik Lin's father, and Ronny Chieng as Eddie, whose relation to anyone I never really caught, though I think he was the one who threw Colin's bachelor party. Or maybe that was a guy named Bernard, I forget. There's also a woman named Amanda who throws a bachelorette party for Colin's fiancée, Amarinta. At first Amanda and her friends seemed to be nice to Rachel, but they soon turn out to be against her. And... there was maybe one other character I wanted to mention who was friendly to Rachel, named Oliver, who was Nick's second cousin. The rest of the characters were of little importance to the plot, as far as I could tell, and of little interest to me. I think most of them were just there to add to the confusion of how big and complicated Nick's world was.

Anyway, there's a lot of drama about whether or not Nick and Rachel will stay together, with all the pressure from Eleanor, and whatnot. You'd think it's a foregone conclusion that there'll be a happy ending for the two of them, but actually... you know, in my reviews, I usually say "of course there's a happy ending," but this time I don't want to spoil whether there is or isn't. It could really go either way. And I'm not sure what else to say, except the movie has good music, and necessarily lavish production values, and I liked the main characters. It's definitely an entertaining movie.