Monday morning found me with red, puffy, and swollen eyes. You know why? I have been crying buckets upon buckets of tears while watching Crazy Rich Asians. Does it even make sense? I watched a Romantic-Comedy movie and I literally cried about 75% of the time while watching it. 

There were many a deviations from the novel but it's quiet understandable since you have to fit four hundred pages into a 2 hour movie. What's important is the main frame of the story is present and the whole production was grand, grand, grand like how I wished it would be.

So there I was, gaping like an idiot at the spectacular-ness that is Singapore.

So amazed that Gemma Chan who plays the part of Astrid, is so chic.

She looks like the girl on the book cover of Crazy Rich Asians, noh? Gemma Chan plays Astrid Leong-Teo, Nick's cousin. *image is property of Warner Brothers*

Wondering how all of those food from the Singaporean hawkers taste like. And the dumplings, oh the dumplings. I wish I had an access to a plateful of dumplings this very instant.

I also mentioned in my previous blog post that I love the comedic timing of the book. I am happy that it translated well into the movie. I didn't know that it could even be funnier when Peik Lin and Oliver Tsien came to life. I was literally laughing and crying at the same time. 

The wedding scene literally gave me goosebumps. I'm still listening to Kina Grannis' version of "Can't Help Falling In Love" on YouTube just to get the feels. In fact, I will visit Kina's YouTube more because I've become a convert. My husband, the guy who spends 90% of his free time playing with games on his phone was quick to point out while watching, "Di ba si Kina Grannis yan?". And I was like, "Kina who?". How the f* is he familiar with this singer and I am not. Ha ha ha. He told me she's a favorite.

Moving on to the next most awaited cameo. Here's the thing though: I didn't tell my husband that Kris Aquino is in the movie. 😀 So when her scene came in, he was like... "Oh, ba't andyan yan?"  (Why is she there?). He sounded really amazed, in a good way. I was proud of that scene too. When the wedding scene came, I knew that Princess Intan, Kris Aquino's character would soon make an entrance. When I first read the book, I imagined that she would be someone like Fiona Tung who lent a very special sapphire necklace to Rachel on the day of the wedding. Of course I was wrong, she didn't play Fiona but I feel that I was also right that Kris will play a part that would one way or another be helpful to Rachel. Indeed, when Nick's mum's posse didn't want her seated in their row, Rachel stroke up a conversation (maybe even a friendship) with "the vicious" Princess Intan and didn't end up feeling so alone during the wedding.

The movie's ending is quiet different from that of the books, although Nick and Rachel ended up being engaged on both. The difference is that in the movie Eleanor, Nick's mum, played by the divine Michelle Yeoh gives her approval and even gives her own engagement ring to Nick when he proposed to Rachel for the second time. In the book version, Nick and Rachel gets engaged without Eleanor or grandma Su Yi's approval and sort of just runs off to New York and looses contact with the family back home.

That's how I ended up saying "Well Played, Rachel Chu" on my blog post's title because she really played her cards well, or rather her mahjong well in the end. Which makes sense because the movie opens with Rachel discussing Game Theory in her Economics class in NYU. I won't discuss Game Theory here, because it's too deep for me, LOL. But I think the message was pretty clear: Rachel beats Eleanor in mahjong and if Rachel had her way, she could beat Eleanor in real life too, because Nick has already proposed to her and promised that he is ready to turn his back on his family if she accepts. But she let her self be beat in real life and rejects Nick's marriage proposal. She didn't want him to turn his back on his family. She also adds that when Nick finds the proper match in the future, she wants Eleanor to understand that the only reason it occurred was because a “poor, raised by a single mother, low-class immigrant nobody” made it possible. This way, Eleanor sees what kind of character Rachel has and finally sees the light of day. Rachel has expressed her admiration for Eleanor Young's giant emerald and diamond ring, an engagement ring given to her by Nick's father when he proposed, during a gathering. She was shocked when she sees that Nick proposed with a different and familiar ring the second time around.

When I read the plot at the back of the novel, I was like, what is the fuss all about? The plot is quiet simple, if not common. Asian Boy takes Asian Girl to Singapore for the first time to attend a wedding and to sort of introduce her to his family. But oooops! Girl didn't know that Boy comes from an uber rich clan. You can read the rest on this photo below. It's a favorite theme in our local teleseryes and telenovelas.