Last Double Review for a While: Crazy Rich Asians and The Spy Who Dumped Me

Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

Crazy Rich Asians was a delightful romantic movie. It was one of the best tonal movies I have seen. It was funny when appropriate, emotional when appropriate, and it was never trying to be anything but itself. Crazy Rich Asians is a relatively honest movie, looking at flaws in eastern and western cultures and how they could better complement each other. The script was excellent, using witty and layered dialogue to advance a very dense plot. The story was so full that there were over a dozen important characters involved and each had a critical role in carrying the movie along. The primary characters were wonderfully acted and were given adequate depth, particularly Michelle Yeoh’s Eleanor, an overbearing matriarch trying to protect her family’s legacy and her son. The interactions between Yeoh and Constance Wu were like ogres; they had layers. Every time they met face to face, more of the story peeled back to reveal the meaty climax. If you are a fan of love and happiness or a fan of Asian culture, go see Crazy Rich Asians. I give Crazy Rich Asians the price of one Rolls Royce Phantom ($405,000) out of the price of four Mercedes-Benz AMG GTs ($112,000 each).

The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)

The Spy Who Dumped Me was awful. There were about 20 people in the theater, and there were two laughs at the movie (I was neither of those laughs) and they were at Kate McKinnon very early on. There was honestly almost an hour and a half of silence in the theater. She had a grand entrance to a party that was very over the top and had a couple of quips, and five minutes later, she was back and was just as over the top, even though it was just her and Mila Kunis. At this point, a gentleman with his date in the theater said, “Oh God, she’s going to be like this the whole time, isn’t she?” This garnered more laughs than the entirety of the movie. The funniest parts were in the trailer, so everyone was expecting them and nobody laughed because it was a chore to get to those scenes. The plot was simple and predictable and copied an awful lot from the superior Melissa McCarthy movie Spy. Everything that this movie did has been done better before. Even the parts that weren’t painful to watch were very dull, especially for a comedy/action movie. There was one good action scene in a restaurant, but that was too small to make this anything more than a bad movie. I give The Spy Who Dumped Me 5 minutes of good movie out of 117 minutes of total movie.