Heralded as the first major American studio film to feature a majority-Asian cast in a contemporary setting since The Joy Luck Club nearly 25 years ago, Crazy Rich Asians has been met with impossible expectations: If this film flops, audiences are told, who knows how long Asian Americans may have to wait for another shot at the spotlight. Just as Gatsby’s soirées marked his ascendance to the stage of Long Island’s upper class, the extravagance of Crazy Rich Asians reflects a self-conscious announcement of the Asian American arrival on the Hollywood stage. Replete with money shots of multimillion-dollar estates, super-yacht bachelor parties, and skyscraper-rooftop pools, the film flirts with messages about privilege, immigrant striving, and the disconnect between Asians and Asian Americans-before ultimately abandoning such ideas for a fairy-tale ending that cements the movie as a celebratory work of affluence-porn. The new film (adapted from the 2013 novel by Kevin Kwan) follows the Chinese American professor Rachel Chu (played by Constance Wu) as she’s whisked away into the world of Singapore’s 1 percent to meet the family of her billionaire boyfriend Nick Young (Henry Golding). Watching the gauche opulence on display in Crazy Rich Asians, it’s hard not to think of Fitzgerald’s musings on the perils of conspicuous consumption.

Behind his impeccably tailored suits and grandiose parties, Gatsby masks his ambiguous ethnic origins, playing the part of an old-money Anglo-American elite to ultimately tragic results. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 classic, The Great Gatsby, the transformation of the working-class Jimmy Gatz into the upper-crust socialite Jay Gatsby is made possible through the assimilating veneer of decadence.

Crazy beautiful you cast