***(OUT OF FOUR)

I wanted to give this movie a hug. No, that’s not quite right. I wanted this movie to hug me.

I’m certain I’m not the only one who feels that way. This movie inevitably crumbles into romantic comedy formula, and I hoped for more comedy in all that romance from start to finish, but despite those imperfections I was won over enough to see past the flaws. It is an infectious story about a girl from the wrong side of the tracks trying to fit in with a high-society family. It is also a legacy marker for Asians in Hollywood film, anchored by actress Michelle Yeoh as a dragon of a potential mother-in-law.

I don’t know what CRAZY RICH ASIANS would be without Yeoh and all that fire in her eyes. Flimsier perhaps, and the production might have resorted to stunt-casting, hiring every Asian actor/actress working today so the rest of us in the audience think “Look! They got that actor, too!”

The movie starts off with a 1995 prologue on a dark and stormy night in London, when Yeoh’s young family, drenched and practically shivering, asks the hotel desk clerk for the keys to the suite. The clerk and the manager tell her to leave, despite the family’s paid-for reservation. The racists won’t even let the family use the hotel phone to make another reservation elsewhere. Yeoh, ever the protective lioness, then spits back one of the best cinematic “fuck you” moments in a movie I can remember without actually using that language. By the end of the scene, her young son looks back at the two cowering hotel employees, and the standard is set: Mom is a fixer. My mom is the universe. Don’t mess with my mom.

 That boy grows up to be one of the most eligible bachelors in Singapore (Henry Golding, he’ll get some more work after this), a kind and decent fella, and as the film quickly points out with a shirtless scene, the hot guy of the story. Not long after his reveal, that boy’s cousin, Astrid (played by the gorgeous Gemma Chan), is introduced as a modern-day goddess, Oxford-educated with a perfect-looking and also shirtless husband to boot. The movie likes to attack stereotypes that way: Asian men are the lookers, as attractive as any white or African-American man, and the women are intelligent, formidable and most importantly, in no way subservient. What is universal here: It’s not a good sign that Astrid’s hubby showers before coming to bed.

But let’s back up and come to America. We are introduced to the girl at the center of the movie, Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), an economics professor at NYU. An expert in game theory, we meet her during a lecture wher, she outplays an unsuspecting poker player after he becomes too emotional on a single hand with high stakes.

Afterwards Chu meets her boyfriend from Singapore at a Flatiron District bar, and he suggests something a little more East. “In the East Village,” she asks? No, he’s about to be whisk her off to the Far East to his friend’s wedding. When they get their first-class sleeping berths, Rachel begins to wonder how rich her guy really is because, after all, he uses her Netflix password. Meanwhile, the rest of that Flatiron bar sends out a barrage of social posts about how this Singapore prince has finally found his princess, alerting the Yeoh character and that entire country that an interloper is about to touch down and steal him away. More high stakes hands lay ahead for Rachel.

The movie smartly resists turning Rachel into an overwhelmed ditz. It also has a lot to say about first-generation Asian-Americans – not only can they can be considered outcasts by their adopted country, but a strong possibility exists they will not be welcomed by their country of origin if they ever return. The derogatory term “banana” is tossed around in this movie, yellow on the outside, white (American and selfish) within. And so that’s how Rachel appears to many of those in Singapore society before she gets her bearings, and even after winning many of them over, there is that impossible mother-in-law to contend with.

Like many, I remember Yeoh best from CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON. She gave life to one of the great female warriors in cinema history, tougher than Sarah Conner in T2, fiercer than Ripley in ALIENS, and more cunning than any of the badass women still standing in GAME OF THRONES. That’s a worthy adversary in any rom-com. And when that warrior-actress spits at Rachel “You will never be good enough,” it definitely elevates the moment way above the average in this genre.

There are other fine flourishes. The director of production, Vanja Cernjul, shot Singapore with a rose-colored lens. He showcases a food court scene with two happy couples that should be the country’s next tourism commercial, and a mood-lighting wedding scene that involved running water really stood out as well. And Constance Wu hangs in there to the end as Rachel, perfectly relatable. If you aren’t rooting for Rachel the moment she steps off the plane, then you’ve been eating with a silver spoon in your mouth since you were born, which is, of course, the point.

Don’t mistake my praise for high praise … the movie is fluffy and entirely predictable in a PRETTY WOMAN or MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING kind of way. They even have a montage where the gay best friend of the family gives our heroine a makeover, trying on different outfits so she looks like a modern-day princess. There’s a scene where the wacky college friend, the movie’s comic relief who represents Asian “new money,” nonetheless gets serious when the plot demands it and the heroine wants to run back to America, telling her bluntly “You’re afraid.” The cynic in me knows Hollywood wants the same but different, and the different this time is the All-Asian cast. And perhaps only this time.

Still, in the final moments, as the fireworks exploded around a high-rise building in Singapore, and the performers celebrated, I found CRAZY RICH ASIANS charming both for what it is, and what it may represent. CRA is already a groundbreaker for Asian cinema and a word-of-mouth hit, pulling in over $50 million at the box office in its first nine days of release — off a reported $30 million budget. That’s a nice line of credit to have.

It’s too early to say with certainty, but maybe the film serves as inspiration for today’s generation of Asian creatives, who, I hope, will get a widely-released Hollywood film made that is a true original. Yeoh and this cast obviously deserve to be known for more than their former typecasts: as samurai warriors, WW2 suicide bombers, token Asian friends, blackjack dealers, and English-mangling chefs at a Benihana. Within the confines of a rom-com, they show their mettle here as actors, and that’s the issue: We shouldn’t have to be alerted to it, we should have known it already.