I’ve been putting off seeing John Chu‘s Crazy Rich Asians for the last two or three weeks. Now it’s Sunday and I can’t dodge it any longer. I’ll be seeing it this afternoon. Dentist’s office, root canal, chalk on a blackboard, etc. The opening weekend gross for this all-Asian, Singapore-set comedy is likely to be $25.2M and $34M over five days. It’ll easily top $100M before all is said and done. Quite the historical landmark.

The idea of sitting through a real-estate porn movie filled with scheming family members fills me with dread. I will, of course, report otherwise if it turns out to be tolerable or half-enjoyable or whatever.

From Kate Taylor‘s Globe & Mail review: “Generously you might say Crazy Rich Asians is a satire of Chinese family values and the social strata of the overseas Chinese — as well as a major spoof of the ornate decorative tastes of the moneyed class — but the larger society is missing from the picture. [And] as the obscenities of wealth accumulate while a large cast of Asian and Eurasian actors render their many silly characters, the source of the laughter becomes troubling.

“Clearly, some Asian audiences may experience this film (produced by a largely Asian and Asian-American creative team) differently. A white viewer such as myself witnessing this overblown display may find themselves in that awkward territory where somebody else’s ethnic comedy leaves them feeling complicit in racial prejudice.”