To All The Boys That I Have Loved - Aug 21

…And, since we have talked about Jenny Han and her LJ trilogy before, let us talk once more about the movie.

Why? Firstly, because of timing – it isn’t known if it was intentional or not, but it came out just as the ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ did, and so it got to ride their wake, because the LJ movie is also a movie about the Asian-American people, who actually live in a mixed-culture family: their dad is Anglo-American, while their mom was from Korea, and now she’s dead. There is the spectre of Jane Austen hanging over the entire LJ trilogy, and it is likely to be intentional for whatever reasons the author has.

The movie has toned down that influence: the film’s LJ is much more spunky and athletic than the novels’ version is. Jenny Han did her best to show LJ as a young woman who is just coming into her womanhood throughout the trilogy…with some humor, but also some drama and tragedy. The movie has that too, but the humor is more boosted, just as it is in the ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ film.

True, we did discuss it before: the LJ novels feel more like a ‘Maid in Manhattan’, not ‘Fools Rush In’ or ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ (mostly, in the latter case). The author put the emphasis on romance, not on humor, while the movie feels more like a mixture of two. This makes it better than the ‘Insatiable’ series, as far as YA Netflix productions go, while ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ differ from it by trying to go international and beyond their rom-com parameters.

Listen: there are still plenty of accolades for ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ coming from…within the U.S. Abroad, even in Canada, there are more sceptics than in the U.S., and it is beginning to show. ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ is an American movie, or maybe even an Asian-American one, but it isn’t an Asian one, and if the American society doesn’t understand the differences, then it has problems. The American society, not the ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ movie. The latter does its job – it entertains. So does the LJ film, as well as the original novels, (in both cases). It’s just that LJ is less ambitious in its message or scope than ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ are, which makes sense, because Netflix isn’t Disney, and it isn’t as formidable as the big league movie companies are, either.

(Apparently, Netflix did offer to make ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ a part of its’ menu, but the director decided to go for the big screens instead. Small world).

Finally, about ‘Reverie’. So far, it is still uncertain if it will be renewed for a second season or not. That is not surprising – it got potential, but little excitement, and on occasion, it was known to focus on Sarah Shahi, (who plays Mara) and her legs a little too much. It is not exactly a hot mess, nor is it insipid as Marvel’s ‘InHumans’ had been; it is just rather lackluster and sometimes – it felt hollow, unsupported, loose.

That and the fact that it ripped-off Marvel’s AoS’ framework plotline, of course. Cannot forget that either. Not surprising, then, that the face of ‘Reverie’ is still hanging in the balance. Good luck to it, though.

This is it for now; see you all soon!