I thought it was great, fun and funny and ridiculous, and it reminded me a lot of the experiences I've had with Chinese friends (I'm a white guy). Dumpling making and Mahjong, getting tons of delicious street food dishes, and there were a bunch of other little things that I can't quite put my finger on right now. I liked that there were lots of covers of songs in English and Mandarin (reminded me of this restaurant I used to go to in college), that two of the main male characters were muscular Asian dudes and that none of them were nerdy. It subverted a lot of common tropes.
Pretty goo if you ask me wrote:
I initially didn’t like the song “yellow” near the end- I don’t understand Chinese and the Chinese lyrics don’t sound so great to my non Chinese ears. But having read the back story on the song and hearing the song again on YouTube, I appreciate it more than I did when I watched the film.
This is a weird criticism to me because there was more than one English song with Chinese lyrics, did you not notice the others?
There are lots of stories where a commoner and a prince fall in love, but their quality is determined by the details along the way and I thought they did a good job here.
Honestly the only thing that made me chafe is that the main female character was supposed to be a born and bred New Yorker, but as a born and bred New Yorker who has spent some time in California, she really looked to me like she was from LA.