‘Lucky Grandma’ is a precious and badass dark comedy.
No, I don’t think it’s a shame that Lucky Grandma had to come out during lockdown. In fact, I find all quarantine-art unforgettable, and this is definitely a film I’ll see as the “face” of quarantine entertainment in my mind.
The premise for Lucky Grandma is a superstitious elderly lady who took near $2000 dollars to a casino on her lucky day, and bet her earnings on auspicious numbers. She found herself with a fortune that came straight to her lap (literally), yet somehow in the process, she pissed off both of Chinatown’s most dangerous gangs.
The thing I appreciate most about this film is perhaps the portrayal of the Chinese/Chinatown community in America, and in particular Manhattan. A great portion of my interest in cinema studies lies in the portrayal of invisible sub-communities that operate in the shadows of mainstream culture, and this film certainly meets that criteria. Parallel to the hustle and bustle of New York City is the lively community of Chinese immigrants, who have been able to resist cultural assimilation to an extent. Those who are more apt at navigating the socio-economic landscape of the city establish niche services that employ and serve just this niche community, which saw the flourishing of businesses like Chinese taxis, Chinese supermarkets, Chinese tourism companies, all of which operated only in Mandarin (and sometimes Cantonese). I have once experienced this myself, years ago, and even then my experience barely scratched the surface of this side of the American dream. I appreciate that Chinatown was given much more personality than the traditional Hollywood portrayal, where the “Triad” would reside (do they even still exist?), or merchants sell exotic food.
Next, I find that Grandma is such a rich character. I might be exaggerating slightly, but the traditional Grandma in Hollywood action-comedy films have a weird sort of deus ex machina that unleashes their beast side as the film’s grand crescendo. It’s funny, but not for very long, and at times even frustrating when a wheel-chaired grandma suddenly stands up to unveil a machine gun on her lap this whole time, then slaughters an entire army of bad people. This film was quite the contrary, as Grandma remains at a consistent level of fragility (which is a weird way to put things, I know), and she is always aware of her drawbacks — her strength and her speed are not comparable to youthful gang members in their early 20s. This wasn’t just true during fight scenes and chase scenes, but is the general power dynamic between the protagonist/antagonist that underpins this entire film and how it unfolds. She falls, she takes damage, and she gets scared, just as anyone would in her terrifying situation.
It’s common to see viewers on the internet vent their frustration against Grandma, questioning why she just won’t return the money, or why she did it in the first place. I’m sure she understood that it was breaking the law to take something that did not belong to her, but I doubt the point of the film is to challenge the boundaries of theft and private property. I suppose part of the point was to illustrate that sometimes with elderly people, especially ones that never grew up in a culture like America that was always “legally conscious,” stubbornness is definitely in play. It doesn’t legally or morally justify what they do, but I think it’s surely an understandable explanation. In fact, it’s most likely universal that some things our elder relatives hold dear seem inexplicably random, and it is what it is — either they give them up, or the world finds a way around it, and this film was a nice combination of both.
I think that more so in recent days than ever before, artists like Sasie Sealy and Angela Cheng are shaping an important part of the Chinese-American narrative and the generational immigration story. This is a narrative that is constantly evolving with every new generation, so I am glad that parts of the most invisible ones can make its way into mainstream American culture. Perhaps I have taken a much more serious stand on a lighthearted comedy, but so be it — regardless of rom-com or dark comedy, every successful Asian American film is a victory for the Asian Americans in the US.
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