Falling for Grace Synopsis: Grace is a Chinese American who longs to be a part of New York’s high society. At a socialite event, she is mistaken for a Hong Kong heiress and meets her Prince Charming. What will happen to this Cinderella when the clock strikes midnight?
Grace Tang (Fay Ann Lee) is a successful Wall Street investment banker who dreams of joining New York’s elite Upper East Side.
When she is invited to a Junior Committee meet and greet for an opera company, she is mistaken for another Grace Tang, one who is an heiress from Hong Kong and has opened a high-end boutique in New York City called Shanghai Tang. She attempts to correct the mistake to no avail and ends up meeting Andrew Barrington Jr. (Gale Harold), an attorney who is also dating Kay (Stephanie March), a committee member.
Andrew has been working on closing down several Chinatown sweatshops due to their poor working conditions and illegal pay practices, one of which employs Grace’s mother. Coincidentally, Andrew’s father has been orchestrating a massive buyout of the same fashion company with Grace’s firm. It’s all tied together in a somewhat confusing fashion, and Grace is caught in the middle.
She and Andrew have a chance meeting outside of Shanghai Tang, and the two begin to spend more time together, even though Andrew has a girlfriend and Grace is pretending to be someone she’s not.
There are also a couple of side plots revolving around Ken Leung Grace’s brother who wants to be a chef, and Margaret Cho and BD Wong are two of Grace’s co-workers who end up dating each other. Honestly, these subplots feel more like filler than having any real significance to the rest of the movie.
I am a huge fan of Gale Harold. I loved his work on Queer as Folk and several indie films he appeared in around the same time. I think he’s a very charismatic actor, but his role in Falling for Grace is a bit bland and underdeveloped. He has a couple of amusing scenes with Christine Baranski, who plays his mother, but her role is so tiny that I’m not entirely sure what purpose it holds beyond reminding Andrew that their family image is too important for him to ruin it by marrying someone he loves.
Unfortunately, I didn’t feel much spark between Harold and Lee, and frankly, as much as I love Harold, his character Andrew is essentially cheating on his girlfriend with Grace. If a leading man is going to cheat, it seems to be a rom-com requirement that the girlfriend is heartless and undeserving of his love in the first place. Kay is neither of those things, and her only actual crime is that she has no personality.
Grace’s scenes with her family were far more interesting to me, and Lee seemed to settle into more of a natural rapport with them than she ever does in her scenes with Harold. The supporting cast, as mentioned above, is completely wasted. Margaret Cho is known for her bawdy and pointed comedy, but she’s pretty restrained here, which is a shame because the movie could have used her brand of humor.
Falling For Grace is a mistaken identity rom-com with Cinderella elements, but it lacks the romantic charm and whimsical direction needed to make it feel like a fairy tale. Instead, Falling for Grace feels like a clumsy imitation of similar rom-coms that have come before it. It’s predictable to the point of laziness. There is even a montage during the credits of poorly photoshopped magazine covers to inform us of the characters’ insanely unrealistic happily ever afters. Thankfully that’s the only cringe moment in an otherwise dull movie.
Watched: 01/06/2020
