'Crazy Rich, Incredibly Broke' Movie Ending Explained & Summary: Who Betrays The Family And Why?

Crazy Rich, Incredibly Broke is a new comedy film from Saudi Arabia streaming on Netflix, that involves slapstick comedy and a highly unrealistic premise, meant to be just a light-hearted watch. The film follows the members of the AlThahabi family, a renowned business family who suddenly face a crisis when their stocks drop massively, seemingly due to the patriarch, Abu Bandar, falling sick. Crazy Rich, Incredibly Broke plays around with ideas of real familial love and the difference between genuine people and impostors in the most lackluster way, making it a totally skippable film.

Spoiler Alert

What is the film about?

Crazy Rich, Incredibly Broke opens with introductions to the members of the AlThahabi family, starting with the patriarch and head of the business, Sultan Bandar, who is often interviewed by news channels for insights on financial trends, or simply for advice to young individuals looking to start their own trade. He publicly praises his father, the late great Sultan AlThahabi, for having been the best in both his professional and personal lives, but actually hides the many flaws that the man had. As the head of the extremely boastful and showy family, Sultan Bandar sets the perfect example by keeping a professional assassin on payroll to shoot at wild animals for him while he pretends to hunt them and get all the praise. 

His wife, Al-Anoud AlThahabi, is a hypocrite of the highest degree, as she advocates for the protection of animals against all forms of cruelty, and yet boasts about her fashion accessories made from genuine animal leather. Al-Anoud spends her time and money engaging in philanthropic work, not to honestly help others but simply to be praised for her ‘kind’ heart. The couple’s eldest daughter, Latifa ‘Lulu’ AlThahabi, is only concerned with her fashion, and her biggest fear is that others might copy her style and end up wearing the same clothes as her. For this, Lulu keeps buying designer clothes and accessories every week, and she often buys out rare products to ensure that nobody else will get their hands on them. Currently, Lulu is engaged to Faisal, the heir to a wealthy business family, but she does not want to go through with the marriage as she doesn’t really love her fiancé. 

The second child of the AlThahabi family is Bandar, who is considered the ‘Golden Boy’ because of his creative prowess and acting abilities, or so he believes. Bandar spends every minute of his life engrossed in his love for cinema, mostly acting in films that his own family produces, and sometimes even writing terrible scripts. Bandar is as bad at acting as everything else, and he is also extremely careless, because of which the productions heavily overshoot the original budget. Lastly, the third child, Reem, happens to be the only one serious about the family business, as she meticulously oversees the operations at their office, even though she’s working in an unofficial capacity. Reem is very interested in succeeding her father as the head of the business when the time comes, but it doesn’t seem like Sultan is too serious about letting his daughter run the trade. Nonetheless, Reem gets all the support from the employees, especially the manager, Taleb, who seems to have taken quite a liking to her. The usual blingy lifestyle of the AlThahabis is disrupted one fine day, when Sultan falls terribly sick and has to be rushed to a hospital. This sudden illness causes the AlThahabi company’s value to drop sharply, and there are already rumors that the son-in-law, Faisal, will be made the new leader of the company. But the family members soon realize that Sultan AlThahabi has actually faked the illness for his recent business deals and investments have gone terribly wrong, because of which their company is now left with no money.

Does Reem’s plan work out?

Being the only one, aside from her father, who is intricately involved with the family business, Reem is extremely worried about the situation that they have to deal with. She learns that Sultan has blown all the family wealth on bad investments and by banking on risky deals that ultimately were not carried out. Therefore, the family now has no money left, and in this case, Reem comes up with the only logical solution: to somehow sell their company and earn a significant amount of money from it. But there is the obvious catch that the company’s value has now tanked horribly, since the owners themselves have no money left. Hence, nobody should be willing to pay much for the business, but Reem decides to play on an emotional plane instead of a logical one. The only potential buyer for the company at this time, according to her, is Abu Mansour, a man who has an old connection with the AlThahabis.

When Sultan’s father had first founded the AlThahabi company, Abu Mansour used to work as an errand boy for the man. With time, Mansour developed his own business acumen, and also a staunch dislike for the family he used to work for. At present, Abu Mansour is an extremely wealthy and influential businessman, who has acquired almost every big business in the city. But he still eyes the AlThahabi company, and especially wants to own the majestic tower that serves as their office, and was a matter of immense pride for Sultan’s father. Mansour admits that there is nothing in the world that would bring him more joy than running his rivals out of business by taking over their company, and therefore, Reem designs her plan accordingly.

Reem wants the family to keep behaving the way they do in public, without letting anyone know about their financial difficulties. The first step of her plan is to leak the news about Sultan AlThahabi being extremely sick, so that the world prepares for Faisal to step up as the new leader. Although Sultan has always been against selling the family business, the emergence of a new CEO will change this steadfast rule, and Faisal will be open to hearing bids for the sale. Sultan secretly supports the whole plan, of course, but he will continue to maintain his position of not wanting to sell in public. The whole scheme is meant to make it look like the AlThahabis are now willing to sell their business because they are unable to replace a fierce and dedicated leader like Sultan, not because they need the money.

Next, it is crucial to put up the pretense that the AlThahabi company is still worth billions of riyals, for which the family members must act as outlandishly as they did in their daily lives, in fact must be even more showy and flashy. Therefore, Al-Anoud goes around handing checks for millions of riyals to every beggar or elderly person she can find on the streets of the city. In reality, Bandar plays the role of all these destitute people receiving the checks, as it is only important for the moment to be captured on video and shared on the internet. The family also runs a fake news mill, stating that AlThahabi is not only paying the highest salaries in the industry, but is also taking on new employees even though it is going through a change in leadership. The ultimate chance to show off the family’s (fake) wealth is to organize a gala event for the wedding of Lulu and Faisal, in which celebrities from all over the world are supposed to be invited. During a celebratory event before the wedding is to take place, the women of the family dress in flashy branded clothes, which are all actually first-copies stitched in a shady alley in Riyadh, and they arrive in fancy cars borrowed from Bandar’s film set. Al-Anoud again hands out a check to a destitute woman, who is supposed to be her son, Bandar, just for the optics. The plan is to hear a bid from Abu Mansour during a meeting at this event, and accept the deal after playing a bit hard to get at first.

The amount that Abu Mansour offers to buy the company is seemingly huge, and adequate enough for Sultan to agree to it. Since Sultan has been claimed to have lost his ability to speak, he obviously cannot negotiate the deal himself, and instead has to rely on his son-in-law to-be, Faisal. But this is when the plan goes sideways, as Faisal puts up a fake show of ego, seemingly to increase the price, by stating that the amount is too less. He even tears up the check, which obviously makes Mansour feel disrespected, and he pulls out. Suddenly, Reem’s plan fails, and there is nobody to make bids for the AlThahabi company, and the family members now have to come down to selling all their personal belongings just to make ends meet.

How is Bandar’s presence appreciated by his family?

Bandar AlThahabi, who believes himself to be a popular film star, is heartbroken to learn that all his fans, the apparent business that his films made, and even the articles written to praise him, were all fake stunts pulled by his family, particularly his mother. He is even more let down when he overhears a conversation in which his father mentions what a failure he is. This makes Bandar determined to come to his family’s use somehow, and he soon tries to introduce a fake Chinese businessman as a competitor to Abu Mansour in the bidding war for the AlThahabi company. Bandar believes that if a global businessman makes a bid for the company, then Mansour will also increase his offer, and more importantly, make a significant offer at least, since he no longer wants to buy the business anyway. Therefore, Bandar gets hold of a stunt actor from his set to pretend to be a Chinese billionaire, and himself assumes the role of his translator. It initially seems like the plan will work as well, but then Mansour clarifies that he is not interested at all. Although Sultan once again tells off his son for having made such an audacious and failed move, the man has a change of heart when he reads a script that Bandar had been writing. It was very obvious to everyone that the script was based on Bandar’s own life, and so when Sultan reads that the young man only wants to be appreciated by his father, he realizes that his son actually loves and respects him a lot. This is the moment that magically changes everything, and Bandar’s presence and contributions are finally appreciated by his family, especially his father.

Who Betrays The Family And Why?

When Abu Mansour does not take the Chinese billionaire seriously, it already appears he has significant inside information about AlThahabi’s real market value. Eventually, he also gets hold of the news that the company has lost all its wealth and that the AlThahabi family members are pretending to be rich still so that they can sell the business at a high value. Mansour shares this news with news channels, and the AlThahabis are exposed. But what becomes crucial for the family members is figuring out who had betrayed them, and it does not take too long to find the perpetrator. 

During the pre-wedding party, Al-Anoud had mistakenly handed over the fake check to a different person, who had refused to hand it back to Bandar, as they thought that it was a real check that would fetch them millions. Lulu had had to help her brother at the time by injuring the other individual, and she now realizes, with the help of a burn mark on his hand, that this other individual was her own fiancé, Faisal. Just like the AlThahabi family members, Faisal was also trying to sell an outright lie, for he did not belong to a wealthy and successful business family. In reality, Faisal’s father had blown through all their money, leaving the company bankrupt. Faisal and his mother were left destitute and had to stay at a small apartment in the seedy side of Riyadh. Their only hope was that Faisal would inherit a lot of wealth through his marriage with Lulu, and use that money to live the rest of their lives in luxury. 

Faisal was also extremely excited about the prospect of the sale of the AlThahabi company, as he believed the deal would fetch him even more money, since he was being prepared to be the next, or acting, CEO. But his greed ultimately got the better of him, as he made a secret deal with Abu Mansour, according to which Faisal would give Mansour secret insider information about the company, and he would be made the manager of the new merged company later on. In order to ensure that he would still have a steady flow of income even after the sale, Faisal gave the true information about the AlThahabis to Mansour, and betrayed the family that had given him so much respect. Despite initially being against the marriage, Lulu had eventually expressed love for Faisal as well, but he now rightfully loses all of this, and there is no way for him and his mother to escape their lives of suffering.

Why was Al-Anoud considering a divorce?

As Sultan now suffers a real heart attack after Faisal and Mansour leak the news about his family having become bankrupt, he has to be rushed to the hospital. This is when he and his family get even closer, and they all admit that these wild experiences have only brought them together as a family. Appreciating each other’s presence and help as the real wealth, they all promise to stand by each other at all times. This is when an old matter is resolved as well, as Al-Anoud had actually filed for divorce earlier, right after Sultan suffered the financial losses in business. Now, Al-Anoud admits that she had done so only because she wanted to take away all the money that her husband had. Before there’s any more misunderstanding, Al-Anoud explains that she always felt that Sultan had stopped loving her and showering her with attention only because he was more focused on earning money. Therefore, she started considering money to be her rival in love, and therefore hoped that the divorce would make Sultan love and appreciate her again. Fortunately for her, and her husband, they mend their romantic relationship without taking any drastic step, and so are once again a loving couple.

Do the AlThahabi family ultimately sell off their company?

Because of the fiasco, Abu Mansour now makes a very low-valued bid to buy the AlThahabi company, which is exactly why he had hired Faisal to give him insider details in the first place. Despite getting so little for the business that their family had run for so long, Sultan and Reem have no option but to accept the deal. However, as the board bearing the AlThahabi name is taken down from the building, right before the deal is signed, Reem realizes that the letters are made of 24 karat natural gold, which means that selling the sign itself will solve all financial troubles for the company. Thus, the deal is cancelled at the very last minute, and the AlThahabi family holds on to their business. Sultan soon retires and tours the world with Al-Anoud, while Reem becomes the new CEO and runs the business successfully with her beloved fiancé, Taleb. At the very end of Crazy Rich, Incredibly Broke, Taleb questions whether the letters of the sign were really made of gold, or if Reem had played a bluff to stop the deal from being signed. Reem does not answer this question, but her smile suggests that she had indeed pulled a bluff. Perhaps she had realized that having sold all the assets and personal belongings had brought the family enough money to survive a few months, and she was confident that she would once again take the business back up to its summit after taking over. Getting the deal cancelled gave Sultan enough confidence to hand over the business to Reem, and ultimately it is a win for each of the family members. 

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