James Riswick
Assistant A&E Editor
Every Sunday morning, it’s easy to find Bollywood movies playing on Los Angeles television.
These Indian-made films are easily spotted by their lavish dance sequences and spunky music interspersed among scenes of drama.
When I was a kid growing up in multi-cultural Toronto, I frequently found myself watching such films much to the confusion of my parents. I thought these Bollywood movies were bizarre and funny since they were so different from anything made in the West.
That is without a doubt the same feeling I had with “Bride & Prejudice,” the new film by “Bend It Like Beckham” director Gurinder Chadha. I was expecting a film similar to “Beckham” about the intriguing Indian culture but instead of a soccer back drop, the world of Bollywood films would be involved. It was involved all right — “Bride” is essentially a Bollywood film but in English instead of Hindi.
Within the first 15 minutes, there are two elaborate singing and dancing sequences — one at a lavishly colorful wedding and another in a busy street. Fans of spontaneous choreography will love this one. There’s nothing like a group of sisters singing about an upcoming wedding then all of a sudden a large joyous squad of Sikh gentlemen begin singing and dancing right along with them.
There were several points when I couldn’t stop myself from laughing — not at the culture, but rather at these purposely over-the-top dance numbers. The problem is, I can’t decide if Chadha meant them to be humorous or if she was accurately trying to portray what Bollywood films are actually like. Either way, the huge elaborate sequences work much better than the more personal song and dances between two or three characters that always seemed very cheeseball — specifically the lyrics.
There is much more to this movie though than the musical numbers that will almost certainly warrant the most attention and/or wrath from movie goers. As the title would suggest, this is a modern take on the classic Jane Austen novel “Pride & Prejudice,” which for those of you not familiar with it, is somewhat similar to the Colin Firth-Hugh Grant-Renee Zelwegger love triangle in “Bridget Jones’ Diary.”
In this Bollywood-meets-Hollywood version of the story, a young headstrong Indian girl, played by the gorgeous Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai, buts heads with the stubborn, arrogant American Will Darcy (Martin Henderson) amidst the trials and tribulations involved with Indian marriages and meddling parents. Director Chadha clearly has a beef with elder generations of Indian women, because like in “Beckham,” family matriarchs are portrayed as hopelessly old fashioned by caring only that their daughters get married to a wealthy Indian boy. Meanwhile, the family father (Anupham Kher, who actually played the father in “Beckham”) is shown to be fair-minded and far more progressive. I have to wonder if this is accurate or just a personal problem the director had with her family.
As heroine Lalita, Rai shows charisma in her first major Western role and is simply stunning — Julia Roberts has reportedly called her “the most beautiful woman in the world.”
This can’t be considered a particularly good acting performance, but her singing voice is actually quite good and not of the painfully scratchy, high-pitched tone of most female Bollywood actresses. Like all men called Darcy in films (see Colin Firth), Henderson is drab as the up-tight American, but warms up as the movie progresses. Nitin Chandra Ganatra steals the show, however, as the zanily pathetic Indian-American Mr. Kholi who’s “high-end” life in a cookie cutter two-story house in the Valley only seems to impress Lalita’s controlling mother. Fans of “Da Ali G Show” should appreciate him.
All and all, I’m not really sure what to make of “Bride & Prejudice.” I see it more as a cultural experience than a film and it’s subsequently hard to rate it along side standard Western movies. If I did that, then “Bride” is simply terrible because of its bizarre musical numbers and weak script. On it’s own, however, it is a fairly impressive blending of Bollywood and Hollywood that doesn’t fall into either category, but manages to treat Western audiences with a taste for the world’s largest film industry.
If you’re up for something a little different, this movie might be both enlightening and entertaining. If it isn’t, you just might want to sample Bollywood on Sunday morning TV.
03-31-2005
