Bride and Prejudice, Sit Back and Have Fun

I believe that sometimes it's better to be ignorant of certain things before seeing a film. The truth is I have never read a Jane Austin book and I have never sat through a three hour Bollywood movie loaded with dance.(This film runs about an hour and a half) This means I had no expectations. I went into the movie and let the director, Gurinder Chadha, take me for a ride...and what a fun ride it was.

I was entertained and had a smile on my face throughout most of this movie. The only time I didn't is when the plot dictated there was some seriousness in the film. Hey it is a love story.

The Plot

During a wedding in India a mother is looking to find proper husbands for her four daughters. Many suiters come into the lives of the family during the wedding and a short time thereafter. It becomes a love story between a wealthy American by the name of Will Darcy (Martin Henderson)and drop-dead-beautiful and head strong Indian gal, Lalita (Aishwarya Rai). Other relationships (some contrived) between the other sisters and fellows flow around these stars of the film.

These are pretty much arranged weddings but Lalita will have no part of that. She wants to love the man she weds. Will Darcy looking to build a hotel in India is turned off by what he sees in India and moves on but there is this attraction he feels toward Lalita.

The rest of the movie is boy meets girl, boy loses girl, girl doesn't like boy, girl likes boy, etc etc. But you also have to add in a host of other characters that fill this film with more faces and characters than can be imagined but even I was able to keep track of who was who.

What I saw

I honestly had no idea as to what I was walking into when my wife took me to this movie. The film opens and soon thereafter a wedding starts and suddenly I thought I was watching an old episode of the short lived TV show "Cops Rocks" where everyone suddenly breaks out into song and dance being performed by an Indian version of the Ziegfeld Follies . At first I thought this joyous outburst was only part of the particular wedding going on, but no, every once in a while in the middle of dialog the music started and the song and dance began.

The film has some outrageous characters (and some overacted)and some very hilarious scenes. The dancing and humor is infectious. Throughout the film we are also brought into dream scenes that where also a hoot. We were treated to scenes where Mariachi Bands, and Gospel Choirs come in and out of the film. At other times I thought I was watching an Indian version of "Grease."

Lalita's mom and dad were just the type (and typecast) parents one might expect in a film like this. The overweight and but not over-played mom just wants her daughter to get married to someone of stature, but it doesn't come soon enough for her liking, while the dad wants the daughter happy and following her own wishes and dreams.

Film and Sound and More

I liked the filming of this movie. Multi-cameras, quick zooms and overhead shots were edited in. The scenes were filled with more colour than I have ever noted in a film. The Indian dancing gals were gorgeous, as were most of the guys good looking. Except for particular characters that needed to be seen as different or ordinary looking, this was a film of VERY beautiful people.

The sound track of this movie was amazing! The sound was excellent in our theatre and it was extremely upbeat in its Indian music and rhythm.

I enjoyed the choreography of the dance scenes. The opening scenes of the gals and guys doing their "mating ritual" dances with each other reminded me of "West Side Story's" Jets and Sharks at the dance in the gym. This was truly an east meets west dancing film. Most of the filming was in India but England (London and Windsor)and the States (Hollywood) were also part of the background.

My Take on It

For those who may have seen Gurinder Chadha's previous film "Bend it Like Beckham", I can tell you I liked this one better. Maybe it's not even fair to compare them because of the upbeat music track in this film. While "Like Beckham" had a seriousness side to it, this film really was just a light-hearted romp with some love attractions within it. It is rated PG-13 and I see no problem with that rating. This is from a guy who is a stickler in what kind of films he would let his young daughters see. My gals are older now and we will be getting the DVD whenever it comes out in a format we can watch on our players. (It is out in other formats now)

The director started out with some dialog and dance scenes that grabbed me right away and drew me right into the story. Some of the film is sharp and witty and some very contrived and yes, there were some poorly acted scenes. I even have to say that the writing left some holes as big as the Grand Canyon but in spite of that I walked out of the movie house with a huge smile and though the theatre was pretty empty at the 4:45 PM showing, the few people there were outwardly sharing their enjoyment of the movie and were saying they were going to make phone calls to tell people to see this film. I'll save some quarters and just tell you now...Go see the film in the theatre soon and enjoy.