Bride and Prejudice
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Movie Reviews of Bride and Prejudice
Movie Review: A very funny and touching film
Summary: 5 Stars
Ever since I saw the "60 Minutes" interview with Aishwarya Rai, Bollywood's highest paid actress, last month I had been anticipating to see "Bride and Prejudice". Now that I had seen it, was it worth the wait? Yes. I was thoroughly captivated throughout the 100 minutes of the film.
Based on "Pride and Prejudice", the story revolves around a traditional (Indian) family whose mother tries to marry off her four daughters. Of course one of her daughters has to be headstrong and goes against her mother's traditional ideas of marriage which is that she believes in arranged marriages. Aishwarya Rai plays Lalita, the second eldest daughter who clashes with her mother on the issue of marriage. Martin Henderson plays Lalita's love interest Will Darcy, a wealthy businessman who encounters Lalita at an engagement party. In the beginning Lalita and Darcy clash because they came from two different upbringing. I personally thought Martin and Aishwarya had lots of chemistry together. Of course I didn't think they would ever hook up because of Jonathan Wickman who was Darcy's rival for Lalita's affections but in the end everything works out.
I have to admit that I had never seen a Bollywood film. I was not used to the musical numbers but it did not take me very long to fall in love with the music. I was hooked pretty much right away. The music was what really made this film very fun and entertaining to watch for me. I especially loved the comical number "No Life Without Wife" in which Lalita and her sisters imagine Lalita being married to an obnoxious, crude businessman named Mr. Kholi (played by Gulshan Grover). The other hilarious moment was when Lalita's younger sister performed her snake dance. That was too funny. I also loved the musical number when Darcy and Lalita were on the beach in Los Angeles and there was a full blown choir and the lifeguards were also singing. I also enjoyed the brief cameos by "Gilmore Girls" Alexis Bledel and Marsha Mason as Darcy's sister and mother. I would have liked to have seen more of them in the film though. I can't think of one possible flaw with this film except maybe that they dragged on the sub-plot between Johnny Winkman and Lahki (Lalita's younger sister) a bit too long and didn't explain why Johnny's mother was fired by Will Darcy.
I was immensely entertained up until the very end where they showed bloopers during the credits. I look forward to seeing more of Aishwarya Rai in the near future. After seeing her in this film, I can't imagine her not becoming a big star in the US.
Movie Review: Watch it girls
Summary: 5 Stars
Bride and Prejudice resets Jane Austen's story in modern day rural India. Lalita lives with her parents and three sisters in India. She helps her father run the family rice farm and has a head for business. Her mother is obsessed with finding them husbands (arranged marriages are the norm) and her sisters are loveable airheads to varying degrees. As elidgable men visit their town, the sisters develop crushes and do the typical female spying and giggling. The mother tries to set them up with anyone with money. Finding a good husband is a very crucial step in these girls lives in a way that wouldn't make sense if they were living down the street in Florida. At the same time they are very normal and easy to relate to. They cue into pop culture.
This film showed family so accurately. Scenes of the mother trying to tone down the youngest sister who wants to show more skin, while at the same time the mother is trying to get her two older daughters to show more skin and attract husbands, ring true. The sisters gossiping about men are great. They giggle about the way too eager visitor from the US who has returned to India specifically for a wife. They describe their crushes to one another and make their own match making plans. The mom here is more positively portrayed that in the other adaptation I have seen (the british mini series). She is, as required, a bit ditzy and obsessed with setting her daughters up. Despite driving her husband crazy throughout the film, at the end they do a musical number together on the stairs. Its not what they are singing about, but you know that they really do love one another.
By the way this is a musical. The songs do fit in with the plot, but at the same time they are randomly breaking into an extremely colorful song and dance number. These musical bits were well done. They aren't about choreographed dance (although that does happen). Rather they show us more details in the scene, provide comic relief or advance the plot a bit (we see that Lalita has fallen in love in the last bars of a musical sequence). The point is, they are mixed in well and not disconcerting.
I usually can't get into Jane Austen novels or adaptations, and I loved this. This is a good choice of musical or a movie for a girls night. I would watch this again and again, and I don't watch movies again. If this at all sounds like something that you would like then it is unlikely to let you down.
Movie Review: Entertaining musical delight and fine tribute to Jane Austen
Summary: 5 Stars
I wasn't much of a fan of "Bend it like Beckham", so I think this film marks a step up for the director. I've never watched a Bollywood film all the way through, as I don't have the patience to sit through three or four hours of most films, so I was looking forward to watching her borrow the best elements from the Bollywood films (the song and dance routines). I also liked that she borrows heavily from Jane Austen's novel to create an original and clever work of her own (in the vein of "Clueless").
I love the Indian actress who plays the lead, with her opinionated comments and strong determination to stand up to anyone who disagrees with her. Her tart tongue, though, makes her not a good bride prospect for Indian males in search of a subservient wife. When she meets Darcy, their worldviews clash and since I knew those two would end up together, its interesting to watch how their opinions change for one another as the film rolls on.
The film is mostly set in Amritsar, India but the Indian family this film centers on ends up globetrotting to London and Beverly Hills. I like how the story seems to offer a critique of both the condescending view many Westerners have of developing world nations (particularly the Western tourist fondness for traveling to luxurious resorts in faraway lands to brag to the folks back home that they've been to India without actually seeing "the real India") and the obsession of Indian society towards material social climbing. It's that clash that makes this film all the more interesting and far superior to the usual gamut of cliched "romantic comedies".
The opening number "Marriage Has Come to Town" really sets the tone for the film and just try to keep your body still for that one. This is a good film to watch at home, as you'll probably want to dance along to the exotic beats of Indian music. Later on in the film, there's a musical sequence reminiscent of "Grease" (intentional, according to the director) and a beach rave scene featuring a seductive Ashanti at her best. By the film's end, with its satisfying conclusion, I simply wanted more, which is a good thing. Perhaps that's why Bollywood films are so long...viewers just aren't tired of the story to leave yet, as there are still more dancing to be done. I'm sure Jane Austen herself would approve of this transcultural tribute to one of her most famous novels.
Movie Review: My favorite film of 2004
Summary: 5 Stars
I can't say I am a fan of musicals. I find most musicals to be annoying (like "Grease"), "Bride & Prejudice" isn't one of those annoying musicals. "Bride & Prejudice" is one of my favorite films from 2004, if not all time favorite film. The film is loosely (and I mean loosely) based on Jane Austen's "Pride & Prejudice" which is given a Bollywood treatment.
India's biggest film star Aishwarya Rai plays Lalita Bakshi, the second eldest daughter in the Bakshi family. Her mother is obsessed with marrying off her four daughters to well to do suitors as quickly as possible. This doesn't sit well with Lalita because she is strong-willed, independent, and doesn't want to settle for any man. When Lalita meets the wealthy William Darcy (Martin Henderson of "Torque" and "The Ring"), sparks immediately flys between the two but so does strong opinions as well. Lalita also meets up with a grifter named Johnny Wickham (Daniel Giles) who shares a past with Darcy.
The good: I loved the music. The music was irresistably catchy. The first time I saw this film in the theatre, the music immediately got stuck in my head. The songs had the right hooks to leave an immediate impression on me. I just loved the musical numbers period. The comic relief of Nitin Ganatra as Mr. Kohli, the would be suitor of Lalita. Nitin is absolutely hilarious as the goofy, obnoxious but kind Mr. Kohli. The costumes were absolutely beautiful. Loved the outtakes during the credits at the end of the film.
The not so good: the writing of the film is a bit spotty but if you watch the behind the scenes making of the film, Gurinder Chadha explains how she wanted to capture the essence of the Jane Austen novel. Anyone who is expecting a word for word interpretation of "Pride & Prejudice" will be sorely disappointed in the film. I wished Gurinder would have been a bit more detailed about Johnny Wickham's past.
DVD features: there is a fifteen minute behind the scenes footage of the making of the film, extended musical numbers, and interviews with Martin Henderson and Aishwarya Rai.
Overall "Bride and Prejudice" is a massively fun film to watch. The music is catchy. The pace of the storyline is brisk and never slows down for a moment. Great cast. I never tire of watching this delightful film.
Movie Review: Multicultural Misunderstanding
Summary: 5 Stars
The movie begins in a welter of confusion, but I guess all versions of PRIDE and PREJUDICE share the problem of having to sort out five (in this case four) daughters of an avaricious and greedy mother, plus the best friend of one of them, so you have all these girls "of a marriageable age" and it takes a little while to realize who is who. As many have noted, however, BRIDE AND PREJUDICE has the incomparable advantage of luscious Aishwarya Rai, so you know right away that she is the heroine.
She is like a tall, and much younger version of Vanessa Williams, the disgraced former Miss America who made a magnificent comeback as a singing star later in her career. Rai's pipes don't have the power nor the punch of Vanessa's, but she has something else, a vulnerable frailty that convinces us that, even as she plays the meanest Elizabeth Bennet on record, she really isn't as bad as she makes herself out to be. Lalita gets annoyed at Darcy for the least little thing, and we don't really understand why (except for general post-colonial reasons), to the point at which we would really start to dislike her if it weren't the divine Aish playing her. She is so beautiful and seems so warm, even when she's playing hard to get or positively spiteful.
Marsha Mason is simply no match for Aish, so the contest never really takes off as it might. Why didn't they get a real spitfire to play the Lady Catherine de Bourgh part--someone like Kathleen Turner? Or you know who would have been good--Jessye Norman! As it stands, Marsha Mason looks like she'd rather be somewhere else, perhaps eating the dinners of two or three of her co-stars, than actually acting in the same movie with them.
The one song, "Show Me The Way, Take Me to Love," just gets better and better each time it is reprised, and the Los Angeles version with the surfers swaying their boards in time to the beat, and the blue-robed gospel choir singers trailing Darcy and Lalita across Venice Beach is outstanding, worthy of George Sidney or Stanley Donen or Vincente Minnelli. Martin Henderson isn't very commanding playing Darcy, but he'll do in a pinch, and the movie makes the most of the chemistry he evolves with La Rai, which by the last reel is smoldering hot!