Filmmaker
Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like
Beckham, What's Cooking?) continues her trend on making lighthearted
and colorful comedies that get by on good cheer and likeability, with Bride
and Prejudice offering up her most ambitious film yet. It is, as you'd
guess from the title, an extremely loose adaptation of Jane Austen's "Pride
and Prejudice", but this version is set in the modern day, and what's more, it
is conceived of as a Bollywood-style musical. Chadha delivers in one very key
area -- it is quite lovely to look at. However, once you go beyond the
appearance of the film, there just isn't much there to entertain, and sadly,
what should have been a whimsical romantic musical feels like no real effort
was put into making anything more than a cotton candy dessert film that tosses
in color schemes, breezy musical numbers, and toothless confrontations in an
effort to make a nearly two hour Hallmark card for India and its style of
moviemaking.
Aishwarya Rai stars as
Lalita, the second oldest among four sisters in an Indian family, whose mother
so desperately wants to marry them all off to financially successful
husbands. The eldest daughter is due to get hitched very soon, which means
Lalita is now feeling extra pressure as the oldest to not have a suitor
already lined up. While potential husbands are directed her way, Lalita has
been exchanging goo-goo eyes with Will Darcy (Martin Henderson,
Torque), the handsome and
rich American that has an attraction, but holds back his feelings and
efforts.
To put it simply,
Bride and Prejudice just doesn't work unless you really want it to work,
and to do that, you'll have to be in the mood to completely be enrapt with the
film's extravagant displays and featherweight delivery. Outside of the look
of the film, the pickings are mighty slim. It is a musical, as you'd expect
from a movie that is trying to capture a Bollywood style, but it's not a very
good one. Some of the choreography is solid, but it is the soundtrack that
proves to be the big weakness. These songs are lackluster at best, with a pop
tinge that smacks of "homogenized so that no one will find them offensive".
What's worse, these songs are so bland, they are completely unmemorable --
which come to think of it, proves to be a blessing of sorts. Sitting here
now, I can remember the gist of the songs, but I'll be damned if I can
remember how they sound.
The humor proves to be
just as flavorless, as is the romance. Sparks certainly aren't flying here,
not only between the two leads, but also there is little tangible tension in
the script worth noting. "Pride and Prejudice" has been adapted innumerable
times, so there is obviously some appeal to film audiences, but any remarkable
quality to Austen's masterwork is buried under costumes, locales, and the
constant need to sugarcoat everything.
Bride & Prejudice
is a fits-and-starts sort of film that does seem to find its groove once in a
while, but never can maintain it for very long. It does what it does in the
prettiest of fashions, although you may find yourself gagging from the visual
overload. As an English-language Bollywood concoction, it does stand atop the
other failed attempts (see The Guru),
but if you're going to take what's good about a genre of films, you should
take care not to bring the bad as well. It may be breezy and fun to watch in
its own limited, mostly vapid way, but there's little sense to be made out of
this mix of international sensibilities.
