ARCH 17,2005
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Bride and Prejudice (☆☆1/2)
PG-13, 110 minutes,
AMC Studio 30 - Olathe
Bride and Prejudice, the new Bollywood musical from the gifted Anglo-Asian film-maker Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham), tackles Jane Austen with a largely Indian cast.
The four beautiful Bakshi sisters, living in upper middle-class style in Amritsar, India, are in the market for husbands. The oldest sister, Jaya, is falling for Balraj Bingle, a wealthy British Indian. Balraj's American friend, Will Darcy, goes after Lalita, who in turn prefers a British backpacker named Johnny Wickham.
Some of these characters are transposed directly from Austen's typically wicked novel, Pride and Prejudice. Lalita closely resembles Lizzie Bennett in her sharp-tongued wit and feminist resistance, and is played here by the gorgeous Bollywood superstar Alshwarya Rai. The director's biggest departures from the novel are cultural and musical, revisions that pay off in the film's sparkling first hour.
For a while, *Bride and Prejudice* is Bollywood at its best. The musical sequences are infectious delights, aided by lavish choreography and swirling displays of pastel-colored costumes. Unfortunately, the film loses much of its color and vibrance when the action moves away from India. One problem is the increasing presence of the actor Martin Henderson the played the doomed boyfriend in *The
Ring1 as Darcy, Henderson's blah delivery bleeds the movie dry, and I kept hoping that creepy little girl from The Ring would crawl out of a television and get him again.
The bigger problem has to do with Bollywood itself, which has a style and
artistic sensibility unique to India. It's no wonder the film's musical numbers virtually disappear as the plot takes Lalita to London and later to Hollywood, where her heroine transforms into just another generic princess, a cinematic stepsister to Hiliary Duff or Julia Stiles.
The hilarious Nitin Chandra Ganatra costars as an Indian living in Hollywood who invites Lalita to stay at his "crib" because "it's the bomb."
Stephen Shupe
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