A Review by Sarah
So, okay, I'm going to be writing an essay for BenBella books Pride & Prejudice anthology. My particular area is going to be looking at various media interpretations of P&P and writing about what they show about the culture and time in which they were made.
In short, I'm going to be getting 10 cents a word for watching movies. Go me!
Anyway, when I found out there was now a Bollywood version, the above mentioned Bride & Prejucide, I _had_ to go.
This was done by the same folks who brought us Bend it Like Beckham, and it was loads of fun. It was set in modern day. You know the plot. The, in this case, Bakshi family has a lot of daughters and no money for daughters. The first daughter falls in love with a rich, nice guy. The second daughter follows a rocky path to love with a rich, arrogant guy. The youngest daughter runs off with a nasty rogue, compromising the entire family. And in the middle, there's the painfully clueless relative seeking a wife.
Well, in this updating, Mr. Darcy was an American hotel heir, attending his first Indian wedding with his friend, Balraj. He doesn't want to eat the food, can't dance, can't manage the clothes, and is generally cluelessly rude at every turn. He does fall for Lahlita, and they do together save the little sister, and in the middle we have Mr. Kahli show up, who has become an accountant in LA and wants a traditional Indian bride.
It was _fun_. The writing was really good. It did hit most of the high notes of P&P and translated them really well into modern day and idiom. It also came the closest of any movie version I've seen yet to getting in Austen's knife-like social commentary. Lahlita is unsparing of Will Darcy's attitudes about India and Indians.
This was Bollywood, so this was a musical. There was a _whole_ lot of singing and dancing. Some of it was worked into the setting, some was presented as fantasy, and some just happened. This might bother some people, but as I absolutely adore movie musicals, I really enjoyed it. The dancing was wonderful. The songs were great, and the love-song when the couple is in LA and they did a Bollywood style big song on the beach with a gospel choir and surfers emerging singing from the waves was _hysterical_.
I highly, highly recommend this movie.
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Posted by: Father Of The Bride Speech | August 28, 2012 at 06:21 AM