VividSimon Simply Perfect

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Keira Brennan The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

d-82523 The beginning starts out with an Indian family with single daughters. Two men from London, Darcy and Baraj, come to India for a wedding and meet the girls. Baraj falls for the oldest daughter Jaya and Darcy is interested in another sister, Lalita. The story follows these couples as different men try to interrupt the relationships of these girls. A distant cousin, Mr. Kholi, and Darcy's old friend, Mr. Wickham, try to pursue Lalita and her sisters. This story flows between India and America and is a very entertaining story about love and family. The pursuit of the girls was captivating, as it kept you always wanted to see what would happen next. I really enjoyed this movie and the conflicts and resolutions that were shown.Watching a Bollywood movie for the first time, I was pleased by what this movie had to offer. Not only did I enjoy the Bollywood drama and passion, but I also was enthralled by the singing and dancing. When Mr. Kholi arrived, a level of humor was added to the film. I also enjoyed the romantic scenes with long gazes and looking at each other wishfully. Also, toward the end, I was delighted by the action scenes and the guys fighting over the girls. The story stayed true to Bollywood values and Indian culture. There was also a good mix of Hollywood in this movie. A lot of the songs had an American style to them which helped bring the two worlds together. I learned a lot about the culture in India, especially the weddings. It was cool to see married couples riding on elephants after their wedding. I liked watching all the colorful outfits they wore and the style of their parties. The houses in India were very different than houses in America. I liked how the director added many dances and songs, but sometimes the songs were a little too American. I liked watching how involved the families are in India for picking a spouse for their sons and daughters. I think the director did justice to this Bollywood film with an American twist. I would recommend this movie to people who have never seen a Bollywood film before.

Hafsa Ali The director Gurinder Chadha naturally gravitates toward issues of identity, but her recent work stands as a lesson in the perils of multiculturalism. The movie portrays two different culture and compares the beliefs of different traditions. The culture clash of the two main characters was to show how both sides are very different but similar. The director seems like she put a bunch of ingredients together to have a result of a rich cultural stew, when it's really more like a rotten potato. When two nations come together in this film, both stand to lose something.Bride & Prejudice did not seem like a Bollywood movie at all. There were maybe a few scenes where Bollywood is portrayed but it seemed more western. The crossover of American and Indian culture just made a really bad clash and has people cringe at the scene of it. The two different cultures try to show that they're differences are incompatible for each other but find a way to be together anyway. The awkwardness begins when Aishwarya Rai, Bollywood's most glamorous female star unites with a basic stud Martin Henderson from Hollywood. In the bustling Indian village of Amritsar, the two characters build a relationship with each other. There are aspects of a Bollywood film like the views on class, family, gender equality, and the musicals. However regular Bollywood's are not so much of a musical, but more like a break-out-and-sing-and-dance scene. The mother of the Bollywood films are more melodramatic, more Hindi or other speaking languages, and value the little details in each scene. The Bollywood music shown in this movie seems like a western musical, which changes the whole aspect of the Bollywood genre.The themes on class, family, and gender equality through a colorful Bollywood spectacle isn't such an awful idea, since the lightness and wide-reaching generosity of the work seems perfectly suited to the musical form. The movie is cluttered with stiff choreography and silly original lyrics. The cultural elements of an Indian family is well portrayed however the director makes the two countries and its beliefs below another. The Indian family is all surrounded with values like family, joy, marriage, and love. But the American family was portrayed as rich, all about business, and advancement. The language that the director chose to portray in a culture tradition was very bad. No Indian character would say words that don't sound like it's actual origin.

Semicolon1999 Butchering of a classic story. Characterization is terrible. Worst thing is, I felt they were not even trying to make this a good movie, just thought the Bollywood spices, mixed with some international flavor, and Aishwariya Rai's presence (in a role that does not suit her at all) would be enough. Aishwariya, most of the times, is her own icy self, rather than the warm, smart heroine she is supposed to be portraying. Martin Henderson's character looks pretty, but also a little dumb, and is as far away from the cool and proud Mr Darcy as can be. With all the running around, from one continent to another, the characters don't get much time to become well developed anyway. The actors playing the mother, Mr Kohli, and Lucky did okay jobs.

UnoriginalJess Chadha's Bride and Prejudice is an ambitious project that both succeeds and fails in its premise. Set in India, England and America, Chadha endeavours to transport Bollywood's extravagance and musical numbers to a western setting, and in this, she succeeds. Bride and Prejudice is indeed a fun and colourful film, replete with several song-and-dance routines. The Punjabi wedding dance song, in particular, is a joy to watch. The combination of Bollywood techniques to the Hollywood film is fun, and in this, Chadha succeeds.As an appropriation of Austen's classic, however, the film fails miserably. At a basic level, the plot and narrative of Pride and Prejudice is unchanged, but if subtlety and wit marked Austen's novel, overuse of clunky satire is what marks Chadha's film. Seeming to prefer satire in the form of almost-painful caricatures to subtlety, and loud debates over what is the "real India" to wit, Bride and Prejudice often feels clunky and clichéd, and fails to display the level of charm one expects. Chadha's caricature of the Americanised Indian, Kholi Saab, is almost painful beyond the point of humour.In addition to this, Bride and Prejudice is too obvious in its condemnation of loveless marriages; as though Mr Kholi's absurd caricature and painfully embarrassing comments such as, "Now we have the advantage of home ground" and "Such small caterpillars that turned into beautiful butterflies" are not absurd enough, Chadha feels the need to drill the idea into audiences heads that he is not a match for the spirited Lalitha. This is seen when Lalitha sings, "I don't want a man who's crude and loud/ Wants a pretty wife to make him proud" (the terrible use of rhyme doesn't do much to support the idea of Lalitha's intelligence and wit).Furthermore, where oh where is the handsome but aloof Mr Darcy? Where is his stinging comment, "She is tolerable, I suppose, but hardly enough to tempt me" spurred Lizzie into an indignant rage? Instead we have Martin Henderson using the pathetic pick-up line, "I'm a hopeless dancer, but this looks like you just screw in a light bulb with one hand and pat the dog with the other". Where is the wit, the arrogance, the insult? Instead we are treated with a Darcy whose goofy comments hardly make one stiffen with insult or go weak at the knees.Despite its failure as an appropriation, Bride and Prejudice is an entertaining film. Just make sure you don't go in expecting the same scintillating wit, sizzling exchanges and intellectual enjoyment one would receive from Pride and Prejudice. That, I am afraid, is somewhat scant in this film.