Bride & Prejudice Review

Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham) has done what everyone in India talks about - she has made a Bollywood film for a Western audience. Huzza! But does it work? Does it allow the emotionally stunted Brits to indulge in a big melodramatic song and dance squishy group hug and not succumb to post-modern ironic cynicism? Bride & Prejudice attempts this perilous balancing act with pizzazz and great dollops of west London Punjabi chutzpah. When it works it is hilarious and brilliant; when it fails it goes down in flames, but its sequins are still glittering brightly.

Chadha flings us straight into Bollywood spectacle with that staple subcontinental ingredient: a wedding song. This is the song that works best, veteran choreographer Saroj Khan is in her element and even Anu Malik can't mess up the thumping dhol beats. Our entry into a very different cinematic universe is flagged when the 'American Born Confused Darcy' (Henderson) is told to watch out because his otherwise sober friend (Andrews) is about to "turn into the Indian MC Hammer". Break it down, yaar.

Unfortunately the music for the rest of the film is disappointing to say the least. In an attempt to make it crossover, Malik has let it fall between two stools and it ends up as just bad Western music with a hint of Indian flavouring. It is not helped at all by the lyrics by Farhan and Zoya Akhtar (the children of top lyricist Javed Akhtar and both good filmmakers). They wrote the English lyrics in Lagaan but the fact that these were terrible hasn't seemed to filter through and they have now been let loose again with dire results.