Bride and Prejudice film review

certificate_12A

BRIDE AND PREJUDICE

Like a supermarket's own-brand curry sauce, Bride and Prejudice tries to please everyone, but ultimately is not as good as the real thing. This Indian reworking of Jane Austen's classic novel follows many of the conventions of the Bollywood style, but the attempts to cross over and please Western audiences are only partly successful. It also signals time for a worldwide embargo on Indian films where the main theme is marrying off children against their will, as it's a theme that is now well past its sell-by date.

After the huge and deserved international success of Bend It Like Beckham, director and co-writer Gurinder Chadha transposes a classic British romance to modern day India. The Bakshi family of Amritsar is desperate to marry off its four daughters, notably the eldest and most beautiful Lalita (Aishwarya Rai). But, like Austen's Elizabeth Bennet, Lalita is as outspoken as she is beautiful, and most of the men presented to her find her too presumptuous to be considered as a spouse.

When Mr Balraj (Naveen Andrews) appears in town to woo her sister, things begin to look up as he brings one Mr Darcy (Martin Henderson) with him. But Darcy turns out to be a prig, unlike his nemesis Wickham (Daniel Gillies), who Lalita begins to fall for. Comic relief is provided by Kholi (Nitin Genatra), who arrives from America to claim a bride but soon outstays his welcome.

The script stretches believability in several places, but this can almost be forgiven as the film is a flight of fancy with an ending that is never in doubt. More worrying, however, is the Bollywood factor, which seems to reduce everything to a lowest common denominator. The humour here is broader than broad: if you're looking for sophisticated laughs then you're in the wrong place. The rigid adherence to the Bollywood code forces the audience to sit through several songs, some of which work, and most of which are painful. Naturally the ensemble pieces feature street urchins with brightly coloured costumes and perma-smiles.