Jane Austen novels and Bollywood films share at least one thing in common: they're not for everyone. Yet somehow director Gurinder Chadha (Bend it Like Beckham) combines old-English romance and class commentary of Austen with the brightly coloured song and dance of Indian musicals to come up with Bride & Prejudice, a purposely corny but thoroughly entertaining piece of melting pot cinema.

"Inspired," as the credits put it by Austen's novel "Pride and Prejudice," Bride follows Lalita Bakshi (Aishwarya Rai), a stunning and intelligent girl from the small Indian town of Amritsar who, according to her mother, is ready to be married. She's quite the catch too - she's smart in a worldly sense, she's got gorgeous eyes, she loves the concept of family and, unlike many of the big screen's leading ladies, she actually looks healthy. Did I mention she strums a mean guitar as well?

In town to scout out some potential hotel purchases is the very rich and equally eligible Will Darcy (Martin Henderson). After some initial tension, the city boy and the country girl find themselves drawn towards one another through the magic of singing and dancing in the streets.

If you haven't experienced Bollywood as of yet, be prepared. Elaborate song and dance routines break out spontaneously, dialogue is filled with clichés and dated jokes and men and women never kiss. Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding and Deepa Mehta's Bollywood Hollywood are two other films where East and West meet, making them good primers so as to ease your way into the Bollywood experience.

Chadha sticks largely to the Bollywood formula - at least as far as style goes. The costumes and sets both blaze with bright colours. With such a set design, it only adds to the fun feel of the film.

Had the script been a product solely of Hollywood, it would induce nothing but groans and the sounds of theatre seats smacking back into place as audience members walked out early. Take the character of Mr. Kholi (Nitin Chandra Ganatra), for instance. He actually quotes the old Budweiser "Wazzup?" commercials that are five years overused. Sure, he's supposed to be a nerdy poser type, but of all the unfunny lines that could have come from him, the best that they could come up with is "Wazzup?" However, there's a lot of Chadha's tongue pressed in her cheek. It's meant to induce groans.

Bride is very aware of itself as a cross-cultural film. And that perspective is exactly where its greatest strength lies. Like Monsoon Wedding and Bollywood Hollywood, Bride tackles the subject of converging cultures as old India, represented by Lalita's mother (the hilarious Nadira Babbar) and old animal-drawn farm machines, and a new, emerging India, represented by the hustle and bustle of big business, cars and new technology. There is tremendous tension between the two and it's Lalita's generation who are stuck in the middle of it.

Chadha is also just a little critical of Western influences on India, which is still a very young nation having gained independence just 60 years ago. These jabs come from Lalita in the direction of Will as his motivations sometimes come across as imperialist.

So if Bride & Prejudice is part Jane Austen and part Bollywood, it probably won't be for everyone. It is however, a lot of fun if you let it and don't take it too seriously. Like Chadha's Beckham, it's cotton-candy fluffy. It might not be the healthiest thing for you but it makes you feel oh so good while you eat it.

©Movie Views; February 28, 2005

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