Cinema Tuesdays Review

Bombay Dreams of Hollywood
By Nathan Cone

The Hollywood musical is turned on its end in "Bride & Prejudice," a Bollywood-style remake of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Starring India's hottest screen actress, Aishwarya Rai, and directed by Gurinder Chada, the movie is a lot of fun to watch, if a bit unsure of itself at times.

Rai stars as the smart and headstrong Lalita Bakshi, who wants to marry for love, despite her mother's pleadings to marry soon (Mrs. Bakshi has four daughters to marry off). She's startled by the arrival of Will Darcy (Marin Henderson), who is visiting her town to accompany a friend to a wedding party. Do they hit it off right away? Of course not. But annoyance can develop into friendship and love, and with this being the umpteenth version of Pride and Prejudice to hit the screen, of course we know that our heroine will first be lured in by Wickham, in this case Johnny Wickham, who, in "Bride & Prejudice," has designs on more than one of Mrs. Bakshi's daughters.

This being a Bollywood-style version of the story, there are musical numbers to round out the story and offer some fantasy sequences. The opening number, "Marriage Song," is a spectacular show, with what looks like scores of extras. It builds and builds for about seven minutes until it explodes in a rainbow of color. Other musical numbers are playful, like "No Life Without Wife" (inspired by "Grease," according to Ms. Chada), or they may be wildly exotic, like a scene on the beach with singer Ashanti performing a sort of Indian hip-hop tune.

Director Chada mentions in a short "making of" featurette included on the DVD that she wasn't quite sure whether to go full-on Bollywood or lean a little more toward Western films, and it shows a bit on screen. I actually would have liked more musical numbers in the film. Another extra feature on the disc lets the viewer check out extended versions of four of the songs in the movie. A little Internet research led me to see that the original cut of the film did feature the complete performances, but the American release was cut for time. That's a shame, because in the case of the aforementioned "Marriage Song" there are several characters that get some solo lines in the extended version, offering a bit more insight into themselves.

Rai has a great screen presence; Roger Ebert is right to declare her one of the most beautiful women in the world. The actor playing Will Darcy, Martin Henderson, is a bit wooden, but I guess Darcy is supposed to be. Still, when Colin Firth played Darcy for the BBC, and in "Bridget Jones's Diary," you could see there was heart underneath his staid surface.

The DVD features a surround-sound mix that is not terrifically enveloping, but does have a nice stereo separation. Extra features on the disc include the standard "making of" short documentaries, and conversations with a few of the actors. The extended songs, as mentioned above, are interesting to watch, and should have been included in the film itself. This is a DVD, after all, so why not go for the whole "extended cut" of the film instead of offering the "extended songs" as extras? There's also a feature-length commentary track with director Gurinder Chada and one of the film's writers.

"Bride & Prejudice" does a fine job overall of placing a familiar story in a new context, and with its multi-ethnic cast, and a storyline that crosses over three continents, it throws in a few "life lessons" about understanding other cultures as well. It's a visually vibrant movie that's fun to watch, and is well worth a look on disc.

7/17/05

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