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BRIDE AND PREJUDICE Send This Review to a Friend
Director Gurinder Chadha, co-writing the screenplay with Paul Mayeda Berges, has concocted the wild idea of taking Jane Austen’s classic “Pride and Prejudice,” turning it into a story set in India, and filming it in the style of those splashy Bollywood musicals replete with lavish song and dance numbers. As you can imagine the mix is quite a cocktail. But the sheer exuberance of the film, to say nothing of the nerve involved, makes “Bride and Prejudice” often entertaining if you don’t take it very seriously and enjoy it for its moments of spectacle and its crazy basic idea.
Does it do justice to Austen? Of course not. Does it give a flavor of the Bombay romantic musicals popular with millions. Absolutely. Chadha, whose “Bend It Like Beckman” was such a good movie, allows her imagination to run loose with this one in an entirely different mode.
A mother, played frenetically by Nadira Babbar, has as her prime mission in life marrying off her four daughters to rich men. One of the eligible young ladies, the Indian version of Austen’s Elizabeth, is Lalita, portrayed by the beautiful Indian star Aishwarya Rai, who takes a dislike to William Darcy, a wealthy American hotel entrepreneur, played by Martin Henderson, who pursues her. The corresponding Wickam of Austen’s novel is now the British cad Johnny Wickam (Daniel Gillies). You get the idea.
There are stereotypes galore, especially the overbearing Kholi, played by Nitin Ganatra, who has moved to Los Angeles, become super Americanized and is after one of the daughters. The plot is rife with misunderstanding and little intrigues, and the action at times shifts to London and Los Angeles. You know the screenplay will work everything out.
The most entertaining if overtly corny moments occur whenever the movie bursts into elaborate musical numbers, one even with a choir on a beach, to give the flavor of the Bollywood musicals that must provide the obligatory production interludes that are a staple of the genre. Those scenes are as over-the-top funny as they are extravagant. A Miramax Films release.
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