Bride & Prejudice
February. 11,2004 PG-13A Bollywood update of Jane Austen's classic tale, in which Mrs. Bakshi is eager to find suitable husbands for her four unmarried daughters. When the rich single gentlemen Balraj and Darcy come to visit, the Bakshis have high hopes, though circumstance and boorish opinions threaten to get in the way of romance.
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Reviews
Such a frustrating disappointment
Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible
Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.
Pride and Prejudice is a very interesting movie to have seen. The movie starts with some westerners visiting India to get a bride. The movie focuses largely on American man, William Darcy and Lalita from the Indian family who is having one of their daughters married to a man named Belraj. The movie has fairly simple plot as Will falls in love Lalita despite their rough patches throughout the movie. The movie's main turning point is when Will and Lalita are in California and Will gives himself a shot at redemption and win Lalita's heart. After they leave California, Lalita, her family, and Will, his sister, and Belraj return to India for the wedding and Lalita and Will are happily united. While I am not a person who favors romantic films it was interesting enough for me to keep watching it.Pride and Prejudice is a movie that is a crossover between Bollywood and Hollywood to give a taste of Bollywood like films. For example an average Bollywood film has a lot of dancing, singing, tends to be a few hours long, simple plot, and more cultural elements of India. The film has a lot more singing and dancing than an average Hollywood film but does have the songs fit in with the plot and film to an extent to fit in with Hollywood. The movie also has a fairly simplistic plot with Will falling for Lalita and the only minor plot twist is one guy being a man whore named Wickham. The movie however is a lot shorter than an average Bollywood at around an hour and a half. However the movie shows more Bollywood with its cultural values of marriage with arranged marriages and letting the parents pick the husband like with Belraj in the movie. The movie shows more Hollywood as well when they have the scene with Will confessing his love for Lalita. Despite some Bollywood features however the movie is overall more Hollywood in nature. The movie does show a fair bit of cultural elements to show more of what India is like. They have value arranged marriages more in their culture like with Belraj and Jaya. Another example of their culture is a lot of their colorful clothing that they wear throughout the movie. Another piece of their culture is how much family oriented they are in the movie. The film shows that family matters a lot to the people over anything else like towards the end of the movie with Beckham and Lalita's younger sister. They also portray the movie with a fair bit of dancing to show they value celebrations in the movie. In the end the director did a pretty good job of displaying the cultural elements throughout the film.
Even though I am not Indian, I just love her culture! They know how to party and their food is so great! It can turn even the most fanatical carnivore into an vegetarian (though their tandoori meat dishes are also excellent)! Indians are a great people! Shrewd business people but very warmhearted! I'm not a big Bollywood fan but India has a very rich film industry as well. Jai Hind everyone!!!!
When marriage has two different meanings, Lalita and Darcy have trouble with love. Mrs. Bakshi wants nothing more for her four daughters than a rich husband of her choosing, but when her two eldest play by their own rules, trouble stirs. The oldest sister, Jaya, falls in love with an Indian man who lives in London named Balraj, who brought along a friend, Will Darcy. Lalita, the second oldest, caught Darcy's eye the moment he saw her. However, coming from two different cultures, they find themselves in multiple disagreements. With Lalita's mother trying to set her up with Mr. Kholi, Johnny Wickham showing up and charming the sisters, and Darcy trying to win her over, it is hard for Lalita to know what or who she wants. Personally, I loved the film. I'm a sucker for cheesy love stories.I thought Bride and Prejudice was a great film to introduce me to Bollywood. Aside from the love story, the song and dance numbers were my favorite part. The song "Marriage has Come to Town" had an amazing set and such intricate costumes that could draw anyone's eyes. Not to mention the incredibly quick and sharp dance moves. Watching this crossover Bollywood film actually made me want to watch more, full-on Bollywood movies. The one critique I have is that the actors need to practice their lip-syncing because that was not so great. Overall, Bride and Prejudice is a great Bollywood introductory film.Although the plot was a basic, cheesy, love story, there was a lot that could be learned from the film. Indian culture was very prominent in this film, more specifically, their values of marriage. In India, arranged marriages are very common. It is likely that the parents will find their child a suitor who the parents think they will later on (in the marriage) fall in love with. Whereas, in America, it is most common to fall in love and then get married. Mrs. Bakshi wanted Lalita to marry Mr. Kholi, a rich Indian who lives in America and could provide her with a beautiful home. Lalita, on the other hand, wanted her parents to have nothing to do with her marriage, she wanted to find love on her own like an American. Another value learned is family. Family will always come first in India, especially with the Bakshi family. When Lachi left with Wickham, Lalita did everything in her power to search for her and save her from what could have been done to her. Adding on to that, Mr. Bakshi wanted to keep his four daughters close when they married so marrying a man who didn't live in India was unsettling to him. We can also learn how important India is to its natives. Tourists tend to see the beautiful, rich, Americanized side of India, when in reality most of India is not very "upper-class", but the natives appreciate it. When Darcy claims to have seen the real India Lalita is the first to step up and prove him wrong, showing him how he's only seen what he's wanted to see, not what was truly there.
Chadha's Bride and Prejudice is an ambitious project that both succeeds and fails in its premise. Set in India, England and America, Chadha endeavours to transport Bollywood's extravagance and musical numbers to a western setting, and in this, she succeeds. Bride and Prejudice is indeed a fun and colourful film, replete with several song-and-dance routines. The Punjabi wedding dance song, in particular, is a joy to watch. The combination of Bollywood techniques to the Hollywood film is fun, and in this, Chadha succeeds.As an appropriation of Austen's classic, however, the film fails miserably. At a basic level, the plot and narrative of Pride and Prejudice is unchanged, but if subtlety and wit marked Austen's novel, overuse of clunky satire is what marks Chadha's film. Seeming to prefer satire in the form of almost-painful caricatures to subtlety, and loud debates over what is the "real India" to wit, Bride and Prejudice often feels clunky and clichéd, and fails to display the level of charm one expects. Chadha's caricature of the Americanised Indian, Kholi Saab, is almost painful beyond the point of humour.In addition to this, Bride and Prejudice is too obvious in its condemnation of loveless marriages; as though Mr Kholi's absurd caricature and painfully embarrassing comments such as, "Now we have the advantage of home ground" and "Such small caterpillars that turned into beautiful butterflies" are not absurd enough, Chadha feels the need to drill the idea into audiences heads that he is not a match for the spirited Lalitha. This is seen when Lalitha sings, "I don't want a man who's crude and loud/ Wants a pretty wife to make him proud" (the terrible use of rhyme doesn't do much to support the idea of Lalitha's intelligence and wit).Furthermore, where oh where is the handsome but aloof Mr Darcy? Where is his stinging comment, "She is tolerable, I suppose, but hardly enough to tempt me" spurred Lizzie into an indignant rage? Instead we have Martin Henderson using the pathetic pick-up line, "I'm a hopeless dancer, but this looks like you just screw in a light bulb with one hand and pat the dog with the other". Where is the wit, the arrogance, the insult? Instead we are treated with a Darcy whose goofy comments hardly make one stiffen with insult or go weak at the knees.Despite its failure as an appropriation, Bride and Prejudice is an entertaining film. Just make sure you don't go in expecting the same scintillating wit, sizzling exchanges and intellectual enjoyment one would receive from Pride and Prejudice. That, I am afraid, is somewhat scant in this film.