A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Great Acting by Zinta!? You have to be kidding. Terrible movie,terrible acting all around. What do you expect when you get actors who have never worked in film? For instance, the lead guy has never worked in film prior the Heaven on Earth! The direction was also so flimsy with nothing to write home about. Deepa Mehta style.All her movies have the same rhythm lacking in depth. Besides,this movie really lacked reality,one could tell from the acting alone. What was the point of shooting it in Toronto when no locales were really highlighted except the snow? Perhaps government incentives, but this movie really is an Indian movie and should not be termed as Canadian. It was horrible.

I have borrowed all lines from other reviews to make a summary of my own: A vibrant and lovely girl, Preity Zinta as Chand flies to Canada to marry a man she has never met. Ironically enough, Chand's new family in the First World lives a poor, miserable lifestyle. Soon Chand becomes a brutally battered and abused wife who bears the brunt of her husband, Rocky's frustration. An intelligent audience doesn't need to see all out, emotional, crying scene to justify actions. A man sitting in a car, lost in though, is more than enough. Rocky isn't shown as a monster, he is shown as a very flawed man who doesn't understand how to deal with his problems, taking his anger out on those weaker than him.Chand is who she is. A girl in a new land. A girl with expectations. Trapped within a system of willing accomplices. She suffers, she aches, she misses her mother, her country, she is desperate thinking that she will have to live the rest of her life with a bunch of monsters, yet she never really loses her sense of life. She does not blame anyone, she does not hate anyone, she seeks solace using her imagination. She creates a world that is better, and lives it. She creates a "Heaven on Earth".It may be slow paced but it’s still engaging and compact. This is a film that confronts so many issues in a very muted and delicate manner. No, I am not talking about domestic abuse. This is an explosive issue, and is dealt with as such. There are issues of expectations…of survival…of denial, of how young ones react - the subtle explorations of the human mind and nature - these are the ones to watch out for.We, as the viewers of this small snapshot in a girl's life, are forced to consider the definitions of mental health. Who is insane? The one that hallucinates? The one that is violent? The one that manipulates? The one that witnesses? All silently-screaming puppets on a string being maneuvered into a life of domesticated dereliction by forces that we could designate as fate or just cruel blows of workaday drudgery…Deepa Mehta stays away from the stereotypical 'Don't-hit-me' pitiable victim and also 'I'll-hit-you-back' kind of liberating experience approach. Mehta doesn't play out any moments of redemption or payback. She simply offers us survival, intelligently integrating magical realism in a rather artistic way. Every time Chand is maltreated by her husband, she starts whispering beautiful, beautiful poetry. When she's alone, she imagines a better life, she imagines she is a beloved woman and wife. All the sequences involving the snake may be confusing and unclear, but what I find great about these essentially surreal incidents is that every viewer is free to interpret them just the way he/she wants to.

The movie is OK to watch. Its true and happening in Canada and other foreign countries. But my comments is not purely about film its about real life scenario too. Most of the film like this are based on pro-women pathetic life in their national and foreign land. Besides this so far , no movies on Indian man who is married to foreign born arrogant wife. Theirs are lot of men who staying foreign from India with their selfish and arrogant wife. Who made their life miserable and down them to too much extent to become a wife follower.I suggest being all time pro women in movie, there must be movies on man living abroad with "Who care, Nobody cares" personalities nature persons.

I agree with the last person who rated this film as horrible. Such films give any genre of independent film a bad name. I think now that Mehta's is trying to show mainstream audiences taboo topics in an interesting way but, failing miserably. I thought the film was shot well and looked colorful enough yet I felt that Chand's character could have been better developed and I would also like to have seen Rocky in any other light but a monster. I am sure even he is a victim of some abuse from his family but his father did not even seem as evil as he was. I cannot understand how some Indians can be ashamed of slum dog for depicting India as "a dirty country" when films like this show just how horrible some Indian community's are yet seem to accept it as just as another fact of life. I guess that's the message the film is going for...?