BRIDE & PREJUDICE (2004) **1/2 Bollywood's way of telling Hollywood [through the device of a Victorian novel adaptation]: "Yeah, look, we know you're kind of laughing at us, and there are some things that we think are pretty damn funny about you too, but you're alright. We're still not sure-all of us, collectively, India-about the British, but we understand you had some problems with them during your colonial period too, and so." It's all modern, but there is a cultural adjustment to Bollywood, for me, letting them get in so many song & dance numbers before bothering to develop any characters or plot. A bit like what worked so gloriously in Mamma Mia!, I guess, but for me that was native. Actually, I like the musical numbers the more simple and ethnic they are. Naveen Andrews just grooves in an early one, fortunately, and so the old-style courting ones kind of have that yin/yang thing going. The pop stuff I can mostly do without. As the father of three beautiful daughters, I can appreciate the dad in this one: just kind of kicking back and letting it all run its course, stepping in just once, and even that to get in his wife's way. Fortunately my wife's not like that. But anyway Aishwarya Rai, Peeya Rai Chowhary, Namrata Shiodkar and Meghna Kothari are an impressive lot by any aesthetic standard and a lot of trouble no matter how laid back you are, so if you can forgive the '80s soap opera obsession with money (while denying it, Hollywood), it gets along well enough. Martin Henderson is a foreigner's conception of a good American (highly ambitious and competent, slightly misguided but with a good heart-a diminutive Bruce Jenner with some charisma, but not enough to have any hope of stealing a scene from Aishwarya), and Marsha Mason is the archetype of something very real; they just let her in the film enough to be truly offensive. Why would anyone wish to offend anyone else with a film you, see? Why do that, when you can do some good!
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