Bride & Prejudice

Austen powerless: Bride & Prejudice is a shallow attempt at Bollywood sass

By Jeannette Catsoulis

Born in London to Indian parents, director Gurinder Chadha would seem the perfect choice for threading a classic of English literature through the bombastic needle of the Bollywood musical. But instead of highlighting the universal nature of Jane Austen's sly social satire, Bride & Prejudice manages to disrespect both cultures by reducing the cast to shallow stereotypes and the story to an exercise in flamboyant kitsch.

Mr. and Mrs. Bakshi (Anupam Kher and Nadira Babbar) share their modest Punjabi home with four marriageable daughters. The family is too low-class to attract rich, traditional Indian husbands (but not to be without servants, we notice), so Mrs. Bakshi is forced to cast her gold-digging gaze toward less class-conscious foreigners. When her eldest daughter snags British-educated millionaire Bingley (Naveen Andrews, currently playing Sayid on ABC's "Lost"), his American newspaper-tycoon friend Darcy (New Zealand soap stud Martin Henderson) seems perfect for second daughter Lali (Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai). We know this because they're fighting from the moment they lay eyes on each other.

Effective neither as musical nor comedy, Bride & Prejudice reprises the family dynamic and faux feminism of Chadha's previous film, Bend It Like Beckham: Meek, understanding father and scolding, snobbish mother, plus daughters whose definition of independence is to struggle a bit before grabbing a man. Flitting from London to L.A. to Goa, fielding gospel choirs and wriggling surfers, the movie is a desperate attempt to please American audiences with little more than vivid nonsense.

As she smothers her likable cast with broad humor and a narrow vision, Chadha's interest in her source material wanes whenever it threatens to say something perceptive about class or culture. Her characters talk a good deal about the "real" India, but the movie never shows us what that is except to suggest it has a lot to do with using your daughters as money bait. Chadha, in fact, seems to scorn Indian culture, making Bride & Prejudice nothing but a mildly entertaining farce, a piece of rainbow-hued candy with a surprisingly sour center.