BRIDE & PREJUDICE

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A Bridge Too Far
"Beckham" Director Fumbles Bollywood Version Of Austin Novel
By Cole Smithey

Overwrought floral song-and-dance numbers fulfill every Bollywood (and Tollywood) cliché in director Gurinder Chadha's misjudged attempt at adapting Jane Austin's novel "Pride and Prejudice" to the non-western demands of Bollywood.

Chadha leverages the surprising success she enjoyed with "Bend It Like Beckham" (2003) to ostensibly seduce American audiences with India's Bollywood trappings that scramble all plot and character development into a blandly sweet confection of soft-soap melodrama.

Former college friends Will Darcy (Martin Henderson) and Raj (Naveen Andrews) go to India for a pre-wedding party for another of Raj's friends where fish-out-of-water hotel mogul Will falls for the lovely Lalita (Aishwarya Rai), in spite of their oil-and- water chemistry. Even ardent fans of Bollywood movies will find fault in this flavorless and protracted musical.

As both a musical, and as a foreign genre movie, "Bride & Prejudice" has two  strikes against it. But the fact that it's also a loose adaptation of a Jane Austin novel proves a chasm too far to cross.

The filmmaker makes a valiant attempt at making the Bollywood style more palatable by keeping everything, including the songs, in English but even this stands at odds against the film's underlying theme relating to American imperialism in India. Will's mother is an odious American hotel tycoon, busy tweaking his financially-tied heartstrings to marry a typically vapid Hollywood-bred bimbo.

"West Side Story" and "Cabaret" are the only two musical movies I know of where the characters seem justified for bursting into song. I could make a case for "The Band Wagon" (1953) based purely on the genius of Fred Astaire, but that would be too close in proximity to "Singing In The Rain" (1952) which, however much of a classic it is, doesn't compare with Astaire's charisma. "Bride & Prejudice" is not the movie to revolutionize movie musicals, much less unite Indian and American cinema.

Rated PG-13. 120 mins.