A cutting edge black comedy that takes you into the lives of an eccentric mix of characters that make up a close knit East Indian community.
This DVD showed up on the New Releases shelf of my local store, so I thought it was a new movie until I read the previous reviews. Well, I can testify that it certainly hasn't become dated. It's a very stylish spoof of Bollywood on one hand and an insightful tour through the generationally mixed culture of Indians in North America on the other, at least as funny as Bend It Like Beckham, and a good deal more honest. The funniest, and the most unsettling, moment comes when one of the secondary characters, a Sikh, orders the God Krishna to "scram" and the God, looking pitifully crestfallen, does exactly that. (PC Advisory: the movie contains something calculated to offend nearly everyone, as some of the other reviewera humorlessly noted.)
December 2, 2006I totally disagree with most of the reviewers here. This movie rocked. It's the funniest, sharpest, most misanthropic take on Indian-American culture I've ever seen. It's magical realist, it's got art school pretensions, it's got cheesy effects, but it's a hell of an achievement for a director who did it at age 21. I was in tears of laughter for most of the film. This is a vastly underappreciated nugget in this genre.
July 16, 2004 |  | Pretty awful, actually... |  |
This was one of the strangest and most poorly-conceived movies I've seen about Indian people anywhere. First of all, the Indian family was so inauthentic in the way it was composed/casted. The protagonist and his parents (the ones on the plane) looked completely southern Indian, while the rest of the family's culture was portrayed (somewhat strangely and unconvincingly, though) as typically northern Indian, especially the uncle, aunt, grandmother, and daughters. This may not be so apparent to non-Indian viewers, who may not be deeply aware of regional cultural, ethnic and racial differences within the vast Indian subcontinent, but to an Indian like myself the family's inauthenticity comes across very strongly. To provide an American parallel, it is as absurd as, say, showing an American family where half the members speak in a Texan drawl and the other half in a New York accent, or showing one brother as black and one as white! It seems to me that the filmmaker Srinivas Krishna, as a Canadian-born person of Indian ancestry, just does not know Indian culture (and its significant regional variations) well enough in order to make a culturally and sociologically accurate movie about Indian people (even about Indian emigres in Canada!). I don't know about Canadian culture well enough to judge whether or not the portrayal of white Canadians in the film was culturally accurate or not, but the portrayal of the Indian family was certainly quite peculiar...
March 6, 2004It's been ten years since I first saw this movie, and some of the imagery and humour has still stayed with me. Having grown up in Toronto and knowing the culture, this may have been one of the factors in understanding a lot of the humour--However, I do think this is a very accessible film, very funny and well worth the time. I think it captured the clash of cultural expectation very well, and it certainly blew apart a lot of stereotypes in both Indian and Canadian cultures. Great movie!
July 12, 2003 | | Leave this one on the shelf | |
I really wanted to like this movie, I tried, but alas there is just no redeemable quality to it. Highly disappointing, the plot was contrived. The actor who portrayed Krishna was good looking in a roguish way, as for the rest of the cast extremely forgettable. The entire premise of the movie was just silly, I guess I hope it would delve into the Indian Diaspora and come up with some solid understanding of this group of people who strive for western success while maintaining eastern values. To make light of an orphaned boy with issues of identity is an affront to good taste. If this film's objective was irony, the only irony is it holds the culture up to ridicule, with undertones of anti-religious sentiment. I did not find any humor in this movie; at best it could be considered a dark comedy where there is absolutely no point or reason for its existence and no entertainment value. Instead, watch "American Desi" or "Bollywood Hollywood" these films are more entertaining and a better buy.
February 24, 2003More reviews at Amazon.com ...
Daily Birthdays
(7 reviews)
