Bride and Prejudice (nope, not a typo) is a Bollywood-style remake of the Austen novel by Gurdinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham, What’s Cooking?). It stars Aishwarya Rai (who Ebert has called not only the most beautiful woman in the world, but also the second-most beautiful woman in the world) as “Lalita,” and Will Henderson (who I’ve never heard of, but who’s handsome enough to satisfy) as Darcy. Naveen Andrews (Sayid in Lost) is Mr. Bingley.
The movie is absolutely gorgeous and a whole lot of fun. There are these huge, absurd, wonderful, musical numbers, and the plot moves along briskly. “Mr. Kholi” (the absurd suitor) is delightlfully, well, absurd. The eye-candy quotient is high, whatever your gender preference for eye candy. I somehow neglected to mention to my friend that it was a musical ( 
), but he was very happy to spend a couple of hours meditating on Ms. Rai’s loveliness, and he agreed that the movie was a lot of fun.
I just started rereading P&P last night – it’s been more than 25 years – and they seem to have been reasonably true to the book.
All in all – a hoot and a half, and worth seeing on the big screen for the sheer colorful (and it is very colorful) spectacle of it.
I thoroughly enjoyed this silly hokey fun movie.
The musical numbers were great, there should have been more of them. I haven’t seen any of the actors in anything else, so I don’t know whether or not to fault them for their B-movie performances or not- fact of the matter is the dialogue was so horrendous it would have been difficult for any actor to give a good performance. I certainly would feel challenged given the task to present a real character with what the actors had to work with.
But is was fun! And it looked great! And it was a silly hokey musical just like the silly hokey musicals of old. No pretense. No trying to be cool.
And I whole heartedly agree with Ebert: Aishwarya Rai is unbelievable beautiful. If for no other reason, go to see this movie just to stare at her for two hours.
I also agree with twickster, Nitin Chandra Ganatra, who plays Mr Kholi, was very funny.
As a huge fan of Bollywood movie musicals, I enjoyed “Bride and Prejudice” quite a lot. I felt that the musical numbers weren’t as catchy or as fun as they could’ve been though; but I still really enjoyed it. It was VERY hokey, but still a nice distraction. Not anywhere as good as “Bend it Like Beckham” (which was by the same director) but still enjoyable.
Well, for sheer fun on the musical numbers, I esp. liked the scene where Lalita and Darcy were walking on the beach, and
all of a sudden they pass the gospel choir, and then the surfers come out of the water and start waving their boards in unison, and then the lifeguards come bopping down the ramp. The whole theater totally cracked up.
I found the movie to be mildly entertaining fluff, but I was bothered by a few big flaws:
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The songs absolutely suck ass. Isn’t it bad enough that there is a real Andrew Lloyd Webber? Why torture us further by trying to be a bad imitation of him?
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Lipsynching is a tradition in Bollywood musicals, but in my mind it breaks the spell of suspension of disbelief to suddenly have a character sing out in what is clearly someone else’s voice, especially when the actors have Indian English accents and the singers have American English accents. Please, lay of the lipsynching.
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The acting was fantastic, except for Martin Henderson and Daniel Gillies. The whole film plummetted to the theatre floor and lay there like a dead donkey every time one of them tried to creak open his face and deliver a wooden line. Ugh. Absolutely horrible.
I saw this last weekend at my fiancee’s mother’s house. She had gotten it both dubbed in Hindi and the original English; fortunately I got to watch the English version.
Not as good as Bend it Like Beckham IMHO, but way worth it, if just to watch a bunch of hot girls dancing around in pajamas.
cough All in the name of better learning your culture, dear. cough
Oh, how I suffer for love.