Where's the Party Yaar?

Kermit the Frog once said "it's not easy being green", from the endless growing up Indian movies lately, it's not easy being brown either. There have so many of these "growing up brown in America" movies in the last decade, mostly low budget flicks that don't get a whole lot of press. The premise has nearly been run into the ground, traditional over bearing parents that are always in the wrong, rebellious kids who want to fit and date like everyone else and always in the right. One thing these movies have taught us for certain is this, if you're brown and growing up in America, you have a harder time assimilating into the mass culture then lighter skinned people. We've been told this over and over and it really does get tired. For young Indian Americans these films may perhaps be of deep cultural significance, loaded with in jokes that non-Indians may not get.

For much of white America, they will strip the film down to it's basics and call it a "country mouse meeting city mouse" story and think "meh, what's the big deal?" Probably gutting the Indian Americans who think they struck comic gold showing off the cool Indians vs. the over exaggerated fresh off the boat (FOB) immigrant Indians. This story is going to simply come across as a country kid moving to the big city to mainstream America, only with East Indians in it, and they will likely miss the deep rooted angst and confusion that Indians want to convey. The movie shows the Indian Americans as self assured, cool and all around well adjusted while the immigrated FOB Indians are socially clueless. Nevermind that the character of Hari as presented in this film would probably be considered a moron even in India, the filmmakers know they have to make Hari that silly of an FOB Indian to justify his mistreatment by the Indian Americans. To make more of the desired impact that the Indian American culture so desperately seems to want to make with mainstream film goers, a more concrete and weighted story has to be delivered with far more sincere actors. It would be interesting to hear what real people in India think of this film, as about 1 billion people are being derided and made out as ridiculous caricatures. Of course a braver movie would show regular Indian Americans mistreating and not including normal behaved and decently dressed immigrant Indians in their social activities for the sole reason of their own xenophobia and insecurities...but that would be hitting too close to reality and I doubt any writer/director would be that brave.

The movie (seems more like a documentary, though long) is good, a good once a worth watch time pass but clearly does not depict Indians. There might be some special cases but not all bag are douche bag. Never mind, a good to see comic case of a special middle class Indian moving to Western world and watch it out for fun.

All the comments by other users above this one are true and genuine. the funny situation lies with the acting - the cousin sings outside his gf's house 'hum dil de chuke sanam' and the one when the friends act like a gujrati and punjabi. And the punjabi daddy is awesome.

The two girls were just OK but the guys rocked with acting skills.

Well i got this movie in a big outside sale of a video club, cost 3$ so why not? After all it got Kal Penn, and yes its my own fault for buying something because i recognize the main star from a movie i like. Kal Penn mostly famous for the Harold & Kumar franchise play here one of the main character in this pre-Harold & Kumar movie. Kinda weird is that the other main character is name Hari Kumar Patel or something like that, which is the name of Kal Penn's character in Harold & Kumar. Anyway, this movie is rated G in Quebec which mean General Public, and therefore it was expected that there would not be raunchy stuff even tough Kal Penn hold panties on the front cover.

Some of the ideas where good, and the movie had a little something that didn't made it "bad" but it definitely need for laughing moments. Its one of those movie where it should be funny, but its not really and the best you can get out of it are a few smiles and maybe a chuckle or two. The main character is socially awkward coming from India and being very traditional and its mostly from him that the smiles come from. Kal Penn do very OK with the material he is offered but there was only one scene that more or less amused me.

This movie like many others enter the "cute comedy" category and i think when i was 10 or 12 i would had a lot of fun watching it, for that period of time, but in today's standard, it felt short.

I will admit the hard accents also made it hard for me to follow everything properly, as English ain't my first language in the first place. And i usually don't mind too much a comic relief side character with accent, having to follow an entire movie like this is kinda difficult. The movie is also full of India's music which where very annoying at time.

I think my biggest grudge against the movie is that with a title like "Dude, Where's the party" (probably cashing in on Dude, Where's my car) i was expecting a wild ride of a night movie, in the vain of "21 and over" only a bit softer. If you prefer take Ferris Bueller's day off as a better example in that rating category.

Anyway like i said, unlike some people if a movie does not amuse me that much but i still finish it and feel like "yah well OK" i will give it a 5 and say its OK, just not as good as i had hope for, but not that bad either. I remember Balls and Chain with the same Kal Penn which was not as good as i had hope for, but a bit better than this if my memory serve me well. In any case, i think outside the Harold and Kumar franchise and Van Wilder movies, there is nothing memorable from Kal Penn in term of comedy. Well Bachelor Party Vegas was nice thinking about it... not awesome but nice.

While I agree that much of this film rehashes a lot of old stereotypes and clichés, I didn't feel that the film did so mean-spiritedly or even without good intentions. Wasn't the moral of the story that all the stereotypes and harsh feelings toward recent immigrants were wrong? While there were points where some of the jokes or plot lines were a little hokey or clichéd and completely overdone (for the love of god, no more doctor/engineer jokes!), I thought the film had some moments of very subtle, very astute analysis on identity, race relations and negotiations of who is "cool" and who isn't. Granted, I'm watching this film for my master's thesis, so I'm looking for all of those subtle cues, but if you look closely, you can see there is a lot more going on in this film than FOB jokes.

That being said, the film isn't perfect. It gets really slow at points, and like I said, a lot of the jokes are completely run into the ground. However, I thought that Hari was such a sweet, likable character (he actually reminded me a lot of the main character in the movie "LOSER," which follows a pretty similar story line about a dorky mid-Westerner moving to New York for college), that he made the movie worth watching. Despite all this film's shortcomings, I'd rather watch it than American Desi (or a large number of the American Desi type films) any day. This is one of the few films of its type that didn't take a completely uncritical approach to "Indian" culture. This movie actually took some time to poke fun at itself.

In my opinion, this film got much closer to satire than pretty much everything else I've seen in its genre, and if you are looking for a film to watch within this genre, this is probably the best option at this point.

If you liked Harold & Kumar, then you may find this movie funny. However, it is not a movie centered around drugs like the afore-mentioned was. There is a weed scene in Where's the Party, but nothing on the scale of Harold & Kumar.

Basically there are 2 general groups of people that will find this particularly funny: 1) Kal Penn fans.

2) Anyone who finds racial stereotypes funny.

As a whole, this movie had some pretty funny moments in it. However, it big time paled in comparison to Harold & Kumar go to Whitecastle.

If you fall into one of the two categories above, check this movie out. If not, you'll probably want to skip this movie and pick something else instead.