PL1981

Creating a modern-day Bollywood version of "Pride and Prejudice" was a novel idea and was always going to be a challenging enterprise and director Gurinda Chandha deserves great credit for attempting to try to do so. What she produces is a worthwhile product with some great flaws The movie is to be credited for seeking to introduce western audiences to Bollywood entertainment and I like that that the film incorporates most of the traditional aspects of Bollywood productions -singing, dancing, guest appearances unrelated to the movie's plot and so on. It also provides us with an interesting and colorful, if I suspect somewhat superficial, overview of some aspects of Indian lifestyle and culture. The singing and dancing is well choreographed and fun even if the lyrics appeared slightly clichéd. I have a feeling Chandha was having a good-natured dig at Bollywood tradition at some parts The plot flows nicely with most of the similarities to the Jane Austen novel plainly evident.

The casting was mostly good. Most of the Bakshi family closely matched their equivalents in the Bennett family and gave excellent performances in their respective roles. Martin Henderson was good as Will Darcy, Naveen Andrews was great as Balraj and the very talented Indira Varma was great as Kiran, the equivalent to Caroline Bingley. Daniel Gillies was good -if slightly forgettable as Johnny Wickham and Nitin Ganatra was hilarious as the irrepressible Mr Kohli.I could think of no better actress to play the Lady Catherine De Bourgh-like character Catherine Darcy than the very talented Marsha Mason.The one disappointment (other than what I'm going to get to in the next paragraph) was Alexis Bledel as Georgiana Darcy. Georgiana Darcy is one of my favorite characters in "Pride and Prejudice" but this version of Georgiana Darcy comes across as flat and unlikeable

But what really spoiled the movie for me was Aishwarya Rai in the main role of Lalita Bakshi, although in all fairness she was given some very sloppy character development and dialogue to work with by Chandha. She's such an irritating, annoying actress and her performance -at least in this movie -was horrible and her being the main character definitely destroyed the charm of this movie was for me. Rai has been quoted in interviews as saying that she didn't read "Pride and Prejudice" before appearing in this movie. Well, perhaps she should have. Lizzie Bennett is definitely opinionated and headstrong but she's also a very sympathetic character and the reader can passionately identify with where she's coming from. Even when we see the flaws in Lizzie's character, they are still portrayed in a sympathetic way in relation to her overall personality. Rai and Chandha make Lalita's character arrogant, rude and pretentious to the point where I was cheering on Darcy when he was being obnoxious to her. That shouldn't be how it is in a "Pride and Prejudice" adaptation

Perhaps this is a reflection of the overall script and character development in this movie, though. Many of the characters could have done with more depth, dimension and substance and there was a huge potential for greater fulfillment of the premise of this movie.The dialogue also fell flat at certain parts.

I think this movie has an interesting premise and the casting, the insights into some aspects of Indian life and the singing and dancing make this worthwhile viewing. However, the sloppy script, dialogue, character development and the casting of Aishwarya Rai in the role of Lalita detract from what otherwise could have been a great movie