Green Card Fever

This just might be the worst movie I have ever seen. This movie went beyond laughably bad, to just bad. The acting was unconvincing and the story was stupid. The worst thing about it is that the dearth of American movies featuring Indian actors causes Indian people to like the movie, regardless of how terrible it is (like "American Desi"). I rank this movie among the 5 worst movies I have ever seen in my life (along with "Batman and Robin"). I implore you to NOT see this movie, only because it will make people think that this is a movie worth watching. I apologize for all of the "hateful" comments, but this movie suffers from everything that goes into making a bad movie.

Some good moments, terrible editing, too much social commentary. Not bad for a first movie.

Srinath Sampath is the lone bright spot in this film. He plays the smarmy cabbie in the beginning. Brilliant! DeNiro got started as a taxi driver and I predict Mr. Sampath will as well.

Good humor. Great story. Comic and tragic at the same time. Nice cast. Vikram Dasu was good in acting. But, may not suit commercial star roles. Purva Bedi was good, but, didn't look like a Telugu girl. Deep Kadare was the best-acted like a Hollywood actor. There are so many non-actors. That's the drawback of the film. With everyone as capable as Deep Kadare, Vikram Dasu and Purva Bedi, and the villain Kizad, the movie would be much better. Living in Brooklyn, I related to the movie and the immigration problems 100%. If you haven't been through those, you may not understand some scenes. But, if you have, you'll cry and laugh.

Doing a film about immigration politics and still keeping it as a romantic comedy is a very interesting idea. It worked for me. I liked the young lawyer guy very much. He's very subtle in his performances. All the other actors needed more training as he apparently has. The film has a very unusual kind of humor. In a very sad scene, the illegal immigrants sit in their prison cell and talk about the famous hot coffee case of fast food joint, and it ends up with a hilarious punch, "American thighs are too costly.." I didn't know whether to laugh or not, but, couldn't stop laughing. Strange humor, but, original. Crew sounds like the amateur college folks who didn't know how to put a real-looking beard to an old character. Cast, writing, and directing was better than the technical parts.

I was expecting this movie to be horrible from the trailors, and even the beginning of the movie seemed pretty uninteresting. However, the main character, Murli, was not even shown in the advertisements. Instead, the publicity was just hoping to attract people on the basis that this was an another American Desi. This is a completely different type of movie than American Desi. The ads are very misleading; I even heard someone say that he thought this was a sequel to American Desi. Anyways, keeping in mind that this is a drama, not a comedy, the movie is about an illegal Indian immigrant looking for work in a corrupt system and about Purva Bedi who plays an ABCD (American Born Confused Desi). Murli plays his character in earnest, and his climax speech is absolutely amazing and heart-wrenching. Purva's story well depicts the hurtful nature of American stereotypes of Indians, and how ABCDs take no shame by engaging in insulting India.