hyped garbage

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Bride and Prejudice is a film that intertwines Indian culture and Bollywood style with Western audiences in mind. The movie begins by introducing the main character, Lalita, and her sister who is getting married to a rich businessman from the west. Lalita meets Darcy, the other main character, who comes off as an arrogant American who refuses to learn the culture of India because it's "beneath him". Various drama comes into play with Darcy's old enemy stirring trouble and with Lalita misinterpreting Darcy's intentions but it ends with the standard Hollywood ending. The film was definitely enjoyable although I would have preferred it to include more Bollywood elements in it. Although I do appreciate that the characters speak in English even if it is unrealistic. The Bollywood elements that are prevalent are the costumes and the location, and the acting seemed more Hollywood. I first learned about Bollywood directly before viewing this film. I watched several clips from Indian Bollywood movies and learned about what makes Bollywood what it is. The clips I watched showed very synchronized passionate dances with singing in different languages. Bride and Prejudice includes one, maybe two scenes where the actors are dancing to songs in Punjab. It seemed more Hollywood than Bollywood to me but that doesn't mean it was a bad movie. The character's have diverse personalities with viewpoints that change over time. For example Will Darcy begins the film telling his friend that he should have married a western Indian girl and not to mix cultures. But by the end of the film he was pounding in the drums in an Indian wedding. I don't have any prior knowledge about family values and traditions in India but according to this movie, young women are primarily focused on getting married to a rich family. For example, Lalita's mother in the movie had the sole purpose of pushing her daughters to marry someone. Even in the first few minutes she is seen scolding her youngest daughter for being too provocative saying she has to let her elder sisters get married first. Many people get married or think about getting married, as Lalita's sister, her best friend and Lalita herself get marriage proposals. I feel like the movie was too focused on marriage and love and avoided displaying other cultural elements in India. If the main purpose of Bride and Prejudice was to make a film that introduced western audiences to Indian culture, than this movie has ultimately failed. If the purpose was to make a good movie with some Indian culture thrown in, than it has succeeded. Lalita dismisses building a resort in India in the movie because it isolated tourists from the "real India" with all its flaws. This movie was like a resort, it was very enjoyable to tourists but it didn't show the real India.

"Bride and Prejudice" was a poor representation of what a Bollywood film entails, this movie is just Hollywood forcing it's formulaic idea of how a romantic movie should be onto wisps of Bollywood themes. The finished product being a very underwhelming stereotypical cheesy 2000s American film. The movie was about two characters finding each other, initially one disliking the other, an antagonist love interest then introduced to build drama between the characters, ending with the realization that the antagonist truly is as the title "antagonist" entails resulting in the two main characters being together.This film is just a pathetic attempt to bring in a new demographic, the outcome being the alienation of both genre enthusiasts. The character development was shallow failing to build a connection between the protagonists and viewer. Without this connection there is very little investment by the consumer making the experience quite boring over all. The characters also fell into many cliché roles, the imperfect, misunderstood love interest, the conniving antagonist, the female just looking for love. All these characters have very little that make up who they are and what they do have has been overused time and time again. Not only are the characters cliché but the scenes felt so too. For example the female love interest, on the brink of changing her opinion of the misunderstood lead male, would have a secondary character, in this case the antagonist and lead male's sister, divulge information casting the lead male in a poor light prolonging the movies goal to get the two leads together. A sloppy and overused trope to meet a movies time requirement in my opinion. Bollywood films are supposed to be huge productions with vast dancing arrangements and captivating musical numbers, unfortunately this fell short regarding this movie. "Bride and Prejudice" attempted these Bollywood staples but had very few lackluster outburst of song and dance. The songs were poorly written, just take the number that repeated over and over… and over again the phrase "Marriage has come to town". No real thought behind the song and much like the characters, the song felt shallow and boring. In regards to the dance pieces they were short and nowhere near the magnitude of those from real Bollywood films. The movie's dance scenes went on for maybe 3-5 minutes tops and consisted of repetitive unimaginative routines which attempted to appease the Bollywood aficionados and keep the attention of the foreign viewers spitting on what it means to be a Bollywood film. The director also attempted to bring in the suspense and tension between characters commonly seen in Bollywood films but as said earlier, this goal was not reached with such boring, two dimensional characters.All in all this is what I expected from a Hollywood 2000s cash grab of a film, overall it felt quite sub par and did not do Bollywood films justice (funny enough it accurately portrayed the poor quality of such Hollywood love stories from this time). I truly hope people do not, after viewing this movie, create their opinion on what Bollywood, as the genre, entails.

The director Gurinder Chadha naturally gravitates toward issues of identity, but her recent work stands as a lesson in the perils of multiculturalism. The movie portrays two different culture and compares the beliefs of different traditions. The culture clash of the two main characters was to show how both sides are very different but similar. The director seems like she put a bunch of ingredients together to have a result of a rich cultural stew, when it's really more like a rotten potato. When two nations come together in this film, both stand to lose something.Bride & Prejudice did not seem like a Bollywood movie at all. There were maybe a few scenes where Bollywood is portrayed but it seemed more western. The crossover of American and Indian culture just made a really bad clash and has people cringe at the scene of it. The two different cultures try to show that they're differences are incompatible for each other but find a way to be together anyway. The awkwardness begins when Aishwarya Rai, Bollywood's most glamorous female star unites with a basic stud Martin Henderson from Hollywood. In the bustling Indian village of Amritsar, the two characters build a relationship with each other. There are aspects of a Bollywood film like the views on class, family, gender equality, and the musicals. However regular Bollywood's are not so much of a musical, but more like a break-out-and-sing-and-dance scene. The mother of the Bollywood films are more melodramatic, more Hindi or other speaking languages, and value the little details in each scene. The Bollywood music shown in this movie seems like a western musical, which changes the whole aspect of the Bollywood genre.The themes on class, family, and gender equality through a colorful Bollywood spectacle isn't such an awful idea, since the lightness and wide-reaching generosity of the work seems perfectly suited to the musical form. The movie is cluttered with stiff choreography and silly original lyrics. The cultural elements of an Indian family is well portrayed however the director makes the two countries and its beliefs below another. The Indian family is all surrounded with values like family, joy, marriage, and love. But the American family was portrayed as rich, all about business, and advancement. The language that the director chose to portray in a culture tradition was very bad. No Indian character would say words that don't sound like it's actual origin.

Jane Austen will be turning in her grave due to this poor adaptation. Coming from the great nation of India I am disappointed with how Hollywood smears and diminishes rich Indian culture. Worse is the attention seeking actors who crave it. Western countries have forever seemed happy to live in ignorance and propel Indian stereotypes like arranged marriages. Now I know there is no smoke without fire but it is not widespread and forced upon today. Just like regency england arranged marriages so did many wealthy Indian families. Nowadays people choose and make matches that they agree to. There are hardly any similarities between modern Indian culture and regency england. They certainly do not make modern adaptations of English films or any films for that matter showing arranged marriages so why is Indian culture still being shown like that, infuriating. Not only is this film an inaccurate portrayal of Indian culture it is an insult to a lovable classic that should remain untouched. This will once again suit an uneducated and ignorant western audience who are happy to have their ignorance reinforced rather than learn about other rich cultures.