About an hour into "Bollywood/Hollywood," Rahul (Rahul Khanna) tells Sue (Lisa Ray), "You're so unpredictable." Really? Because there's nothing she does in the film, and nothing in writer-director Deepa Mehta's script, that's even remotely unpredictable. Sue's about as unpredictable as the sunrise.
The premise: Forced to find a nice Indian bride before his sister gets married, westernized Rahul Seth meets Sue in a bar. And in a deal stolen right out of "Pretty Woman" (1990), she agrees to pose as his bride in order to satisfy his mother.
Well, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what will happen.
It's obvious Mehta set out to make a lighthearted parody of romantic comedies and meld the genre into the suddenly popular Bollywood movies. I enjoy good Bollywood films. But in trying to find the best of both worlds, Mehta falls horribly short.
The romantic-comedy aspect of the story doesn't work because the characters aren't all that interesting. The outcome's a foregone conclusion and both Khanna and Ray have such poorly defined characters that, although they look nice, there's nothing beneath the surface. Ray has screen presence to spare. But Mehta needed to give the poor girl a stronger role.
The film's Bollywood angle does worse. What's fun about good Bollywood movies is that their songs are peppy and the song-and-dance sequences are fun to watch. Here, there's just one song-and-dance number - Sue's routine - that comes close to emulating a Bollywood number. The rest are unimaginative and completely forgettable.
Mehta tries to gently poke fun of and respect Bollywood films and Indian culture. Unfortunately, she does a lousy job straddling that fine line. Subplots and characters, including a bit about men in drag and a grandmother who quotes Shakespeare, make no sense and one female character keeps popping up in various scenes repeating the same line of dialogue: "What a bunch of losers." Why? Mehta also tries to capture the Bollywood essence with some ridiculous supertitles, including one during a kiss that says, "Kiss to end all kisses. No debate." It's a horrid, desperate attempt at humor, trying to force laughs out of us because nothing in her story makes us chuckle.
Intermingling western and eastern genres could have made for a fun, exotic, unpredictable film. But Mehta doesn't seem to quite know what she's doing. I'm certain the initial idea sounded terrific and the film likely looked good on paper. But it suffers when translated on to the screen.
"Bollywood/Hollywood" is the kind of film that makes "The Guru" (2002) seem like a masterpiece.
The premise: Forced to find a nice Indian bride before his sister gets married, westernized Rahul Seth meets Sue in a bar. And in a deal stolen right out of "Pretty Woman" (1990), she agrees to pose as his bride in order to satisfy his mother.
Well, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what will happen.
It's obvious Mehta set out to make a lighthearted parody of romantic comedies and meld the genre into the suddenly popular Bollywood movies. I enjoy good Bollywood films. But in trying to find the best of both worlds, Mehta falls horribly short.
The romantic-comedy aspect of the story doesn't work because the characters aren't all that interesting. The outcome's a foregone conclusion and both Khanna and Ray have such poorly defined characters that, although they look nice, there's nothing beneath the surface. Ray has screen presence to spare. But Mehta needed to give the poor girl a stronger role.
The film's Bollywood angle does worse. What's fun about good Bollywood movies is that their songs are peppy and the song-and-dance sequences are fun to watch. Here, there's just one song-and-dance number - Sue's routine - that comes close to emulating a Bollywood number. The rest are unimaginative and completely forgettable.
Mehta tries to gently poke fun of and respect Bollywood films and Indian culture. Unfortunately, she does a lousy job straddling that fine line. Subplots and characters, including a bit about men in drag and a grandmother who quotes Shakespeare, make no sense and one female character keeps popping up in various scenes repeating the same line of dialogue: "What a bunch of losers." Why? Mehta also tries to capture the Bollywood essence with some ridiculous supertitles, including one during a kiss that says, "Kiss to end all kisses. No debate." It's a horrid, desperate attempt at humor, trying to force laughs out of us because nothing in her story makes us chuckle.
Intermingling western and eastern genres could have made for a fun, exotic, unpredictable film. But Mehta doesn't seem to quite know what she's doing. I'm certain the initial idea sounded terrific and the film likely looked good on paper. But it suffers when translated on to the screen.
"Bollywood/Hollywood" is the kind of film that makes "The Guru" (2002) seem like a masterpiece.