A Bollywood-style version of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice, Bride & Prejudice tells the story of the Bakshi family, living in a small Indian town with four daughters whom their mother is anxious to marry off. The family knows a few very eligible bachelors (read "rich, successful in business and handsome") from the UK and the US, and the film tells the troubles, triumphs and tragedies surrounding the daughters' relationships with the bachelors.
First, I should note that I'm not a huge fan of Bollywood musicals, soap opera-like plots, realist dramas or traditional romance films (traditional both in a filmic sense and in the sense of traditionalist values being espoused). So my rating might reflect that bias. On the other hand, there are films in all of those genres that I do like quite a bit, and my wife, who is Indian and usually enjoys those genres much more than I do, gave Bride & Prejudice an 8, so perhaps my bias wasn't that significant.
A 7 from me is equivalent to a "C" letter grade--a passing grade but nothing to be overly proud of. For me, it means the film is average, with as many things done wrong as right. Let's look at the problems I had with Bride & Prejudice first.
Director Gurinder Chadha--whose Bend It Like Beckham (2002) I liked a lot--made Bride & Prejudice a bit too sprawling, both in tone and plot. The tone ranges from serious romance to tragedy to parody, but those attitudes are all approached very differently from one another and thus do not mix very well in the film. They instead take turns in a way that will likely result in many viewers preferring one approach over the other and lamenting having to wait for that kind of material to appear again. For example, the parody material worked much better for me, and after awhile, I found myself occasionally growing impatient for it to reappear.
The plot, and this may be due to a close parallel with the Austen book, tends to drone on and on, one episode after another, without a clear climax until the very end. The film really could have stopped at any arbitrary point and been satisfactory (except perhaps to those only accepting of a traditional "happy" ending). Once the "riding off into the sunset" climax finally does arrive, it feels more like it took 3 or 4 hours to get there rather than the film's actual running time of just under 2 hours.
However, there are a number of positive aspects to note. As I briefly noted above, the more humorous material worked very well for me, and much of the film is humorous. Chadha even made a nice attempt to inject parody into some musical numbers. The number set in the marketplace, with singing vendors and transvestites, and the number set in Los Angeles were particularly funny. There is a very funny scene with one of the Bakshi sisters doing a "snake dance". Even better, all of the material with and about Mr. Kholi (Nitin Chandra Ganatra) was hilarious.
The performances are mostly good, although Martin Henderson as Will Darcy remains oddly aloof even when we're supposed to warm up to him. Also, because the film is so sprawling, a few good characters, such as Balraj (Naveen Andrews) and Kiran Bingley (Indira Varma), are mostly lost in the shuffle.
The romance and realist drama material occasionally worked for me, and might have worked even better if I hadn't liked the comedy portions so much that I was wishing for their return instead. Overall, Bride & Prejudice is worth seeing, but unless you're a big fan of the genres and don't mind switching gears continually, lower your expectations a bit before watching.
