Capsule Movie Review #7: Bride and Prejudice
Bride and Prejudice is a cheesy Bollywood-esque retelling of Jane Austen’s classic novel Pride and Prejudice by Gurinder Chadha, director of “Bend It Like Beckham”.
For those who haven’t come across this tale previously: girl meets boy, girl hates boy, girl meets cad, cad seduces girl, girl finds out more about boy, dumps cad, falls in love with boy and they get married. The frankly beautiful Aishwarya Rai plays Lalita (girl) to Martin Henderson’s arrogant rich American Mr Darcy (boy), with help from Daniel Gillies as Mr Wickham (cad).
The movie has a lot of life and energy, with bright colours and a fairly fast-moving plot, but unfortunately the Bollywood aspects didn’t appeal - I actually winced when the first musical number unconvincingly cranked into life. The movie suffers from its attempt to be cross-genre as it tries to hit all the targets but never quite manages to get anything in the right place.
So if you’re a fan of Indian/British films, or a lover of musicals with slightly dodgy acting but a lot of heart, you might want to give this a go - otherwise I can’t really recommend it.
(for more reviews and ratings see the reviews page)