Bollywood/Hollywood (2002)

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

The acting in this movie is really good.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Rahul Seth (Rahul Khanna) is so used to his Westernised lifestyle. Unless he got himself a nice Indian girl, his mother and grandmother will not see the marriage of his sister happening.So he hired a Spanish escort Sue (Lisa Ray) to act as his girlfriend in front of his family, even teaching her some of the common Indian practices as well.But along the way, he is starting to think that he may be getting more than what he wanted.Those Bollywood dance moves and the music are often a joy to watch and it appears in this movie as well. Kind of always bring me back to the days whenever I watched those Bollywood movies on the television. Songs and dances...both are always a common feature in Bollywood movies.Watch out what happens during the credits. It's quite refreshing.

Rahul is quite well off, hard working, young and handsome. However when he tells his mother and grandmother that he has been seeing a white woman, they bully him into letting them help him select a nice Asian girl – a promise he made to his dying father convinces him to give it a try. Naturally it is a disaster but he cannot get out of it now. Consoling himself in a bar he meets a woman called Sue – she looks a bit East Asian but maybe Spanish, regardless she could certainly pass for Asian if it wasn't for her very western attitudes and dress. It occurs to him that she may be able to help him and he offers her money to pretend to be his Asian girlfriend. She accepts but getting her dressed correctly is only the first step.Sold as an affectionate cross between the structure and style of an American (well, Canadian) romantic comedy and the Bollywood films, this film manages to have enough of each to be recognisable and still produce sufficient mutual good to be enjoyable. In truth, neither cinematic culture is that well represented here because neither is the best it has to offer but the mix still works for the most part. The story is pretty obvious but, aside from the odd moment here and there, flows well with a bit of spark and energy. From the "American" side of things it is engaging and occasionally sweet even if it plays pretty much to formula the whole way. The Bollywood stuff is mainly the song and dance routines and, although they are OK, they don't quite have the size and style of the best that Indian cinema has to offer – although the film still does well enough and the songs are quite cool.The cast take to the mixed material well. Khanna plays up the Indian background well in contrast with his Canadian home; he isn't great but he does the job. Ray is a lot more fun because she has a sassy character that works well with her as an actress. Her looks and her attitude make her an appealing character and actress and she helped the energy level of the whole film. The rest of the cast are so-so but nothing special. I enjoyed the turn from Pathak but Chowdry, Malik and Mann weren't that good.Overall this is an OK film that I quite enjoyed but not one that will still in my memory for that long. It has enough life to it to be entertaining without ever threatening to be that original, clever or memorable. Worth a look if you like Bollywood films because it does work as a slightly different take on them but generally it probably isn't good enough to draw a much wider audience.

Bollywood Hollywood starts off like a spoof on the films of the former (Bollywood), from the first scene where a dying father makes a speech to his young son from his deathbed on family values to the comic sub-titles in many of the scenes which take on different aspects of Hindi movie melodramas. But the movie falters and ends up looking like the very films it appears to be trying to parody.Rahul (Rahul Khanna), a wealthy young man of Indian origin settled in Canada, is distraught when his gori lover dies in a freak incident. Somewhere at this point his mother demands that he get himself a girl, an Indian one this time, else his sister's wedding might get called off. He hires Sunitha (Lisa Ray), whom he meets at a bar, to act as his fiancée. As time goes by, he naturally starts falling in love with her. But, her questionable antecedents create doubts in his mind and... I would be giving nothing away if I tell you what follows but I won't do that in case you go on to watch the film.The cast performs well enough but the ideas don't really work and thus a Shakespeare quoting grandmother seems more incongruous than funny and a cross-dressing servant wholly irrelevant. 'Nothing is what it appears to be' goes the promo for the film. However, there are no surprises in this one where everything is as predictable as it gets. It has a few funny moments, but if you miss this flick, don't get too worked up about it.

I enjoyed this film immensely, and found it a humorous take on second-generation Indo-Canadian life. The songs were enjoyable (my only complaint about the film is that the songs weren't subtitled - a bit frustrating for those of us that don't speak Hindi!), and I recommend the film highly - great fun!