Where's the Party Yaar? (2004)

Sick Product of a Sick System

Best movie of this year hands down!

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

While I agree that much of this film rehashes a lot of old stereotypes and clichés, I didn't feel that the film did so mean-spiritedly or even without good intentions. Wasn't the moral of the story that all the stereotypes and harsh feelings toward recent immigrants were wrong? While there were points where some of the jokes or plot lines were a little hokey or clichéd and completely overdone (for the love of god, no more doctor/engineer jokes!), I thought the film had some moments of very subtle, very astute analysis on identity, race relations and negotiations of who is "cool" and who isn't. Granted, I'm watching this film for my master's thesis, so I'm looking for all of those subtle cues, but if you look closely, you can see there is a lot more going on in this film than FOB jokes.That being said, the film isn't perfect. It gets really slow at points, and like I said, a lot of the jokes are completely run into the ground. However, I thought that Hari was such a sweet, likable character (he actually reminded me a lot of the main character in the movie "LOSER," which follows a pretty similar story line about a dorky mid-Westerner moving to New York for college), that he made the movie worth watching. Despite all this film's shortcomings, I'd rather watch it than American Desi (or a large number of the American Desi type films) any day. This is one of the few films of its type that didn't take a completely uncritical approach to "Indian" culture. This movie actually took some time to poke fun at itself.In my opinion, this film got much closer to satire than pretty much everything else I've seen in its genre, and if you are looking for a film to watch within this genre, this is probably the best option at this point.

This is a movie about an Asian Indian family living in the United States. Mo Bakshi (Kal Penn) was raised in the U.S., is familiar with the way of life and is considered one of the cool kids. Harishkumar Patel (Sunil Malhotra), or Hari for short, is what the americanized Indians referred to as "FOBs" or Fresh Off the Boat.Hari comes to the U.S. in order to go to college. Before he goes, he is foretold by his family in India that his true love will fall on him like lightning from the sky, that her name began with the letter "P" and would fall in love with him on the night of a full moon. On his first day in class he meets Priya (Tina Cherian). Actually, she trips onto him and he interprets this as falling from the sky and chases her for the remainder of the movie.Throughout the movie, the FOBs are trying to get into the cool parties while guys like Mo and his buddies do their best to keep them out. I suppose this movie is trying to point out the differences between them and even goes as far as to say they are racist against their own heritage. It is a little hard to explain but I understood the movie completely.This was titled "Dude, Where's The Party?" at the video store and billed as a comedy. After just coming off of watching Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, I figured this was a "can't miss" movie. While it was not too terrible, it was nowhere near as funny as Harold & Kumar (with the exception of maybe one scene). I kind of got the picture they were trying to capitalize on Kal's Harold & Kumar fame by releasing this movie afterward, even though it was made before and the box cover could be misconstrued as well.Also, some of the actors are in need of acting classes or something. Most of the smaller parts I guess. I did not think the women were all that beautiful either, with the exception of Mousami Dave, who plays Poonam Mehta. Mousami was by far the hottest girl in the movie. With all things considered, I rate this in the middle and would honestly recommend to pass on this film. 5/10

This movie is by far one of the best comedy I have seen in years!Very close and similar to Blake Edwards' 1968 The Party, but in a more modern sense. In addition, similar comedy can be found only in Indian movies, and producers of this movie have done a good job to bring it to the US. It might contain some rather racist actions and comments towards Indians, but its more like racism you can laugh about rather than getting angry at. I wouldn't call this an all racist movie because characters in this movie all had different personalities ranging from smart to stupid, ugly to nice, and rich to poor, which is basically found in every type of society.In addition, Sunil Thakkar was a classic in this movie and really made the movie worthwhile! I couldn't find a single scene by him that I didn't laugh at!Well done job for a well done movie!

Bollywood movies have grown up a lot and are becoming more mainstream. The problem is the standard Bollywood movie has to follow a strict formula, with very little room for experimentation. This movie appeared to try to push some of those boundaries, but with little result. The plot line starts off normal, the FOB character is far from believable. His character would be a FOB in India, the way he's portrayed. The characters are very plastic and predictable.The music and dance scenes were nice, modern and fun. The supporting characters were the best part of the movie. This "party" takes up almost 1/3 of the movie and nothing goes on really, leaving you waiting for the traditional ending "big speech". When it arrives, it makes no sense, and if ANYONE can understand the main character's point from his dialog at the "big speech" then send it to the production company for inclusion on the video jacket. It might raise the rating a notch or two. Fans of Bollywood will find this average, fans of comedy will forget it within hours and fans of movies will find it below average.