'Bride and Prejudice': Mr. Darcy and Lalita, Singing and Dancing

The New York Times > Movies > Movie Review | 'Bride and Prejudice': Mr. Darcy and Lalita, Singing and Dancing: "pitch meeting for the new British movie 'Bride and Prejudice' must have been a killer: 'Jane Austen's novel 'Pride and Prejudice' - you know, the dead chick that wrote that Gwyneth Paltrow movie 'Enya,' 'Emma,' whatever - done like a Bollywood musical, only shorter.'

Then again, because the director Gurinder Chadha knows how to sell multiplex multiculturalism - her last feature was 'Bend It Like Beckham' - the actual pitch was probably cannier, something along the lines of: 'Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' recontextualized as a Bollywood musical (only shorter) and set against the backdrop of the new global economy. I think we can get Ashanti for one of the numbers.'

Whatever the case, 'Bride and Prejudice' - which transposes Austen's 1813 novel to 21st-century India, with layovers in swinging London and sunny Los Angeles - is as high concept and rife with cliche as anything ever churned out by Hollywood, but with worse production values and a load of sanctimonious political correctness. Think 'My Big Fat Sari Wedding' tricked out with putatively exotic locales and clumsy song-and-dance numbers, and delivered with much finger-wagging about cultural tolerance. The kicker here being that the wagging finger belongs to the story's heroine, originally called Elizabeth, here called Lalita (the Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai, radiantly beautiful but inert), and the object of her reflexive high-mindedness is none other than a wealthy American hotel heir, Will Darcy (Martin Henderson, just inert)."

"Bride and Prejudice" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). The film contains some chaste romancing, some naked and ripped male torsos and a Harvey Weinstein cameo.

Opens today in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, Dallas, Washington, Detroit, Houston, Seattle, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Denver and San Diego.

Directed by Gurinder Chadha; written by Ms. Chadha and Paul Mayeda Berges, based on Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice"; director of photography, Santosh Sivan; edited by Justin Krish; music by Anu Malik and Craig Pruess; choreographer, Saroj Khan; production designer, Nick Ellis; produced by Ms. Chadha and Deepak Nayar; released by Miramax Films. Running time: 111 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.

WITH: Martin Henderson (William Darcy), Aishwarya Rai (Lalita Bakshi), Daniel Gillies (Wickham), Naveen Andrews (Balraj), Nitin Ganatra (Mr. Kholi), Namrata Shirodkar (Jaya Bakshi), Indira Varma (Kiran), Anupam Kher (Mr. Bakshi) and Ashanti (as herself).