The Asian Version of Pride and Prejudice

I had to analyse this film and compared it to the book for the speech and ideolect for one of my assignments so I decided to buy the DVD (I normally don't like musicals)
The DVD turned out to be an ex rental copy which was annoying because you can fast forward the ads on it.

The musical film Bride and Prejudice is made in a Bollywood style and was adapted by Gurinder Chadha.

The story

Set in Amritza, India for the first part of the film and in London, UK and LA, California for the second part, the Bakshi are the centre family of this story.

Mrs Bakshi has 4 daughters that she wants to marry off to wealth men but their second daughter who's called Lalita is stubborn and wants to marry for love and not for money. Lalita is played by Aishwaraya Rai. When her best friend gets married, she meets an American businessman called William Darcy played by Martin Henderson who comes to the wedding because his friend Balraj is the best man.

Darcy is intrigued by Lalita but she takes an instant dislike to him as he accidentally insult her culture and by that insults her. At the wedding, Balraj takes an interesting in the Bakshi eldest daughter, Jaya. He visits her to go on holiday as he is leaving town the next day. Mrs Bakshi thinks it's a great idea but Mr Bakshi wants Lalita to go with her as the chaperone in a way.

On holiday, Lalita and Darcy clash against and she finds comfort in a man called Johnny Wickman played by Daniel Gilles. Johnny is the son of Darcy's old nanny but he's not what he portraits. He's also Darcy's enemy so to speak.

Jaya and Lalita come home and find that Mr Kholi is coming. Mrs Bakshi wants Lalita to marry Mr Kholi but Lalita is repulsed by the idea. She rejects his marriage proposal. One of her friends ends up marrying him first in India and then a big wedding in LA and all the family is visited to go over there.

This is where Lalita sees Darcy again and she finds out that Darcy is the reason behind Jaya's dismay as he was the one that told Balraj to not contact her anymore. She storms off and they fly back to London. Lahki goes missing and everyone is concerned and frantic about Lahki's whereabouts. Darcy turns up to apologise to Lalita but gets pull into the search for Lahki. Lahki has actually has gone to visit Johnny who she became friends with when he visited them in India.

Darcy seems worried that Lahki might be with Johnny. He tells Lalita that Johnny is not what he seems. She asks him why he hates him so much if they grew up together. He reveals that Johnny got his little sister pregnant. Lalita and Darcy get together after he saves her youngest sister, Lahki, from the clutches of Johnny Wickman played by Daniel Gilles.

All the characters are based on the characters in Pride and Prejudice. Some more loosely than others. 19th century people don't fit in our 21st century multi-cultural society which is when the film is set. Although, a continent and a few centuries lay between the book and the film, the underlying story is the basically the same even using the same initials, for example LB Lizzie Bennet or Lalita Bakshi.

The soundtrack
As it's a musical, there's got to be a soundtrack. In the film, every now and then they burst into song and dance. The most funny one I thought was "No life without wife" which is when Mr Kholi wants to marry Lalita. All the music has an Asian flavoured. They are all fun songs and bouncy songs but some of them seem to go on too long. For example "A Marriage Has Come To Town" where Lalita is walking through the market with her friends. It's a lovely ballad and catchy dance tune but just a bit too long winded.

You can buy the soundtrack on Amazon starting from £6.

The acting

Aishwarya Rai who's plays Lalita is a beautiful young woman who fills the screen with her presence. She makes the character believable and she's a joy to watch.
The entire surrounding cast did a great job. Only thing that left me disappointed was the character of William Darcy played by Martin Henderson. Colin Firth who played Darcy in the TV drama did a lot better job. I don't know if it was because they made Mr Darcy an American (no offence to you lot but Mr Darcy has to be English. It's a written rule) or that his acting just didn't match that of Aishwarya Rai but it was disappointing performance.

The extra feature (listed at the bottom)

It's nice to see so many extra feature on this DVD. If you're interested in how the film was made and the points of view of the cast, it's a brilliant addition to the DVD.
Some of the outtakes are quite funny Aren't they always? But some of them were already shown in the ending credits.
The deleted scenes were nice to see but I can understand why they deleted them especially the one where Martin Henderson (Mr Darcy) is singing on the beach in a duet with Lalita. Thank god for that. Martin's singing was terrible.
The UK premiere is for people that want to know what goes on a premiere but was a bit boring for me as I've seen loads of those shows where they show the opening premiere and the red carpet thing.
Photo galllery: A bit pointless in my eyes just watching stills of the film you've just seen.
Trailers from tv and the cinema just showing you what the film is about.
If you've got a DVD-rom in your PC (which I haven't on this PC that I use now) you can view the production notes and cast and crew biographies.
Also you can watch the DVD with the director, Gurinder Chadha, doing an audio commentary.

The overall thoughts

The photography in this film is amazing. Just for that, this film is a must see. Although the writing and dialogue for the film is weaker than the book of Jane Austin and they adapted and cut out slightly more than I would have liked, I liked it. It was an entertaining musical.
I can understand if people who are fans of the book don't like this film. As they may not understand or not like the Indian ideology in the adaptation. Also the fact that's a musical may put other people of as well but for the people who have seen the film but haven't read the book yet, they might want to read it to understand where Gurinder Chadha was coming from.
I must say though that even though I liked this film, I preferred Bend it like Beckham, which is also written and directed by Gurinder Chadha.

DVD Features

• Special Feature Information:
° Director Audio Commentary
° The Making Of
° Aishwarya Rai Featurette
° Martin Henderson Featurette
° Production Design Featurette
° Make Up Featurette
° Dance Featurette
° Ashantis Song Featurette
° Crew Does Balle Balle
° Deleted Song Arrogance Pride And Vanity
° Extended Scenes
° Production Notes
° Photo Gallery
° Cast And Crew Biographies
° UK Premiere Featurette
° Outtakes
° Audio Description
• Main Language: English
• Hearing Impaired: English