Bride And Prejudice Details

Jane Austen's classic story is transposed to India and given a Bollywood makeover here by director Gurinder Chadha (Bend It like Beckham). Aishwarya Rai (one of India's brightest stars, making her English-language debut) takes the Elizabeth Bennet role as Lalita, one of four eligible daughters from a good family. Lalita meets handsome but haughty American Will Darcy (Martin Henderson) at a wedding, and soon the sparks are flying and saris whirling for full on, cast-of-hundreds musical numbers. The script nimbly pulls off the location and time shift of Austen's tale, and Chadha is ably aided and abetted by Bollywood's top choreographers and technicians who pull out all the stops for the big set pieces. However, there's a fatal lack of chemistry between the two leads and the stretches between the singing occasionally fall flat.

After an hour, Gurinder Chadha's stuffing of Jane Austen into the straitjacket of a conventional Bollywood movie has delighted us long enough; there is too little wit and too much song and dance, though it has its moments.