You might as well know it: I am a gori but my heart is Indian. I watched Hollywood Bollywood because it was a new release (read: already been seen in the rest of the world) in the theatre and all of my friends were going to see it for Vaisakhi night.
The cast, I thought, was a good mix of fresh faces (not typical of any Bollywood film), and they worked so well together, they might as well have been a real family. I must admit that my favorite character is Rahul Khanna (drool!), who plays Rahul Seth. He is not so typical a bollywood character; rather, he is a bored wealthy businessman who wants to lead a normal CANADIAN life. My next favorite is Lisa Ray, who plays Sue Singh, the multi-talented escort. The last favorites are tied at third, and those are Moushumi Chatterjee and Dina Pathak (God rest her soul), mummyji and grandmaji respectively. Mummyji is the typical Indian mom, very dramatic and ’’so unlucky!’’. Grandmaji is a breath of fresh air, quoting Shakespeare. I see her as mischievous and funny.
Now for the plot. Basically, Rahul has a gori girlfriend who is a pop star. The family (well, actually, the mom and maybe grandma) disapprove, she dies, they’re happy. Now for his marriage to a proper Indian girl! However, he HAS to marry or be engaged to a girl first, so his sister can get married. A secret his sister is holding is forcing her to get married, forcing him to get married, and so forth. Depressed from meeting so many ’’acceptable’’ girls, he finds refuge in his drinking at the bar. Enter Sue. She can be ’’anything you want’’. It is assumed she is an escort, although I didn’t discover this until after the movie was over. They devise a plan to pretend to be engaged so his mother will be happy and his sister can get married. Then things get bollywood when Pretty Woman scenes start assaulting your eyes. They make her up to be an Indian girl and yadi yadi yada, the engagement party of his sister. Sue reveals something about herself that wasn’t that big of a surprise to me, but I’m not going to tell you......
Funny scenes include The Killer Khalsa, the drag queen chauffeur, (appallingly funny)the buxom maid, and the little headlines that accompany some of the scenes, like the songs! Some things were so ridiculous they were funny.
I thought the songs were really well done, short and to the point with subtitles to help those not gifted with the gift of understanding Hindi, not too much lovey dovey dancing around in the fields and in the snow with thin saris on.
The locations were really well played, and I’m glad that it was admitted as Toronto, and not some American town who wished they were Canadian.
All in all, this movie kept me in my seat until the end of the movie, and I didn’t squirm once to re-adjust my sleeping legs, partly because it was a shorter film.
All must know, however, that this movie is not a bollywood film or a hollywood film, it makes fun of both styles of movie making as well as some cultural gibes (re: Sue’s Punjabi parents!)
Enjoy this movie!!!