We Americans are only partially aware of India's Bollywood films, the ones with the lavish costumes and random song-and-dance
numbers that you see parodied or referenced here and there. So Gurinder Chadha, a Kenya-born, London-raised woman of Indian descent, has followed her modest hits "What's Cooking?" and "Bend It Like Beckham" with "Bride & Prejudice," a romantic comedy that combines Jane Austen and Bollywood musicals cutely, if not especially effectively. It does not lack for color or energy, though, and all of the Indian cast members are instantly likable. (Curiously, all of the Western actors are flat, but more on that later.) It is set in the town of Amritsar, where the Bakshi family has four daughters, three of whom are of marriageable age and thus are the objects of Mom's (Nadira Babbar) ceaseless matchmaking. At a wedding party for some friends, the oldest girls, Jaya (Namrata Shirodkar) and Lalita (Aishwarya Rai), meet men who will soon change their lives. Jaya meets Balraj (Naveen Andrews), the groom's best man and a well-to-do Indian; Lalita, meanwhile, meets and clashes with Will Darcy (Martin Henderson), a millionaire American whose family owns hotels around the world and who is considering buying a beach-front resort elsewhere in India.
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