Bride and Prejudice (2004)

Bride and Prejudice: 2004, dir. Gurinder Chadha. Seen at Arbor Great Hills (March 9).
I couldn’t resist seeing Bride and Prejudice, because I am such a huge Jane Austen fan and I delight in watching all the weird adaptations and permutations of Austen novels on film. Would it be as charming as Douglas McGrath’s adaptation of Emma, would it be as annoying as the recent Mansfield Park, would Lizzy be transformed to someone as passive and silly as Bridget Jones? I had to find out.
I liked Bride and Prejudice much better than Bridget Jones’s Diary or Clueless. It is a successful (and cute) transformation of Pride and Prejudice to contemporary India, L.A., and London. Light and frothy, yes, but fun to watch, especially if you know the source material.

That’s a lot of the pleasure I get out of movies adapted from Jane Austen books, especially when they are not straightforward adaptations. I like to see how they do it. What is Mr. Collins going to be like? Will Lizzy’s relationship with her dad be preserved? Just how evil is Miss Bingley going to be?
Bride and Prejudice adapted most of these issues quite well. I liked the transformation of Mr. Collins into Mr. Kholi, who is terribly annoying in the beginning but once he is married, settles down into being only moderately a kiss-up. (This allows us to feel less sorry for Chanda, the equivalent of Charlotte Lucas, who marries Kholi for convenience and not love.)
In fact, most of the nastier aspects of Austen’s characters are smoothed down in this movie. Miss Bingley is thoughtless and snobby, but not as mean as she was in the book. The incident with Lydia and Wickham, now with Lucky and Johnny Wickham, is toned down so that Lucky escapes relatively unscathed.
Lizzy Bennet is now Lalita Bakshi, and Aishwarya Rai plays her most charmingly. She doesn’t mind working in the fields with her father. She isn’t afraid to argue with anyone. And of course she is stunningly gorgeous, but that seems almost incidental (to me, anyway—I am sure others might argue). But then nearly all the young actresses in this movie are gorgeous.
The weak point of the movie is in Will Darcy as played by Martin Henderson. I can’t believe that it was so difficult to find a good actor for this part. Is there really such a shortage, that they had to get this guy from New Zealand to play an American millionaire? I can think of a half-dozen better actors, who would not have been that expensive, either. The amazing lack of any chemistry whatsoever between Darcy and Lalita is one of the disappointments of this film. Fortunately, the other actors and actresses are so lively and entertaining that it is not too difficult to overlook this problem. In particular, Naveen Andrews is quite appealing as Bingley.
The musical numbers don’t drag the movie down, and are not too long or burdensome. They were a lot of fun. I particularly enjoyed the “No Life without Wife” number where the sisters are lamenting their mother’s matchmaking schemes. I don’t know what the hell Ashanti was doing in there, and that number went on longer than I would like, but the rest was fine. Sometimes it was surprisingly surreal, like the gospel singers appearing on the beach behind the two lovers in one song.
My boyfriend didn’t want to go anywhere near Bride and Prejudice because he doesn’t like Jane Austen adaptations or Bollywood musical extravaganzas. Obviously this movie is not for everyone. However, if you like watching Jane Austin adaptations, or any kind of delightful romantic comedy, this is a great way to pass the time. I think it would have been a perfect summer movie … for me, anyway. McGrath’s Emma, perhaps, is my favorite, but I think I shall like Bride and Prejudice quite as well as the BBC miniseries of Pride and Prejudice.