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In effect, the picture preemptively pokes fun at any purists who'll want examine too seriously the movie's relationship to Austen's novel. If you want vintage Austen, go to the library and check out the book. If you want a realistic, complex, redemptive, beautiful wedding story set in a non-Bollywoodized India, you must rent Monsoon Wedding. If you want a wacky multicultural pairing to make you laugh a lot and learn a little, head for the movie theater playing Bride & Prejudice.

Talk About It

1. What did you think of the film's portrayal of marriage?
   
   
2. The characters in the movie debate arranged marriage. What are its pros and cons? Can you add any? Do you know anyone who used the services of a matchmaker? How was this experience for him or her?
   
   
3. How are Internet matchmaking platforms such as eHarmony similar to arranged marriage? How are they different?
   
   
4. Are singles in your church anything like the sisters and the young men in Pride and Prejudice?
   
   
5. Is Lalita's character a liberated woman? What is the source of her identity?
   
   
6. What's the best advice you were given about waiting for marriage?
   
   

The Family Corner

The movie, in true Indian fashion, is clean and suitable for older children who are accompanied by their parents. The sexual references that earned the film the PG-13 rating are very mild.

Photos © Copyright Miramax Films

No, the 'B' is not a typo. Gurinder Chadha's latest movie is called Bride & Prejudice.

Chadha's bio identifies her as "born in Kenya … an Englishwoman of Indian descent," so it should come as no surprise that Bride is yet another multi-cultural experiment. Taking a step up to something more elaborate and ambitious than her last film—Bend It Like Beckham—Chadha stirs together the thick, cheesy stylings of popular entertainment from India with the plot outline of a beloved Jane Austen novel (Pride and Prejudice, of course). The result is earning mixed reviews.

Agnieszka Tennant (Christianity Today Movies) says it's "a deliberate caricature" of Bollywood's "lavish musicals that include over-the-top song-and-dance montages, cleaned-up onscreen morality … and little complexity." Will Austen fans enjoy it? "If you want vintage Austen, go to the library and check out the book. If you want a realistic, complex, redemptive, beautiful wedding story set in a non-Bollywoodized India, you must rent Monsoon Wedding. If you want a wacky multicultural pairing to make you laugh a lot and learn a little, head for the movie theater playing Bride & Prejudice."

Harry Forbes (Catholic News Service) says, "The adaptation is not the last word in wit, not all the dialogue sparkles, and the dialect initially takes some getting used to, but the story moves along entertainingly. If you don't mind your Jane Austen set in a world of saris and cell phones, this otherwise remarkably faithful adaptation may be just for you."

This cross-cultural spectacle is scoring with mainstream critics.

Steven D. Greydanus (Decent Films) says the film's fusion of Jane Austen and Bollywood exuberance "works, for the most part. This is light entertainment, not high art. Think of it as a chaste You've Got Mail or Maid in Manhattan, with accents, bright colors, and singing and dancing."

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