Director: Vipul Amrutlal Shah, tbc, 130mins Stars: Akshay Kumar, Katrina Kaif, Rishi Kapoor, Clive Standen. "A british brat meets a funjabi boy" runs the tagline to this latest attempt to cash in on the lucrative NRI (Non Resident Indian) global box office. With the return of the Asian diaspora to the cinemas, current Bollywood filmmakers have adapted the traditional formula to include a staple NRI subplot. Jasmeet or Jazz (Katrina Kaif) is a British Asian London lass who enjoys nights out with her mates - and her white boyfriend, Charlie (Clive Standen). Her boozy behaviour outrages her conservative Punjabi dad Manmohan (Rishi Kapoor), who takes the family on a holiday to India. During the visit, Manmohan hatches a plan to get Jazz hitched to his best friend’s son Arjun (Akshay Kumar), a farmer. Jazz agrees, they get married and return to London where she promptly announces that ‘walking around a fire seven times’ does not constitute a legal marriage in England. Arjun decides to win her over before she marries Charlie. The film attempts social commentary on cross cultural relationships with alienation from one’s own - and from the host state’s culture - forming its underlying theme. It fails largely due to Suresh Nair’s script which may be set in London but his characters live in Bollywood-land. He whacks us with stereotypes which are unreflective of our daily lives. The dubious moral here is that you can take the girl out of the Punjab but she will only be happy if she retains the traditional values of the motherland when living in the mother country. Jazz downs vodkas and wears skimpy dresses but is reluctant to snog her gorgeous fiancé. In fact, the film stresses her virginity: she is described as being "as pure as the Thames, the Ganges of London." White Londoners are vile racists who are ignorant of modern day India and regard British Muslims as potential terrorists. Every single touristy London landmark is signposted whilst Punjab is presented as a lush paradise where extended families live and dance happily together. Director Shah adopts a Richard Curtis approach, focussing on developing the implausible romance between his leads. Kumar, sporting hennaed hair, is all toothy smiles whilst Kaif, in her first non-dubbed speaking part (she is not fluent in Hindi), emotes through her ever present lip gloss. On a frothy level, the film does manage to evoke the occasional chuckle like Charlie wanting Phil Collins to play at his wedding reception and his meeting with a Prince Charles lookalike. But given the lack of realistic exploration of the socially relevant subject matter, this is not, as the filmmakers would like us to believe, a radical romcom in any sense.
