Bride & Prejudice

 

Picture: C+     Sound: B-     Extras: C     Film: C

 

 

Is it me or is the work of Jane Austen been grossly overused for feature film material.  At one point, a comedy film called Mafia! (1998) was called Jane Austen’s Mafia!, but no one got the joke and serious Austen adaptations (even when they were comic) continued.  Bend it Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha took on a much more obvious and safe project when the bigger hit offered something new.  This ethnically fused version of Pride & Prejudice could have been fun, but it feels like a colorfully produced piece of political correctness without trying.

 

It is also beautifully produced, maybe too much so, but Chadha should have taken a look at the work of Nicolas Roeg and tried to do something more challenging with issues of ethnicity.  Instead, we get a predictable, competent, good-looking, well-manicured variant of the already tired.  No wonder this did not have the critical and commercial success of Bend it Like Beckham.  Ultimately, this is for only very serious Chadha or Austen fans.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image is colorful, but not always with the clarity and depth it could or should have had, and it is not from the intents of cinematographer Santosh Sinan.  The production design sometimes looks fake like the 1956 The King & I, but that was a better looking, directed and produced film.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix has some good surrounds, including on the sudden music sequences, none of which are memorable.  Any reference to Bollywood cinema of India is amusing at best.  Extras include extended songs (yikes!), deleted scenes, the Ashanti song on its own (the worst of them all), two interview pieces, an audio commentary by Chadha & fellow co-writer Paul Mayeda Berges and a Making Of piece.  Hope Chadha gets back to something original.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo