A film that grandly declares itself inspired by Austen's novel deserved something better than this for screenplay. After taking on an interesting idea, Chadha deserved to give herself a better scriptwriter than herself. Some of the better lines come straight from the novel; pity that Austen could provide no NRI material for Chadha to lift. What should have been the strength of a film like this emerges as its weakest link.
Austen aside, it's hard to see what this kind of script can do for anyone other than feeding a British audience yet more cliches of their idea of ways Indian. This is the flip side of Indianising icons; every such feed adds to a reduction. Within this adventure, Indianness is reduced, and by the same failing, Elizabeth is reduced. Far from the style of Elizabeth, Lalita emerges as a singularly dumb creature.
Here Aishwarya, such as she is, seems to fit the script, such as it is. She never gets past that 'look-at-doe-eyed-me' look. She rode a chariot that her admirers made for her when she became Miss World, and she hasn't gotten off it yet. She looks afraid that a real expression would mark her as a woman of the world rather than the lady on the chariot. Her expressions seem to halt in the early stages of formation; who knows which particular look might trap her in an unflattering snapshot? She travels the world a prisoner of her facial paint.
Chadha's shadow of the book limps along in faltering episodes that fail to hold together, or to hold the audience. The characters only move from one country to another without appearing much moved in their selves. At the heart of the story is the idea of giving up pride and letting go of prejudices. Elizabeth sees how hearsay and her own misjudgement led her away from truth. She thinks she was "blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd", "I, who prided myself on my discernment". Nothing much happens to Chadha's characters. They're comfortable 'passengers' (pardon the Punjabi!), just transferring from a jumbo jet to a couple of elephants in Amritsar for the shaadi in the end.
The faux-Bollywood style doesn't quite pull off either. The song-and-dance sequences seem to follow the dumb end of Bollywood style. Coming to Bollywood, as it has so regrettably come to be known, the film probably needed Madhuri Dixit, and screenplay of the Farhan Akhtar class. The script is self-consciously synthetic, the lyrics flat when audible, the music forgotten as you hear it, the film forgettable once you've seen it. The idea of adaptation wasn't bad, the adaptation is. It is a translation that fails both languages.
