Bride and Prejudice Dir. Gurinder Chadha

Gurinder Chadha’s Bride and Prejudice was my first experience with Bollywood cinema, and I was admittedly put off at first without having actually known the genre’s defining characteristics. Upon reviewing some the concepts, Bride and Prejudice suddenly transformed into an unlikely sort of postmodern cinema. One of my favorite aspects of the film was its use of metafiction to justify its immense amount of overacting and cheesy dialogue. Chadha most likely wanted to include these overdone aspects out of respect for previous Bollywood films. By keeping this in mind, certain aspects of the film that might seem unnecessarily overdone (Johnny’s random first appearance, Balraj’s MC Hammer skills, the entire cast’s need to simultaneously join in song) are given a second chance with the knowledge that they were done in such a fashion on purpose, most likely with the intent to pay homage to Bollywood movies of the past.
Chadha’s approach reminds me of Michael Davis’ Shoot ‘Em Up, which combines clear-cut hero and villain roles, over-the-top stunts and acting, and overly-cliché dialogue, much like Bride and Prejudice. Like Chadha, Davis advertently chooses to make Shoot ‘Em Up as unrealistic as possible to transform his film into a live action Looney Tune. Bride and Prejudice is obviously at the completely opposite end of the spectrum as Shoot ‘Em Up, but both films do a good job of honoring their influences in a refreshing way.