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When a desi distributor released Deepa Mehta's musical comedy Bollywood/Hollywood in America about a year ago, the film reached some 25 screens and mostly drew desi audiences. Unlike in Canada, where it was shown in about 70 theatres across the country and earned a handsome $1 million, Bollywood/Hollywood earned just about $200,000 in America.
Now, perhaps encouraged by the fabulous response to Gurinder Chadha's Bend It Like Beckham ($33 million) and a decent run for Daisy von Scherler Mayer's The Guru (approximately $4 million), Magnolia Pictures has opened Mehta's film in mainstream theatres like AMC in New York.
Whether the film will get a new lease of life is up to the audience. Practically every mainstream publication including The New York Times and Time Out magazine has run negative reviews. In England, too, it got nasty reviews. Only the BBC gave it three (out of five) stars, ending the review with: If you're just looking for a hearty laugh, then Bollywood/Hollywood should fit the bill. In Canada, couple of publications such as Toronto Sun had a few good things to say about this romantic comedy.
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The director shot Bollywood/Hollywood in Toronto, the city she has called her home for nearly 20 years, saying the film's multicultural story was a tribute to the city, regarded by many as one of the most multicultural urban centres in North America. The filmmaker loves Toronto so much that she changed the locale of the well-known book, The Republic Of Love, from Winnipeg to Toronto. The film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, drew mostly negative reviews as many reviewers wondered what made her change the locale.
In Bollywood/Hollywood, she tells the story of Rahul Seth (Rahul Khanna), a Westernised, young dot.com millionaire, who is under pressure from his family to get engaged to a desi girl before his sister's upcoming wedding. Desperate, he hires the services of the gorgeous Sue (Lisa Ray) to pretend to be his fiancée. Predictably the relationship undergoes a dramatic change. The cast also features Ranjit Chowdhry, Moushmi Chatterjee, Dina Pathak and Kulbushan Kharbanda.
'There's the germ of a good idea in Deepa Mehta's transatlantic, cross-cultural romance, which is pretty much summed up in the title -- to bring together the world's two most powerful commercial film cultures and create a hybrid that would be a hit in both India and America, and score with the myriad immigrant communities across the globe,' The Guardian, the respected British newspaper, wrote in February.
'Mehta, who forged her reputation in the West with the powerful melodramas Fire and Earth, attempts to keep things pacy with slick photography and regular switches between Hollywood psychodrama and Bollywood dance and fantasy. But, in the end, the film is sunk by toe-curling dialogue and transparently awkward emoting. A let-down.'
In the Village Voice, the film came for even more severe criticism: 'Bollywood/Hollywood vies for an ironic tone as it incarnates timeworn Bombay-programmer set pieces and plot contrivances into an American milieu. But the result is a film without a nation, without any comic grace and often without even the slimmest technical efficiency.'
The New York Times, which warmly embraced only one Indian film, Lagaan, in the past two years, found the Deepa Mehta film to be a 'disappointingly shallow and not terribly funny romantic comedy.'
Bollywood/Hollywood is showing in about three dozen theatres in America. If the viewers go for Mehta's convictions -- that it is an irresistible comedy -- more screens will be added in the coming weeks.
