Bride and Prejudice Information

Bride and Prejudice is a 2004 romantic musical film directed by Gurinder Chadha. The screenplay by Chadha and Paul Mayeda Berges is a Bollywood-style adaptation of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. It was filmed primarily in English, with some Hindi and Punjabi dialogue. The film released in the United States on 11 February 2005 and was well received by film critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 79% of 33 professional critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 6.6 out of 10.

Plot

The plot of the movie is based on Austen?s novel Pride and Prejudice. Some character names remain the same, while others are changed slightly, using localized names with similar pronunciation (such as Lalita for Elizabeth). Set in Amritsar, the story follows Lalita Bakshi, a young woman living with her doting father and helping him run the family farming enterprise; her mother, who is determined to marry off her daughters to respectable and wealthy men; and her three sisters, Jaya, Maya, and Lakhi. At a friend's wedding, Lalita meets Will Darcy, a handsome and wealthy American working in the family hotel business, who has arrived in Amritsar with his long-time friend, the barrister Balraj, and Balraj's sister Kiran.

Events in the movie roughly parallel those in the novel, punctuated by "Bollywood" style song and dance numbers: Darcy resists his attraction to Lalita, who considers him conceited, arrogant, and intolerant toward India and Indian culture. At various parties and gatherings, Mrs Bakshi's mindless chatter, Maya's kitschy dancing, and Lakhi's uninhibited flirting astonish Darcy and his friends, and mortify Jaya and Lalita. Balraj and Jaya fall quickly in love, but misunderstandings and interference by others drag out their courtship. Lalita meets and is attracted to "Johnny Wickham," Darcy's former friend, and he validates her low opinion of Darcy. Mr Kholi, a rich, crass, clumsy, and ostentatious Americanized relative, proposes to Lalita; after she turns him down, her best friend Chandra agrees to marry him, much to Lalita's confusion and consternation.

When the youngest sister Lakhi tries to run off with Wickham, Darcy and Lalita find the couple and separate them before he can ruin her life, as he almost did to Will's young sister Georgie.

Ultimately, back in India for Jaya and Balraj's wedding, Darcy surprises and wins over Lalita by joining in the traditional drumming, showing that he is learning to appreciate Indian culture. The film ends with the double wedding of Jaya to Balraj and Lalita to Darcy, with the two couples riding on elephants down the streets of Amritsar.

Cast

Names in parentheses are the characters in the original Austen novel.

• Aishwarya Rai as Lalita Bakshi (Elizabeth Bennet)
• Martin Henderson as William "Will" Darcy (Fitzwilliam Darcy)
• Daniel Gillies as Johnny Wickham (Mr. George Wickham)
• Naveen Andrews as Mr. Balraj (Mr. Bingley)
• Anupam Kher as Mr. Bakshi (Mr. Bennet)
• Nadira Babbar as Mrs. Bakshi (Mrs. Bennet)
• Namrata Shirodkar as Jaya Bakshi (Jane Bennet)
• Indira Varma as Kiran Balraj (Caroline Bingley)
• Sonali Kulkarni as Chandra Lamba (Charlotte Lucas)
• Nitin Ganatra as Mr. Kholi (Mr. Collins)
• Meghna Kothari as Maya Bakshi (Mary Bennet)
• Peeya Rai Chowdhary as Lakhi Bakshi (Lydia Bennet)
• Alexis Bledel as Georgina "Georgie" Darcy (Georgiana Darcy)
• Marsha Mason as Catherine Darcy (Lady Catherine de Bourgh)
• Harvey Virdi as Mrs. Lamba (Lady Lucas)
• Georgina Chapman as Anne de Bourgh

Soundtracks

Title	Singer(s)
Balle Balle	Sonu Nigam, Gayatri Iyer
Tumse Kahen Ya, Hum Na Kahen	Udit Narayan, Alka Yagnik
No Life Without Wife	Gayatri Iyer, Nisha Mascarenhas, Sowmya Rao
My lips are waiting	Ashanti
Lo Shaadi Aayi	Alka Yagnik, Kunal Ganjawala, Anu Malik
Tumse Kahen Ya, Hum Na Kahen (sad)	Alka Yagnik
Dola Dola	Gayatri Iyer
Tumse Kahen Ya, Hum Na Kahen	Instrumental

Production

The film received funding from the UK Film Council with the stipulation that a majority of filming had to take place in the UK. Locations used include Halton House, Stoke Park Club, Turville, and Cobstone Windmill in Buckinghamshire, and Southall, Somerset House, Little Venice, the London Eye, and the National Film Theatre in London. Other locations used for the film include the Golden Temple of Amritsar, the beaches of Goa, the Grand Canyon, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and Santa Monica Beach.

Ashanti sings "Take Me to Love" and "Touch My Body" in the film. According to director Gurinder Chadha in "making-of" extras on the DVD release, Ashanti's appearance in the film is an homage to the tradition of a celebrity making a cameo appearance to sing an "item number, a song that has no direct involvement in the plot in Bollywood films.

Critical reception

The film opened to generally mixed to positive reviews. BBC noted that "Swapping corsets for saris, and polite pianoforte for the bhangra beat, director Gurinder Chadha reinvigorates Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice with fun and flamboyance".

Professional Reviews
IMDb (6.1/10) link
BBC link
Rotten Tomatoes link
Hollywood.com link
USA Todaylink
Rolling Stone link
reelviews.net link
The New York Times link
ABC Australia link

Box office

The film grossed $24,716,440, against a budget of $7 million budget. Thereby a success commercially.