Sawnet - Cinema - Reviews
American Desi
Directed by Piyush Dinker Pandya
2001
I watched the movie with my 15 year old daughter. Parts of it were
funny
but by and large I was irritated by the stereotypes and the
assumptions.
The message that I kept getting (and I may have misread it) was that
if
you do not know the garba/raas, understand Hindi and watch Bollywood
movies you are not Indian. The "Indianness" of the characters did not
speak to my daughter at all. We are from Kerala, visit India every
summer,
she speaks a smattering of heavily accented Malayalam, has learnt
Carnatic
music for a while, is familiar with Bharat Natyam. At the end of the
movie
she said that the kids would have probably reacted to her the same way
that they did to Kris because she was not their kind of Indian.
My reaction to the movie was probably governed to a great extent by
the
fact that I grew up in Delhi at a time when all South Indians were
pejoratively called "madarasis" and looked down upon ( I don't know if
things have changed). When I see broad generalizations, especially
implicit messages that says north Indian Culture= Indian culture I can
feel a wall coming up. Interestingly enough, my friends from North
India
enjoyed the movie and thought it was hilarious. My friends from the
South
and East, especially those who have never lived in the North, did
not. I
thought the Indians were too heavy handed in imposing their brand of
"Indianness" on Kris and after a while the stereotypes ceased to be
funny.
-- Shanti Menon
I didn't find it offensive in any way. Goodness,
I didn't take the movie that seriously! How could one not smile when
the
GTA asks the students for a "rubber?" A good number of us probably
had
done the same!
Sure some portrayals were over the top. But was it really a negative
statement against a whole race? The Sikh student (sorry, I forget
his
name) was portrayed as a talented fellow who follows his heart on a
career
choice. Nina has a sensible head about her shoulders and was so-oo
likeable, no?
-- Jaya Tripathi
I walked out with a sense of dissapointment after the movie.
Which North
Indian has a last name of Reddy and which Reddy's speak Hindi
at home
and
do Northie style pooja?! How do such deeply religious parents
raise a
completely clueless kid? How does Nina's NJ raised friend
speak with a
perfectly Indian accent while Nina speaks with an American
accent? What
about his two cronies? Too many loopholes, particularly the
first one -
it
was very glaring and obvious. One would've expected somebody
making a
movie to do his basic homework atleast! If this were from an
American
director of non-Indian descent, I doubt the glaring flaw
would have been
so easily overlooked.
While I don't have an issue with portraying India in
a "negative" light,
I
found the movie full of stereotypes and incredibly cliched.
Especially
the
realllllly old joke of asking for a "rubber" and getting
drunk on the
first beer! What's next - the silly joke abt "Open the door
to let the
atmosphere in"?!
And then there's what Shanti mentioned - Wearing pretty
laacha's and
dancing the raas and watching Hindi movies is hardly
being "Indian" to
atleast 40% of the nations population! Overall, I felt the
movie
represented a strictly second generation American, North
Indian, point
of
view and was another one of those offerings that perpetuate
stereotypes
and have very little basis in ground reality.
But then, it _is_ meant to only be a light- hearted movie -
if it were
full of more intelligent humor and less slapstick comedy, I
would not
have
called the 8 bucks and 2 hours entirely wasted.
-- Samyukta Athreya
I saw it this last weekend with a group of eight graduate students
from
India. A student group had brought it to campus to raise money for
something, so there were a lot of people there. I'd say that the
crowd
was about half Indian, half 1st, 2nd generation students. There is
not a
great unity among these two groups of students on campus. Sort of
like
the Chinese Americans, Korean Americans, etc. don't mix well with the
Chinese and Korean students on campus. Anyway, three people from the
group I was with got up and left halfway through the movie. After the
movie, the remaining people in our group-all of them except
one-criticized
the movie. Comments ranged from "disgusting" to "disrespectful."
They
felt as if the movie had criticized Indian culture. One man turned to
me
and asked what I thought. I felt really, really ignorant at that
moment
because I had enjoyed the movie. It had sort of a tacky dialogue, but
I
just took it as a comedy. But then I felt totally disrespectful to
the
group of people I was with because I had laughed during the movie and
failed to pick up on things that could have been offensive. During
the
"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" advertisement before the movie, I had
even been critiquing stereotypical elements. How did I fail to pick
up on
American Desi? But then, most of the audience
seemed to be enjoying the film, so I am not sure.-- Anonymous
I also took it as a comedy. I went to see it
with a
few of my S. Asian girlfriends and we all thought it was very funny.
- My only critique of the movie is that they portray "Kris" as this
total
"ABCD" up until he goes to college and then when he meets a Desi girl,
who
he is interested in, he decides to go all out (trying to learn
Garba/Rass,
cook an Indian meal, talk about Bollywood movies, etc.). This is all
fine
but the movie ending (which wrapped up everything so perfect) left me
feeling that now that "Kris" has found his "Indian identity" he is
fine -
as opposed to before when he was not fine/ignorant of Indian culture
(aka
an "ABCD"). My friends did not feel this way, but I was a bit
irritated at
the prospect of the way the situation was presented - you are either
one
way or the other and there is no gray area inbetween.
-- Pallavi Thakur
I'm one of the newer lot on the US scene (been here for the past two
years) and agree with many of the postings about cliched situations
and
characters. I specially agree with you on the North Indian angle of
the
movie. I come from Chennai and though I'm pretty comfortable with
Hindi
and aware of a lot of customs in other parts of the country, I still
find
it hard to digest that India = North India and us from the south of
the
the
Vindhyas are all 'Madrasis' with only idlys and dosas (actually we say
dosais) to our credit. I may be a bit strong in saying this but I hope
you
get the general idea. I dont mean to offend any of the others and I
happen
to be the only south Indian in my whole group of Indian friends. None
of
them can even make out the difference between the 4 major south Indian
languages and I once had someone ask me to teach him 'South Indian'. I
find all this extremely hilarious though sometimes irritating but
choose
to take it in the lighter vein. Every community in India has it's own
distinct styles, languages and culture which, I guess, get exaggerated
in
movies. I also like learning about different customs, food, etc., so I
dont have too much of a problem.
The part about Kris being a Reddy but then having total North
Indian customs in his house was one which also struck me as really
being
out of sync. For one, I'm not too sure but I dont think we have the
custom
of touching people's feet and being given money in the South. I may be
wrong so correct me if I am.
- On the whole though, I found the movie pretty hilarious if all the
situations are taken in a light vein. I particularly found that boy
(forget his name) who is a Gujarati from Kenya or somewhere really
cute.
Just as us recent immigrants have been portrayed as being bumpkins, I
guess you who've grown up here found the emphasis on being Indian =
being
good too cliched. So if anyone wants to feel offended, both parties
have
got their own reasons to do so.
-- Radhika Iyengar
I hated it -- well, hate is a rather strong word,
so
let me say that I stongly disliked it -- it had the potential to be a
great movie, I think -- there were parts that made me laugh quite a
bit --
but the acting was awful -- and I know some of the actors in the film
--
but I wasn't sure if the Indian accents were supposed to be fake or
real
not to mention that some of the Hindi was horrible -- and this is
coming from someone that's grown up in the states so I know that we
all
have accents when we speak Hindi -- but please, if you have an Indian
accent when you speak English, then that implies that either 1) you
came
to America when you were a little bit older or 2) you've grown up in
an
area of America where there are a lot of Indians and you've picked up
your
English from this group as opposed to in school -- both imply that you
should have a better accent when speaking Hindi than some of the
characters in the film did!
What also pissed me off was the Muslim girl's character -- I forget her
name too (I basically saw this movie and tried to forget it as soon
as
possible:)) -- in any case, I loved that girl (I think her name might
have
been Farah? someone please correct me if I'm wrong) -- in any case, I
loved her character in the beginning of the movie -- spunky, fun,
independent and she seemed to know who she was -- but by the end of
the
movie when she knows the boy (Rizwan's character) does indeed like
her,
she seemed to have toned down a bit -- her clothes, the way she
carried
herself, even her demeanor -- at the garba she was different than her
initial spunkiness in the beginning --- that really annoyed me because
what are they trying to imply? that if you want a guy you can't be
funky
and independent?.... and before you all say that I'm reading too much
into
this -- a lot of people I know had the same reaction and many of them
did
not see the movie with me!:)
so, in summary, I thought the movie had potential but Kris's story
got
lost in everything (i.e. emphasis on sterotypes, etc.) and the result
was
actualy more like a bad Hindi film full of the flat good guy and bad
guy
and heroine and sidekicks... well, that's my story and i'm stickin to
it...
-- Anonymous
Film description:
[South Asian Women Filmmakers]
[Sawnet Film Reviews]
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