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: