Jane Austen: The Bollywood Years!

We heard that this was good, and our friends did not deceive us: Pride and Prejudice is given an Indian theme, as a family living in a small town with four marriagable daughters goes through all the usual problems in trying to find them suitable husbands.

Here, Mr. Darcy is a rich American who says some really unwise things when meeting Lalita, the second daughter, but true love conquers all. The characters are good, the best being the awful Mr. Collins, who has become a really hilariously repellant yuppified Southern California type.

And the musical numbers! This strongly reminded both of us of Love's Labour's Lost, mostly because of the charmingly unprofessional way the musical numbers were performed. This is not to say that they weren't good, or fun to watch, or beautifully choreographed, but there was that "hey, kids, let's do a musical number here" feeling about it. They were great, and many of them were in English, which Mr. Otter and I appreciated.

Sure, it was a two hour musical, they had to cut out a whole lot of stuff... but not only did they leave in the important stuff (and a lot of actual dialogue from the book, very well done) but the writers, actors and director really GOT IT. This was fun, charming and beautiful to watch...we may have to buy it, we liked it that much. Go see it, you'll like it too.