ABCD = "American Born Confused Desi" (film only review) (American Desi (DVD))

Member Name: anonymili

Product:	American Desi (DVD)
Date:	16/07/09 (151 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: nice songs, some humour

Disadvantages: pretty poor stereotypes

Krishnagopal Reddy is an American born Indian who insists on being called Kris. He is an all round American youth who does not consider himself in the least bit Indian and he gets quite a horrid shock when he starts college and finds his roommates are all Indian. Soon after starting college he meets and falls for Nina, an Indian student who is very much into Indian culture and is not impressed by the fact that Kris knows so little about his roots. He joins the Indian Students Association to impress her but it's not as easy as he thinks as he has to help out with putting on a big Indian show and for someone who knows practically nothing of Indian culture, this is no easy accomplishment.

Does Kris impress Nina and win her over? Do his roommates forgive him for being so "American"?


American Desi was released in 2001 and although set in a US college, most of the main cast members are Indian. One might class it as a "romantic masala comedy". I didn't see the film till several years after it was released and have now seen it twice. Although I found it enjoyable enough I found many of the characters to be typical stereotypes of Indian youth. You have Kris, the main character, played by Deep Katdare who also appeared in Green Card Fever, Indian Cowboy and Vasarna's Lovers, whose character is made out to be somewhat negative because he's not into the Indian culture.

From a personal perspective I am a British born Indian and my brother is 37 years old and has never needed to be "Indian" to get along in life. He never needed to join any Indian societies during further education to be accepted for what he was and neither did I. Neither did a good 80% of the Indians that I know personally who were born and raised in the UK. So I didn't find Kris's character to be overly convincing in his quest to become "more Indian" just to impress a girl.

ABCD is a commonly used expression in India when referring to Indians (desis) born and brought up in the USA - the acronym standing for American Born Confused Desi. EBCD (or BBCD) is used for English (of British) Born Confused Desi. I, personally, find these terms to be very derogatory, it's like an insult really - implying that because you're born in the USA or the UK that you must be confused. I'm in my 40s now (shhh keep that quiet) and I'm certainly not confused about what I am. So basically the premise of the film was quite insulting to me personally in some ways yet I found it an entertaining enough watch.

Deep Katdare is an able enough actor although I wasn't overly impressed by his acting or character in general. His character is quite verbose about his dislike of anything Indian although his parents are shown to be fairly traditional for the little time they appear in the story. His best friend is Eric is played by Eric Axen and he's shown to be a stereo-typical all American Casanova who's rather insufferable. Purva Bedi plays Nina, our hero's love interest; I found her character to be rather annoying and her acting talents weren't too impressive either. She's not a big name actress, she's appeared in small roles in shows like ER, The Drew Carey Show, Law & Order and Boston Legal (none of which I've seen her in personally). She left no lasting impression on me and I doubt I would even remember seeing her if I saw her in another show or film.

Of Kris's roommates I found Salim (played by Rizwan Manji) the most annoying being a male chauvinist who thinks a woman's place is in the kitchen and that all American Indian women are corrupt. Of the other 2 roommates we have Jagjit (Ronobir Lahiri) who's studying Engineering but whose great passion is really Art and who's too scared to tell his tyrant of a father what he really wants to study and we have Ajay (Kal Penn) who thinks he's an "African American homeboy". One wonders how Kris was assigned 3 Indians as roommates and also I found it odd that he made no move to get his room changed. The scenes where Kris tries to go along with Nina's ideals pretending that he was becoming more "desi" were supposed to be funny and I found only a few of them mildly amusing but mostly I felt like telling his character to "grow a damn pair" and get on with it! One also wonders how a guy who purports to despise all things "desi" suddenly falls head over heels for the first "desi chick" he claps eyes on! The words shallow, fickle, inconsistent, etc, spring to mind. There's a fight scene with a childhood friend of Nina's and Kris which was hilarious. The fight scene was terribly choreographed and I suspect it was deliberately done in rather a tongue in cheek way to mimic fight scenes from Bollywood films.

The film has an excellent soundtrack if you enjoy Indian/Western fusion music. Some of the dance scenes were very colourful and quite charming to watch and some parts of the story were actually quite touching.


After all the slating I've done of the film above, you might be surprised that I'm still prepared to give it a fairly decent 6 out of 10. It could be a bit of an eye-opener to non-Indians to see the sort pressures Indian youngsters often have to deal with from their families to fit in to an East/West culture and how some of those youngsters rebel against tradition and the outcome of their rebellion. Thankfully I have been allowed to be my own person by my parents so I can be quite smug about what my peers might have to go through (even if it fictional like this film).

Watch this if you'd like a bit of Bollywood set in American society and mainly focussed on young adults!


THE BORING STUFF

Written and directed by: Piyush Pandya
Producer: Deep Katdare
Duration: 100 minutes
Certification: PG
Language: English
Music by: Erin Hil & Wig

Summary: A bit of Bollywood but Hollywood style...