Tasteless !. Review on American Desi Movie

Take a refresher course on typical Indian behaviour with the following stark facts:

1) Indians, after a meal, lick their paws clean with their tongue like a cat.

2) Indians get drunk, dance naked in the moonlight

3) Indians piss on their own and other people’s feet

4) Indians leave their fly open with shirt tails hanging out of it

Anybody liked to read that? Then would you like to watch it as well?

American Desi is about an ABCD desperately running away from the fact that he is Indian.

One does laugh at their own selves. But Kris, the main protagonist hates everything Indian, even down to the way his mom performs puja, or the way his dad prepares tea. Everything is mocked at.

Not only Indians, the movie typifies ‘Yankee behaviour’ too. The American guy keeps throwing up his hands in the air and saying “Yeahh” all the time like a klutz. Or an American girl desperate to try out all the positions in the Kama Sutra. Now c’mon, this is all so lame.

The characters are all annoying, trite, shallow and superfluous. The stereotypes and presumptions are irritating to say the least. I lost count on the number of times those absolutely tiring references to Indian Standard Time, and Kama Sutra are made.

There are too many glaring loopholes in characterizations to point out. (Reddy-a North Indian surname?) The accents, the Hindi was all horrible, who talks in that manner? A movie maker is expected to do his basic homework at least. Technical inferiority and tacky dialogues add to the misery. All this laced with gags and jokes that even Johny Lever would have rejected. Spoils what could have been potentially a great movie.

Indians abroad do face a sense of ambiguity and clash of cultures leading to some kind of angst (Yet?) But, American Desi is too superficial to depict any of those. So what is being Indian all about anyway? According to writer – director Piyush Pandya, watching hindi movies, cooking an Indian meal and enjoying raas garba? How paediatric!

Am I taking this movie a bit too seriously? You can take it in a lighter vein if you force yourself to. But if this is funny, so is Ashok Saraf.

I am ashamed to know that there exist people in this world who are ashamed of their own culture.

Bend It like Beckam, Hyderabad Blues, Monsoon Wedding, these movies too poked fun at Indian idiosyncracies but with a lot more panache and did not pointedly ridicule Indians. Here director Piyush Pandya seems hell bent on digging out and glorifying Indian quirks to generate a few lowly laughs. A resort to cover up for the lack of substance in his tale. Half hearted sub-plots add to the overall ineptness.

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If anyone is bothered... The plot summary

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Krishna Reddy (Deep Katdare) insists on being called Kris. He deplores his Indian roots and people. As a freshie in engg. college he runs into 3 roomies, who happen to be Indian too. He falls in love with Nina (Purva Bedi) who is comfortable with her Indian origins. There is also Rakesh (Anil Kumar) trying to get her.

Kris’ muslim roommate, Salim (Rizwan Maji) is being pursued by a Indian American girl Farah (Sunita Param). At first, Salim detests the seemingly ‘corrupt’ Farah, and later falls for her after noting that she’s a staunch namazi (believe it or faint).

Kris's other roommate a Kenya-born Indian Ajay Pandya (Kal Penn) keeps you amused whenever he appears.

While Jagjit Singh (Ronobir Lahiri) another roommate,(a sikh guy with the untidiest ever turban) is trying to win his fathers approval to pursue a more artistic vocation.

Note guys with different religious affiliations living in the same room. National integration a la those old Joginder movies.

Kris has to prove he's 'Indian enough' to Nina by learning to dance the garba. All ends well during Navratri with some mandatory dhishum dhishum thrown in too.

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So that’s the plot. The blessed plot. Now please tickle me!

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