Decent Watch. Review on Outsourced Movie

If you haven’t heard about this movie, don’t be surprised – it hadalmost zero publicity. Sometimes small movies are the hidden surprises - like Dasvidaniya, which was superb. This one almost gets there, but trips at the last 100 m.

Thename of the movie is a giveaway as far as the story is concerned. Itbegins with call centre manager Todd Anderson being told by his bossthat his entire department has been outsourced – and worse, he has togoto India to train the team there!

As expected, Todd struggles againstthe culture shocks, including his name - and spicy food - when he landsin India. For some inexplicable reason, he is called Mr. Toad by alland sundry in the movie. And his work is based in an imaginary Mumbaisuburb called Gharapuri (Wikipedia tells me that Gharapuri is actuallyanother name for Elephanta Island).

But inspite of pandering toquite a few clichés - including a ridiculous cow that keeps wanderinginto the callcenter - Outsourced is very wittily written and doesn’tallow these clichés to put you off from this movie. And it uses theclichés rather well – eliciting frequent guffaws from the audience.Considering that this was intended for American audiences, I considerit quite an achievement for the makers that it appeals to us Indiansequally well.

The going is pretty good – till the love angle kicksin. Ayesha Dharker plays Asha, one of the call center employees – whoTodd falls in love with in the most cheesiest of sequences. In HotelKamasutra, no less !! I personally don’t like Ayesha Dharker’s looks atall and it doesn’t help that her role in the second half is writtenquite stupidly – you can make out that this portion was writtencompletely with an American viewpoint.

After this fall, the movieloses its way a little and stumbles around, before the final showdownin front of Todd’s boss. That part of the movie feels like a sportsmovie, where a coach starts off with a really bad team, but improvesthem drastically and they make it to the finals – and they are just onegame away from glory !!

So should you watch this movie or not? Iwould say yes - even though I am awarding it only a 2.5 star. Becauseits a warm-hearted movie, with plenty of funny sequences that linger inyour head. And because it includes a negative 0.5 star for the HotelKamasutra sequence !!