Rating: 
Summary: A disappointing English/Indie film
Review: When my family saw this film, we thought that it would be good. Strangely, we were disappointed. The acting and dialogues come across as faked. The costumes were Ok. The cast could have been better. As for the music, the only good pieces were the bumbling 'Madhorama Pencha' and the melodious 'Chunari Chunari'. If you love good movies, then you had better avoid this film.
Rating:
Summary: Simply the emptiest imaginable project
Review: I wouldn't even call this a film. It looks like one long MTV video, or a hip, happening tourism commercial. Depressingly shallow, the movie never tries to convey anything at all. I felt like someone told me interminable, tedious, mild stories about their family, while the TV played in the background, and someone arranged flowers nicely in the foreground. The 'making-of' documentary on the DVD showcased the glibness of the director, so impressed by cellphones and computers side-by-side with pigs and saris, that she completely lost sight of the fact that texture does not make a tale.
Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely the best foreign movie I watched recently
Review: when the movie finished, I actually wanted to stand up and apploude the director and the actors. What a beautiful way to capture the colors, and a great, funny story to watch. Not just another foreign movie, it is artful. Absolutely, Loved it!
Rating: 
Summary: Monsoon Wedding
Review: This delightful film, gives us an insight to the problems and pressures of the young struggling with traditions, parents who are beginning to live beyond their means, and abuse problems that have been kept hidden and must now be faced. There isn't a culture on the planet that cannot identify with the many issues addressed in this film. The performances were first rate and quite natural, and the music was wonderful.
Rating:
Summary: Indian celebration
Review: This film is about an arranged marriage between the daughter of a upper-middle class Indian family in Delhi, and the son of an Indian family who have relocated to Texas. The film begins as the father, expecting guests to arrive from around the world, juggles last minute wedding details. In all of the flurry and fuss that surrounds the wedding, few people notice that the bride seems somewhat distracted by a previous love affair, or that an orphaned cousin seems a little uncomfortable in the presence of her uncle, the accepted family patriarch. But all these troubles are resolved by the end of the film. The sub-plot of the film involves the Indian version of the 'wedding planner'--a lower-caste Indian named Dube who catches the eye of a servant girl. Dube was an incredible character with all of his drive, ambition, and the latest gadgets. The film cleverly made a statement about the caste-system, but it was subtle and elegantly woven into the film. This was a wonderful film--the colours, the music, the vegetation--everything was lush and rich. I loved seeing the Indian relatives converge on the household--there were Indians from America, Indians from Australia, etc. The subtitles are mixed with some English and a patois that is utterly charming.
Rating:
Summary: Delightful
Review: This movie was just delightful. The clash of the old and the new in the guise of an Indian wedding was so well done -- an Indian version of "Father of the Bride" where everything that can go wrong does. This family comedy takes place almost entirely within the walls of the bride's family home as they make the preparations for this arranged marriage. Relatives arrive from all over, as does the family of the groom. The house grows increasingly loud and the tension rises accordingly. The characters are never really introduced and I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out who was who. There is a lot of conventional typecasting in this movie, but that seems to work in a comedy (although the subplot of the lascivious uncle is not funny). The comedy is in the clash of old customs with the new ways of doing things and the logistics of accommodating both. Great cinematography combined with a lush setting and great music made this an enjoyable movie.
Rating:
Summary: My Big Fat Indian Wedding--wild, wet and wonderful
Review: Just in case you don't know, having a wedding in monsoon season, when torrential tropical rains drench the land every late afternoon is not the Done Thing. But in this story, the bride-to-be is doing a lot of Not-Done-Things, like sneaking off with her married boyfriend for a hot goodbye the evening before her arranged wedding. And that is just one of the five storylines in Mira Nair's low-budget, prize-winning film. The film starts a bit slowly, so slowly that my better half was sighing with exasperated male boredom in the beginning 20 minutes. But the pace naturally heats up as the wedding activities reach their peak. This is an interesting slice of Indian life, with some commentary on the changes in India over the last few years, with dot-com wealth spreading to the lower middle class, entertainingly told as the story of the wedding coordinator Dube and his village-girl-turned-servant bride. This was the cutest and most touching part of the story. By the end of "Monsoon Wedding" even the male sighs of boredom had been converted to grunts of admiration. Well-filmed on a shoestring budget with a top-class cast, this is an exotic and rich story, Indian in every way, but universally understandable.
Rating:
Summary: boring and pointless
Review: I guess I have to be in the right mood to see a movie like this, but I could not stay interested in it at all. I liked movies such as Gosford Park, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, etc. But those movies usually had interesting characters, plot intrigue, and some humor mixed in to keep the movie upbeat at least a little. This movie had none of that. I did not care about any of the characters. It was mostly depressing (when not boring) and the sporadic use of subtitles was annoying and distracting. The plot was straightforward-almost like a documentary. My wife did not care for this film either so I am truly astounded by all the positive reviews. I would pass on this one.
Rating:
Summary: Great Big Fat Indian Wedding
Review: As indicated by my title for this review, this movie has all the fun and joy attributed to Nia Vardalos' successful comedy, 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding', albeit told at a slower pace in a mixture of English and subtitled Punjabi which may or may not prove daunting to some viewers. However, 'Monsoon Wedding' even with all its fun, has an added dimension, capturing both the stress and happines of a Delhi family as it prepares for the huge four-day Indian wedding ceremony. At first, the audience watches with sufficient interest the variety of ritual activities (which are explained in adequate detail on the movie's website)and then with mounting scrutiny as the events trigger reactions of internal angst, anger, trepidation and a spectrum of other emotions for many of the film's main characters and threaten to thow a number of ill-timed monkey wrenches into the well-oiled wedding machinery.
A few of the peccadilloes to be surmounted: The bride-to-be has never before met her intended husband, an engineer from Houston, Texas. The groom is expecting a virgin bride, not realizing that she has been having an affair with her married boss. The father of the bride has over extended himself financially throwing a wedding he cannot really afford. One of the bride's cousin must deal with a treacherous secret from her past regarding an older family member. And most charming of all, the wedding consultant falls head-over-heels for a young family servant and can barely concentrate enough to get the huge tent up in time in case of the threatening monsoon rains.
I recommend this film to anyone who enjoys watching and participating in family drama. The culture and ceremony may not be familiar, but certainly the ties that bind us as kin to one another are universal,relegating the particulars meaningless.
Rating:
Summary: colorful, joyous Indian film
Review: Occasionally, we Americans are treated to a delightful foreign film. I suspect that lots of these are made every year, but the powers that be long ago decided that we have neither the patience nor the inclination to watch them. One that did get through was the joyous Indian treat, "Monsoon Wedding". A family in Delhi is overjoyed after one of its daughters accepts an arranged marriage with a successful Indian engineer who lives in Houston, TX. The girl's reason for accepting isn't out of respect for tradition. She's simply given up hope that her married lover will ever divorce his wife. When the prespective groom arrives, he turns out to be a really nice guy, and the bride-to-be agonizes over whether or not to be honest about her past. Meanwhile, the man hired to build the wedding tents finds himself head over heels in love with the family's shy young maid. There are lots of laughs in "Monsoon Wedding", as well as many witty and insightful observations about middle-class Indian society. While there is a fascination in seeing some of the more exotic aspects of life in India, the most satisfying aspect of the film is its way of showing how universal the joys of love and of family are. Typical of cosmopolitan families outside of the USA, the characters often switch from one language to another while speaking. In this case, they speak Hindu, Punjabi and English. I know some moviegoers can't stand subtitles, but, to me, the use of multiple languages simply adds to this film's charms.
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