Husband and I got really bored last night, so we thought we would cap the weekend out with a nice comedy. We ended up ordering the above movie On-Demand. I didn’t really have too many expectations from the movie except for a slight curiosity about how Albert Brooks did India…It was not very disappointing, if a little tiresome about the cliches and stereotypes. I think the premise was to play-off of stereotypes in the manner of I-will-laugh-at-my-stereotype-and-make-fun-of-yours… It is not offensive or anything, just a little used-up.
I had to explain Albert Brooks to my husband as Marlin in “Finding Nemo”, so it was pretty funny when Brooks has to constantly refer to the cartoon and his fish character when he is introducing himself around in India (Score one for Neel for making us watch Nemo). There is a lot of self-deprecatory humor as Brooks completely fails to see his audience and they fail to see him. Though funny for a little bit, things can get sketchy after a while since a lot of references Brooks tries to explain as not Indian have been around in India via Star and other English channels since more than a decade ago when I lived there. The audience surely knows enough about the stuff.
I was quite disappointed that there was no true interaction between Brooks and any Indians or Indian comedians except for the overly-fawning Maya. It might have been fun to see Brooks and a few Indian comedians riff on each other. I guess Brooks was more invested in the dumb-American-creates-problems-while-trying-to-orchestrate-peace schtick to actually involve his character more with the locals. India and for a little bit, Pakistan are only backdrops for Brooks’ one-man-show about Americans and so could have been interchanged with Afghanistan and Kazhakstan for all that they mattered.
Overall, there were definitely a few chuckle-worthy moments as were groan-inducers. A time-pass movie aimed primarily towards American elites who want to laugh at the dumb Americans, IMO.
Posted by shanti at October 9, 2006 11:34 AMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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