It was about this time last summer...

...when I first saw the trailer for Marigold. My response was pretty much mah. I finally got the DVD and watched it this weekend.

First off, this is a movie made with much love, which I greatly appreciated. Apparently the director, Willard Carroll, caught the movie Chori Chori Chupke Chupke while vacationing in India and was sucked in by the first song, "Number 1 Punjabi". He subsequently ordered Bollywood DVDs by the boxload until he'd seen over 150 movies, including everything Salman Khan had ever done. He relates all this in the bonus features, and my husband found it quite amusing, as it's pretty much what happened to me. Substitute Andaz Apna Apna for CCCC, and I've not quite hit the century mark yet and have only seen about 2/3 of Salman's movies. But yeah, Willard and I share a love.

It's also not the fish-out-of-water story I feared. No "whacky" encounters with strange customs or weird food. Again, much appreciated.

It's also not really what the marketing claims it is, which is an east meets west, Hollywood girl meets Bollywood guy. Sure, that's what's going on superficially, but there is even a scene in the movie that pretty clearly spells out that she's just Marigold, not Every American Girl, and he's just Prem, not Every Indian Boy. It's a smaller but more interesting story than the marketers would have you believe.

I don't think it was a rousing success; I'd have to put in the category of films that try for something interesting but don't quite follow through (for comparison, I also put Stranger Than Fiction and Feeling Minnesota in this category). It's really the story of how an overgrown adolescent learns to set aside childish things and be a grown-up. And despite the marketing spin, it's not all of Bollywood that does this for her, it's just one guy who makes her feel safe enough to let up on her defense mechanisms. These two characters and how they draw each other out was really very well written.

It was an interesting story, particularly when her semi-fiance enters the picture and is neither a villainous jerk nor some dope you know she'd never end up with (like the flute player in Serendipity - was it ever remotely believable that Kate Beckinsale would marry that guy?).

Still, flawed. Too many characters appear all at the end of the film, and it all feels rushed (which is one way in which it was not a real Bollywood movie, not even two hours long???). Plus Prem's parents go through a drastic change in motivation that really needed a lot more set-up to feel real. And I would have made Marigold's arc a bit less neat. She pretty effectively stops being a bitch; if I had been writing it, it would have been a much tougher transition for her, and at the point when the Big Secret is revealed, I would have had her really fight not to lose all the grace and self-control she's just learned to have.

Still, it was far better than I had expected.