Marigold.

"Marigold is Bollywood For Beginners, offering a crash course in Indian cinematic themes and tropes without ever providing more than a small taste of the genre's gaudy, vibrant pleasures," writes Nick Schager in Slant.

Writer/director Willard Carroll "knows his Bollywood stuff and, refreshingly, doesn't apologize for, or waste time explaining, an industry and a style that most Americans still regard as silly. Instead, he honors them," counters Rachel Saltz in the New York Times.

"It's a mixed bag, this Marigold, sassily funny when [Ali] Larter is cracking wise and predictably more stilted when Carroll has his characters revert to standard Bollywood form," writes John Anderson in the Los Angeles Times.

Related: For the San Francisco Chronicle, Sandip Roy reviews Stephen Alter's Fantasies of a Bollywood Love Thief: Inside the World of Indian Moviemaking.

Also via Bookforum, Maithili Rao in the Hindu: "Does popular culture not only define but also disseminate the zeitgeist of a nation? Not just within the geographic boundaries of the nation state but also to the cultural conglomerates of the Indian diaspora scattered across the world in this globalized age? The spread and reach of Bollywood provoke these disquieting, connected questions to the dismay of the discerning film lover who is acutely aware of the richness of our other cinemas and its neglected auteurs left out in the cold."

Posted by dwhudson at August 18, 2007 5:36 AM