9/9/2003 » Film

I saw 'Where's the Party Yaar?' Monday night in Manhattan. I liked it, 3 out of 5 stars. The film's marketing is out of sync with what the movie actually is. It's pitched as a desi 'House Party,' as a broad, slapstick comedy; but it's actually more 'Mumbai on the Hudson.' It's a fun film with a meditative pace, and it's much more sweet-natured than crass. Large portions are a kitsch valentine to Bollywood films of the '60s and '70s. Barring 'Bollywood Hollywood,' it's the slickest of the recent rash of SAA (South Asian American) comedies, it felt far less amateur.

It's the first film about the 16-25 SAA age range, the others reflected the 26-35 crowd which is whiter and squarer. The car-stereo-customizing, girl-chasing, job-and-credit-card-bill-shirking, R&B-centric community college students are real. The Hindi remix boy band scene is hilarious because the character does it without irony. Much of my affection for this film stems from familiarity; there are a ton of desi in-jokes ranging from a Vicco vajradanti toothpaste parody to trouble with escalators, long names, coconut oil, white sneakers, tongue scrapers, metal cups, talcum powder, ajwain and churan. Shyam's zebra-skinned love shack is straight out of Bollywood's disco era, the samosa hat was reminiscent of Cheeseheads. There are a couple of fly, 'Usual Suspects'-style plot twists. There's a drop-dead funny pickup line: 'Did you know I'm good at math? Let's add you and me, subtract your clothes, divide your legs and multiply..." There's a linen-suit-safari-hat-and-pink-sari chaste love scene straight outta Bollywood. Thankfully, there's no wedding. I love the scene where the two Malyalee dads are sitting there in their wife-beaters and lungis watching TV and one says, 'Eh, Varghese, your wife's fish curry is the bomb!' I became one with my inner Mallu. And I'll never forget, 'When you can't afford the Palace, come to the Place!' and 'You are my doggies!'

There are shout-outs to different ethnicities (Malyalees, Gujratis, Punjabis, Sri Lankans) and different SAA styles (the wanna-be Jamaican, the progressive filmmaker, the middle school Goth, the sweet FOB, the trying-too-hard-to-get-laid FOB, the manipulative fashion student, the hip-hop fiend). The running Sri Lankan joke ('We're not Indian!') drew cheers from the SLs in the audience. The filmmakers cast across ethnicities with Serena Varghese, a Malyalee, playing Punjabi.

But the seams show in strangely flat scenes which peter out without exposition or emotional punch. The scene with the Tina Cherian character where she's leaning back into the sunlight was totally unexplained: was she drunk? drowsy? stoned? The late-night 'I see Indian people' line fell flat. In the climactic scene with Ray the party promoter and his boss, the reactions ring false. There's a soundtrack, but no dramatic score, so audience emotions are left unmanaged. At two hours, the film could've benefited from tighter editing. The lead, Kal Penn, doesn't have the brood-ability for this role, he's much better off doing comedy. The actresses were picked for beauty, not emotional intensity. The characters seemed to live in a world without white people. The script wasn't particularly subtle or intelligent, 'You're throwing Indians out of an Indian party!' felt like the obligatory lesson at the end of a Nickelodeon afterschool special, and the obligatory guru-ex-machina was overdone. The constant Music Masala promotion cheapened the film. The crew didn't blank out visible brand names, which felt unprofessional.

Despite the emotional flatness, the rave kid style is adorable, the sarod scene on the bed hilarious, the fashion student had cool, translucent clothes, and Varghese's bod is in fact the bomb. Sunil Malhotra looks a lot like the Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar, who also frequently plays the nerd to hero transformatrix. Varghese bears a passing resemblance to Kareena Kapoor. It felt like a film without stars, they don't yet have the acting chops to go with it; Malhotra's accent was shaky, and Varghese's romantic vacillations weren't believable, but they were sympathetic on screen.

It's really an 'apna' film, it probably has too many in-jokes to cross over beyond indie film crowds. They've paid for broad distribution and gotten tons of press hits, but they lack funding for driving foot traffic. 'Bollywood Hollywood' handed out soundtrack CDs at desi events, the kind of grassroots promo strategy I haven't yet seen this team doing, though I've received some email promo. The theater was nearly empty when I saw it, there was one professional, Indian Indian couple on a late Monday showing.

Go see it before it disappears! It's playing at the UA Union Square (Manhattan), AMC Mercado (San Jose), several others. Official site.

Btw, if you're in Manhattan, don't forget -- Monday 9/15, 7pm, Jhumpa Lahiri at Barnes & Noble Union Square; 7:45pm, "vertical ring of fire" art fireworks spectacle over Central Park (you'll see it from all over the city).