Bride and Prejudice is a 2004 romantic musical film directed by Gurinder Chadha. The screenplay by Chadha and Paul Mayeda Berges is a Bollywood-style adaptation of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. It was filmed primarily in English, with some Hindi and Punjabi dialogue. The film released in the United States on 11 February 2005 and was well-received by film critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 81% of 32 professional critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 6.8 out of 10.^[2] This film was the debut of R&B singer Grammy-winner Ashanti as an actress.

Plot[link]

The plot of the movie is based on Austen′s novel Pride and Prejudice. Some character names remain the same, while others are changed slightly, using localized names with similar pronunciation (such as Lalita for Elizabeth). Set in Amritsar, the story follows Lalita Bakshi, a young woman living with her doting father and helping him run the family farming enterprise; her mother, who is determined to marry off her daughters to respectable and wealthy men; and her three sisters, Jaya, Maya, and Lakhi. At a friend's wedding, Lalita meets Will Darcy, a handsome and wealthy American working in the family hotel business, who has arrived in Amritsar with his long-time friend, the barrister Balraj, and Balraj's sister Kiran.

Events in the movie roughly parallel those in the novel, punctuated by "Bollywood" style song and dance numbers: Darcy resists his attraction to Lalita, who considers him conceited, arrogant, and intolerant toward India and Indian culture. At various parties and gatherings, Mrs Bakshi's mindless chatter, Maya's kitchy dancing, and Lakhi's uninhibited flirting astonish Darcy and his friends, and mortify Jaya and Lalita. Balraj and Jaya fall quickly in love, but misunderstandings and interference by others drag out their courtship. Lalita meets and is attracted to "Johnny Wickham," Darcy's former friend, and he validates her low opinion of Darcy. Mr Kholi, a rich, crass, clumsy, and ostentatious Americanized relative, proposes to Lalita; after she turns him down, her best friend Chandra agrees to marry him, much to Lalita's confusion and consternation.

When the youngest sister Lakhi tries to run off with Wickham, Darcy and Lalita find the couple and separate them before he can ruin her life, as he almost did to Will's young sister Georgie.

Ultimately, back in India for Jaya and Balraj's wedding, Darcy surprises and wins over Lalita by joining in the traditional drumming, showing that he is learning to appreciate Indian culture. The film ends with the double wedding of Jaya to Balraj and Lalita to Darcy, with the two couples riding on elephants down the streets of Amritsar. They lived happily ever after.

Cast[link]

Names in parentheses are the characters in the original Austen novel.

• Aishwarya Rai as Lalita Bakshi (Elizabeth Bennet)
• Martin Henderson as William "Will" Darcy (Fitzwilliam Darcy)
• Daniel Gillies as Johnny Wickham (Mr. George Wickham)
• Naveen Andrews as Mr. Balraj (Mr. Bingley)
• Anupam Kher as Mr. Bakshi (Mr. Bennet)
• Nadira Babbar as Mrs. Bakshi (Mrs. Bennet)
• Namrata Shirodkar as Jaya Bakshi (Jane Bennet)
• Indira Varma as Kiran Balraj (Caroline Bingley)
• Sonali Kulkarni as Chandra Lamba (Charlotte Lucas)
• Nitin Ganatra as Mr. Kholi (Mr. Collins)
• Meghna Kothari as Maya Bakshi (Mary Bennet)
• Peeya Rai Chowdhary as Lakhi Bakshi (Lydia Bennet)
• Alexis Bledel as Georgina "Georgie" Darcy (Georgiana Darcy)
• Marsha Mason as Catherine Darcy (Lady Catherine de Bourgh)
• Harvey Virdi as Mrs. Lamba (Lady Lucas)
• Georgina Chapman as Anne (Anne de Bourgh)

Soundtracks[link]

Production[link]

The film received funding from the UK Film Council with the stipulation that a majority of filming had to take place in the UK. Locations used include Halton House, Stoke Park Club, Turville, and Cobstone Windmill in Buckinghamshire, and Southall, Somerset House, Little Venice, the London Eye, and the National Film Theatre in London. Other locations used for the film include the Golden Temple of Amritsar, the beaches of Goa, the Grand Canyon, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and Santa Monica Beach.

Ashanti sings "Take Me to Love" and "Touch My Body" in the film. According to director Gurinder Chadha in "making-of" extras on the DVD release, Ashanti's appearance in the film is an homage to the tradition of a celebrity making a cameo appearance to sing an "item number, a song that has no direct involvement in the plot in Bollywood films.

Critical reception[link]

The film opened to generally mixed to positive reviews. BBC noted that "Swapping corsets for saris, and polite pianoforte for the bhangra beat, director Gurinder Chadha reinvigorates Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice with fun and flamboyance".

Professional Reviews
IMDb (6.1/10) link
BBC link
Rotten Tomatoes link
Hollywood.com link
USA Todaylink
Rolling Stone link
reelviews.net link
The New York Times link
ABC Australia link

Box office[link]

In October 2004, the film released and opened well across the UK, grossing $2.7 million in first three days.^[3] The film collected a world wide gross of $24,716,440.^[1]It was made with a budget of $7,000,000.Hence,a success at the box office.^[4]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Bride and Prejudice at the Internet Movie Database
• Bride and Prejudice at Box Office Mojo
• Bride and Prejudice at Rotten Tomatoes

Naveen Andrews
Naveen Andrews signing autographs (2009)
Born	Naveen William Sidney Andrews (1969-01-17) 17 January 1969 (age 43) Lambeth, London, England, UK
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1991–present

Naveen William Sidney Andrews (born 17 January 1969) is a British actor. He is best known for portraying Kip in the film The English Patient and Sayid Jarrah on the American television series Lost.

Early life[link]

Andrews was born in Lambeth, London, the son of Nirmala, a psychologist, and Stanley Andrews, a businessman,^[1] both Malayali Nasrani immigrants from Kerala, India.^[2] He was brought up in Wandsworth, South London, and had what he has described as a "very repressive" upbringing. Andrews was brought up in the Methodist denomination.^[3] At the age of sixteen, while at Emanuel School, he fell in love with his mathematics teacher, Geraldine Feakins; seven years later they had a son, Jaisal, born in 1992.^[4]

Career[link]

Andrews auditioned for drama school and was accepted at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Ewan McGregor and David Thewlis. His studies paid off when he won a role in Hanif Kureshi's film, London Kills Me (1991). Andrews starred in the 1993 BBC miniseries Buddha of Suburbia. He portrayed Kip in The English Patient (1996) and Sayid in the popular television series Lost (2004). In 2006, he was voted one of People magazine's World's Most Beautiful People.^[5] He also starred in Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996), Mighty Joe Young (1998) and Bride and Prejudice (2004).

Personal life[link]

Andrews was in a relationship with actress Barbara Hershey; they lived together in Los Angeles. The couple separated briefly in 2005 and, during that time, Andrews had another son, Naveen Joshua, with another woman, Elena Eustache. He and Hershey later reconciled.^[6] However, he and Hershey announced in May 2010 that they had separated six months earlier.^[7][8] He has been involved in an ongoing custody dispute with Eustache over their son; on 7 January 2009 Andrews was granted temporary sole legal and physical custody of the child.^[9]

Andrews has spoken about his alcoholism and his two-year addiction to heroin in the mid-'90s.^[10]

Andrews also plays guitar and sings.^[11] He became a naturalised US citizen on 27 May 2010.^[12]

Filmography[link]

• London Kills Me (1991) as Bike
• Wild West (1992) as Zaf
• Double Vision (1992) as Jimmy
• The Buddha of Suburbia (1993 TV mini-series) as Karim Amir
• The Peacock Spring (1996) as Ravi Battacharya
• Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996) as Raj Singh
• The English Patient (1996) as Kip
• True Love and Chaos (1997) as Hanif
• My Own Country (1998) as Dr. Abraham Verghese
• Bombay Boys (1998) as Krishna
• Mighty Joe Young (1998) as Pindi
• Drowning on Dry Land (1999) as Darshan
• A Question of Faith (2000) as William
• The Chippendales Murder (2000) as Steve Banerjee
• The Beast as Tamir Naipaul (1 episode, 2001)
• Rollerball (2002) as Sanjay
• Future Tense (2003) as Miles Gupta
• Easy (2003) as John Kalicharan
• Bride & Prejudice (2004) as Balraj
• The Ten Commandments (2006) as Menerith
• Provoked: A True Story (2006) as Deepak Ahluwalia
• Grindhouse (2007) as Abby (segment "Planet Terror")
• The Brave One (2007) as David Kirmani
• Animals (2008/I) as Vic
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as Detective Ash Ramsey ("Shadow", 2010)
• Lost as Sayid Jarrah (114 episodes, 2004–10)
• Rise of an Exile as Atticus Benedict (2012)
• Sinbad (TV series) as Lord Akbari (2012)
• Creature of the Black Lagoon as Doctor David Raya (2012)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Naveen Andrews at the Internet Movie Database