Bollywood/Hollywood is director Deepa Mehta’s lighthearted jab at Bollywood, India’s Bombay (now called Mumbai)-based film industry. The region produces hundreds of films a year, all of which feature music and over-the-top melodrama. In fact, music is such an integral part of Bollywood that a film without music is considered “an oddity and a definite box-office risk.”
Mehta begins satirizing the Bollywood form by locating her story in Toronto when, traditionally, it would take place in India. This allows Mehta to superimpose the Bollywood style over a shopworn Hollywood story—a rich man in a bind needs a woman to pose as his wife and finds a feisty escort/prostitute who’ll play the part for money. At first the two are strictly business, but by the end of the film, they’re madly in love. This predictability hurts the performances, however, as leads Rahul (Rahul Khanna) and Sue (Lisa Ray) deliver their lines with only momentary lapses into true emotion.
Still, Bollywood/Hollywood redeems itself in spots. First of all, the Toronto backdrops are actually allowed to remain as Toronto. Plus, the song-and-dance numbers at key moments make cut-and-dried reactions novel again. Several stand out among the supporting cast—Bollywood archetypes like the overdramatic mother (Moushumi Chatterjee) and more unique figures like the Shakespeare-quoting grandmother (Dina Pathak) and the chauffeur (Ranjit Chowdhry) who moonlights as a cross-dressing lounge singer.
If you don’t like romance or music, you might be fascinated by the movie’s cultural insight. The film portrays, in detail, many of the ceremonies surrounding Indian prayer and weddings, as well as the beliefs held by the steadfastly traditional characters. Along with the musical numbers and strange cast of secondary characters, there is an intimacy in the everyday interactions between the characters that lets the viewer feel like part of the family.
