[.ca] Masala

Fabulous, sharp satire:
I totally disagree with most of the reviewers here. This movie rocked. It's the funniest, sharpest, most misanthropic take on Indian-American culture I've ever seen. It's magical realist, it's got art school pretensions, it's got cheesy effects, but it's a hell of an achievement for a director who did it at age 21. I was in tears of laughter for most of the film. This is a vastly underappreciated nugget in this genre.

Pretty awful, actually...:
This was one of the strangest and most poorly-conceived movies I've seen about Indian people anywhere. First of all, the Indian family was so inauthentic in the way it was composed/casted. The protagonist and his parents (the ones on the plane) looked completely southern Indian, while the rest of the family's culture was portrayed (somewhat strangely and unconvincingly, though) as typically northern Indian, especially the uncle, aunt, grandmother, and daughters. This may not be so apparent to non-Indian viewers, who may not be deeply aware of regional cultural, ethnic and racial differences within the vast Indian subcontinent, but to an Indian like myself the family's inauthenticity comes across very strongly. To provide an American parallel, it is as absurd as, say, showing an American family where half the members speak in a Texan drawl and the other half in a New York accent, or showing one brother as black and one as white! It seems to me that the filmmaker Srinivas Krishna, as a Canadian-born person of Indian ancestry, just does not know Indian culture (and its significant regional variations) well enough in order to make a culturally and sociologically accurate movie about Indian people (even about Indian emigres in Canada!). I don't know about Canadian culture well enough to judge whether or not the portrayal of white Canadians in the film was culturally accurate or not, but the portrayal of the Indian family was certainly quite peculiar...

Masala - the movie:
I totally disagree with la1a1a. This movie is not about the history of Indians at all! Nor about Indians in Canada. Come on! It is not even a movie based on actual events. And as such, remains to be an entertaining and magical movie, with both fantasy and bonanza. I feel Srinivas Krishna, the producer and director, has done an excellent job with creativity, artistic ability and a wonderful cast from the top to the bottom. The colors and music were bewitching and so were some of the sets. Well done, definitely a must see and a 5 star catagory!

Answer to Yona the Wise:
Uh ... no, white Canadians are not realistically represented in this film. We are depicted as two dimensional charicatures, and quite funny charicatures, as well. The choice of a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey jersey for Lord Krishna may be the proper colour choice. However, I don't think it's fitting or respectful to put a loser's uniform on any top deity. I quite enjoyed the exchange between the televised Krishna and the dotty grandmother. As I understand it, a TV picture of a Hindu deity is just as real as a statue. So, this film is up there with the Simpsons and Gonisha.