“UnIndian” turns the tables on Australia

MUMBAI: Anupam Sharma’s “UnIndian” is the quintessential film for Indian expats - full of great locations, pretty houses and a thousand clichés about Indians and their ways. Set in Australia, but mostly among the Indian community there, the film is a somewhat clunky effort at a cross-cultural romance, with a predictable conflict and resolution.

Will (cricketer Brett Lee) teaches Australian English at a university and is in a bit of a funk when he meets Meera (Tannishtha Chatterjee), a working single mother whose pushy parents want her to get married again. They introduce her to bright Indian doctors and engineers, but much to their consternation, Meera falls for the Australian.

An Indian roommate coaches Will on dating an Indian girl, and we get a few more stereotypical jokes about curry, interfering Indian parents and a running gag about "ICN" -- the apparently super-efficient Indian community network for sharing the latest gossip.

For a country that has been often reviled for its racist attitudes, “UnIndian” turns the tables on Australia. Here, it is the Indians who are turning up their noses, recoiling at the thought of locals marrying their innocent Indian girls.

Other than a few smart lines, “UnIndian” doesn’t have too much going for it. The performances, especially by the leads, are laboured and tedious. Lee, acting in his first film, is most at ease in scenes where he’s playing cricket, but looks stiff and out of place at the first hint of emotion in the screenplay.

Supriya Pathak, playing Meera’s mother, is hilarious as the over-anxious Indian mother constantly meddling in her adult daughter’s life while Maya Sathi, who plays Meera’s precocious daughter, is a delight to watch. They are the two bright spots in what is otherwise a forgettable film.(Movie review by Shilpa Jamkhandikar)