As part of the most bizarre double bill I've ever been to, I followed Cocaine Bear with this, and boy did I wish I hadn't.
The plot sees (only in the movies) documentary film maker Zoe (Lily James), who lives on a house boat on the Thames by Chelsea use her childhood friend and next door neighbour, Doctor Kaz Khan's (Shazad Latif) upcoming arranged marriage as the basis of her latest fly-on-the-wall documentary with 'hilarious' results. We follow Zoe and Kaz, who really should be a couple, as she films his half hearted matchmaking attempts and subsequent arranged marriage which results in a trip to the wonderful city of Lahore in Pakistan, where everything is unbelievably lovely, clean and utterly beggar free, for a ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS three day wedding. Along for the ride is Zoe's mum, Cath (Emma Thompson) who naturally is obsessed with how wonderful everything about her next door neighbour's family culture is, she's a totally paid up and fully committed Pakistani-phile, she loves every thing about their muslim culture to such an extent, you'll actually find your toes curling in embarrassment each and every time she's on the screen.
Cue lots of examples of how awful Western attitudes towards marriage and dating are compared to the enlightened, marvellous, mysterious ways of the far East. Until an incredible late in the third act reveal when you realise the whole film has been a subversive rug-pull.
Kaz's arranged wife is less than enthusiastic with the prospect of moving to the UK and harbours a secret, there's a plain speaking grandma who spouts mostly racist sentiments from her wheelchair, and added to the mix - a banished daughter, who dared to marry a western for love and bear a child, and finally a lovelorn English vet, set up with Zoe by her mum, Cath.
The film, which to its credit brought out a nicely and surprising ethnically diverse crowd at my cinema, begins as the most generic of sit coms, ticking off all the familiar tropes, to such an extent I scored well over 50 points with my cliche bingo card, everything about Zoe's romantic life is held up as wrong footed and terrible, while the arranged marriage model is lauded and hailed, "did you know that only 1% of arranged marriages fail." we are told, while we see Zoe's latest drunken one night stand fail when she finds out her date is married, then her best friend's marriage fails when the husband cheats. Meanwhile arranged marriage couples give talking head interviews to camera praising to the heavens the glories of their couplings, claiming that you 'fall into like, walk into love'. It really is the worst type of propaganda, that is up until the film pulls a Syd Field in the third act with a literal rug-pull and that the whole film is revealed to have been one fantastically miss-direct. It's cleverly timed to arrive just at the end of the second act and the beginning of the third, when Zoe shows the rough cut of her movie to the Khans and family secrets are exposed and confronted, a divorce is announced, and true love, un-arranged, wins out.
This is button pushing at its finest, a hideously manipulative, smug and self satisfying movie which insults with its stereotypical portrayals of two cultures to such an extent that it loses all credibility, and the ending which dawns on you, well before it arrives with such cringe-inducing schmaltz that your already toe curled feet will roll back up your legs to your knees.
It's great to see Clem Fandago's Shazad Latif back in action, and Lily James is a good actress, but I just wish they'd had a better story together, because this one holds absolutely no water at all and is as about as believable as the idea of a cocaine addicted black bear killing scores of people.
Smug, satisfying, simpering and sickeningly twee. This film also loses marks thanks to Emma Thompson who is so bad in this that you find yourself hating her each time she bobs into view.
5/10
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