This film is about a second generation American growing up with Bengali-American parents. He struggles to balance his family’s culture and identity with the vastly different American culture and identity.
This film has scenes in India (mostly Kolkutta, but also one by the Taj Mahal in Agra), and a couple of scenes are in Bengali language or a mix of Bengali and English.(Benglish?) However, the vast majority of scenes are filmed in America and are in English.
This film had a couple of comical aspects, like the large servant trying to keep up with the young man jogging in Kolkutta and the clueless yet good intentioned girlfriend attempting to be nice yet unknowingly violating traditional protocol when visiting the boy’s parents.
One thing that I was surprised about: they neglected to show puja (devotional worship). At first, when the mother first came to America, I thought that she was going to do puja when she mixed the cereal with the red powder (kumkum?) and nuts, but that was all that they showed of it.
I would recommend this film to almost anyone. I think that it would be particularly nice for a Westerner with non-Western parents or family members. But also, I think that any non Indian should watch if he or she wants to learn more about how some aspects of a traditional Indian lifestyle (albeit an urban one) are different from the typical American lifestyle.
One tip: this is not a Bollywood movie. I saw a couple of comments remarking that it is Bollywood. Anyone who watches Bollywood films would know that this is definitely not Bollywood.
