"It's kind of like Bend It Like Beckham on acid," is how Gurinder Chadha describes her latest movie, It's A Wonderful After Life. Gurinder Chadha is best known for her Desi diaspora movies Bend It Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice and her latest movie follows a similar path...

Writer Tanzila Ahmed is at Sundance, America’s premiere festival of indie flicks, held yearly on the snowbound streets of Park City, Utah. From her home base at the Taqwacore house (peopled with those who produced the film of the novel being shown there and the bands that soundtrack it), Ahmed will bring us a daily dose of indie celeb news. Learn more about her and her work here. And read her past blogs here.

 

“It’s kind of like Bend It Like Beckham on acid,” Gurinder Chadha describes her latest movie, It’s A Wonderful After Life.  Gurinder Chadha is best known for her Desi diaspora movies Bend It Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice. Her latest movie follows a similar path, but with more dark humor and slapstick British comedy. She and Sendhil Ramamurthy (best known as Mohinder from Heroes) sit down with me (and with my camera crew of The Kominas) at Sundance 2010.

Gurinder and and Sendhil talk about how British Desi comedy is different than American Desi comedies.

The movie takes place in England, and revolves around the single and desperate character Ruby. Sendhil Ramamurthy plays the leading man.

Sendhil Ramamurthy is best known for his role on Heroes.  Here he talks about the transition to film and taking off his shirt on the big screen.

Gurinder talks about how the internet was made for movies like hers.

I got the chance to watch “It’s A Wonderful Afterlife” after this interview and I must admit, I wasn’t too impressed. Though it follows the same basic plot recipe of “Bend It Like Beckhem” and “Bride and Prejudice”, in this movie the lead woman character feels overly two-dimensional and the comedy felt orientalized without any smarts. I really wanted to like it too, but I was hugely disappointed. Maybe I don’t get British comedy or the dark plot went over my head, but I’d really hoped for a movie of the same caliber as her previous ones. I totally enjoyed interviewing both Gurinder and Sendhil though, so all I can say is let’s hope that she’ll do a better job next time.

1.5/5 stars

Check out the trailer below: