| 100 |
New York Post
Sheer delight. An ensemble comedy-drama that recalls Robert Altman's best work.
|
| 100 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Carla Meyer
Contains an incest story line that's disturbing but shouldn't scare people away. Nair handles the subject with such grace and sensitivity that it becomes just another element in this complex celebration of family.
|
| 91 |
Entertainment Weekly
The old-world-meets-new mesh is incarnated in the movie's soundtrack, a joyful effusion of disco Bollywood that, by the end of Monsoon Wedding, sent my spirit soaring out of the theater.
|
| 90 |
Time
They bring their characters to good, slightly surprising, quite satisfying places. And leave us beaming happily.
|
| 90 |
Washington Post
Nair is not making a caricature out of Lalit or anyone else. She's inviting us into the inner recesses of her culture. And it's both pleasure and privilege to be one of her guests.
|
| 90 |
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
Exploding on the screen in a riot of movement, music and color.
|
| 90 |
Los Angeles Times
Has an engaging warmth and an effortless sense of life. It also has an instinct for the humanity and universality of situations that are comic, romantic and quite seriously dramatic by turns.
|
| 90 |
Wall Street Journal
Nair's movie, far from being paste, is a string of small, exquisite gems.
|
| 88 |
USA Today
Some of the movie's best scenes -- knockouts, in fact -- involve musical interludes.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Tribune
Delighted me like few films I've seen recently. It's a sexy, sweet, sumptuously entertaining movie about the huge and wildly eventful wedding reception.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Sun-Times
One of those joyous films that leaps over national boundaries and celebrates universal human nature.
|
| 88 |
Boston Globe
The film's bountiful warmth and gusto do their work. By the end, we feel part of the family, too.
|
| 80 |
New Times (L.A.)
Pulsates with music, dance, color and laughter, but also glows with quiet moments of drama.
|
| 80 |
LA Weekly
Nair, who, in this film as in so many others, aims for the beating heart of the predictable movie moment.
|
| 80 |
Chicago Reader
Joshua Rothkopf
A late radical shift in tone, from jittery exuberance to ruinous alienation, strikes an impressive contemporary note amid all the obeisance to custom.
|
| 80 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
A sight worth seeing.
|
| 80 |
Slate
When the groom's enormous procession fights its way through the hard rain and muck to the bejeweled bride, Nair's chaos downright sparkles.
|
| 80 |
Newsweek
Nair’s stereotype-shattering movie -- like the polymorphous culture it illuminates -- borrows from Bollywood, Hollywood and cinema verite, and comes up with something exuberantly its own.
|
| 80 |
Rolling Stone
Aims for pure joy and achieves it.
|
| 75 |
Baltimore Sun
The beauty, vibrancy and complexity of Indian culture is on addictive display in Monsoon Wedding. If only there were more to the film.
|
| 75 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
It's a fascinating babel, and Nair, using the unfolding ritual of the wedding as a centre point, captures the competing sights and sounds with her own unique mix of cinematic borrowings -- think Robert Altman meets Bollywood.
|
| 75 |
Miami Herald
Ebullient, joyous film.
|
| 75 |
New York Daily News
With its colorful embroidery, Monsoon Wedding feels pleasurably grounded in a reality about which most Westerners haven't a clue. This may be their only engraved invitation.
|
| 75 |
ReelViews
An infectious celebration of life and love.
|
| 75 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
In the film's stronger moments, the artist in her definitely seems to be saying that the impulse to retreat into cultural fundamentalism carries dire risks, that much of what is old and traditional needs changing and there are some things about the detested process of globalization that are wonderfully liberating.
|
| 75 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
A feast for the eyes and ears as its story is a banquet for the heart.
|
| 75 |
Christian Science Monitor
Fans of Robert Altman's hit "Gosford Park" will find similar pleasures here: colorful characters, multiple story lines, and clever blends of comedy and drama.
|
| 70 |
New York Magazine
Eminently disposable, but that's its charm. It stays with you just long enough to make you smile.
|
| 70 |
TV Guide
Punjabi weddings are notorious for their lavishness, and Nair's intoxicating soap opera revels in the sights and sounds of this clamorous family ritual.
|
| 70 |
Variety
Splashy, noisy and downright fun.
|
| 70 |
Film Threat
Strongly infused with an unmistakably exotic Bollywood flair.
|
| 70 |
Salon.com
Monsoon Wedding is going to be a big art-house hit because it's one of those movies that reassures audiences that people in other countries are just like us.
|
| 60 |
The New York Times
The agile handling of the soap-opera elements -- conventional plotting at best -- finally makes "Wedding" a pop, facile take on Capulet versus Montague stuff, likable but square.
|
| 58 |
Portland Oregonian
Gives just enough to forgive any of its initial flaws and eventually grows on you.
|
| 50 |
The New Yorker
A scruffy, thick-grained piece of work, shot in thirty days and scrawled not with luscious coloring but with the tense and inky markings of a society that is fighting to keep its reputation for togetherness, and wondering what that reputation is still worth. [18 & 25 Feb 2002. p. 199]
|
| 40 |
Village Voice
An air-conditioned bus tour of Punjabi ritual. Nair stuffs the film with dancing, henna, ornamentation, and group song, but her narrative clichés and telegraphed episodes smell of old soap opera.
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