Director: Gurinder Chadha

Cast: Aishwarya Rai, Martin Henderson, Nadira Babbar, Anupam Kher, Namrata Shirodhkar, Naveen Andrews.

Ratings:

Balle balle, it is! Indeed from the first shot to the last.

If you thought that only Yash Chopraji had a thing for sarson-da-khet in sadda Punjab, you are mistaken. Cause Gurinder Chadha, true to her Punjabi roots has done the same in Balle Balle! Amritsar to LA (that's Bride and Prejudice dubbed in Hindi).

Set in the northern part of the country, the opening frame of the film pans across a lush hariyali in the land of the five rivers, with Aishwarya Rai perched across a tractor in jeans and a tee, devoid of any make-up.

And if that raises your hope to see a deglamorised Aishwarya Rai, shedding her inhibitions and doing justice to her role of Lalita, well, you are in for a surprise. Even as our miss congeniality tries hard to recover from the debacle of a cropper in love comedy Kyun! Ho Gaya Naa , she fails to sizzle on screen with hunk Martin Henderson, strategically cast as an American hotelier, finding his steps to India, thanks to a the perfunctory presence required at a friend’s wedding.

The extra pounds show. So does the double chin. What remains hidden is a potential powerhouse performance as a young Indian, proud of her nationality and not ready to take trash in the form of ‘everything Indian is bad’ from confused US-returned Indian cousins and American entrepreneurs.

As a new age Indian girl, headstrong and assured of what she wants from her life, Ash fails to drive home the point that she will marry only for love.

She remains confused throughout the two and half hour flick, hopping from Amrtisar to London to LA to London to Amritsar back again, in search of love.