One problem have with most directors I have met is that they purposely choose the worst scripts in order to make something more out of them.Here, we have such a director. Mira Nair does a great job of directing. The script isn't "poor", but it is very bland. The story line is pretty weak. The characters are good, however, and that saves it for her.The story is weak because it is about a family forced to flee a country. If the family was "down and out" it would be a good story, but the family is almost royalty.That doesn't make them bad people, but it makes for a dull story.However, Nair must have made directing a passion. She utilizes what she has to make the most of. Here, Nair looks like the MacGyver of directing, able to take the dullest settings and make them appear interesting. Nair could take a street sign, and plant it in an artistic way. For example, much of this is set in gardens, airports, motor vehicles, businesses, streets, groceries, the dullest arenas you can imagine. Nair does well to make them appear larger than life.The story here has a "larger than life" appeal. That's because of the pretty well written characters, good acting, and polished work all around, from director down to the part time stage hand. All did excellent work.However, I couldn't rate it very high because it still bored me. I need some excitement in my story. This is not exactly a "chick flick", because the characters appeal to men. The chick is the weird one, while the lead male is the obviously sane one, the one people could identify with.The embellishment of scenery probably can make most viewers enjoy the movie more than I. I'm just a little bourgeoisie for that. What the movie suffers from is constant drag. It is twice as long as it should be. Had the movie been cut in half, I would give it 2 more stars easily. Still, that does make it a good movie for those of us who don't cheat and "pause" when we leave the room.

This film begins in the early 1970s in Uganda. Idi Amin, the insane dictator, has just announced that all non-blacks must leave the country. So, a young Meena and her parents are forced to leave the only place they've ever lived. While they are Africans, their heritage is Indian.The film picks up two decades later. The family now lives in Mississippi of all places--in a small Indian community. They work for an Indian-owned motel. Meena (Sarita Choudhury) meets a nice young black man, Demetrius (Denzel Washington). And, after dating a very short time, they sleep together...and are discovered by her relatives. The family is incensed--presumably because Demetrius is black. And, lots of chaos and repercussions occur.My feeling is that the script missed the point a bit. While only idiots might be angry at the interracial angle, I guess I'm old fashioned and can see the family getting upset that Meena is spreading her legs after only two dates. In movies, this is a good thing--in real life, pregnancy and STDs might be the result. So, had Meena and Demetrius had a deeper connection before they were discovered, the film would have made a lot more sense--and the conflict would have been much more interesting. As it is, the relationship between Meena and Demetrius is unconvincing and makes little sense. And, speaking of that, the film ends very, very, very abruptly and left me feeling very flat. Overall, a film with some real possibilities but that just didn't come together well. A bit of a disappointment.

After making a splash with her debut feature 'Salaam Bombay', director Mira Nair tried to attract a wider audience with this strictly conventional (if pleasantly untraditional) cross-cultural romance. Denzel Washington plays a small town Mississippi janitor who charms (and is charmed by) the liberated daughter of an Indian political activist exiled from Idi Amin's Uganda. The conflicts between father and daughter are in fact more involving than the star-crossed love affair, and while it hardly follows any standard romantic formula there's still a discouraging sense of compromise to the film, in which likable but underwritten characters trade weak dialogue sounding all too often like the result of a bad translation. The cast is certainly attractive (if a little lopsided: Denzel Washington completely outclasses his co-stars), and the production is marked by a welcome lack of Hollywood gloss, most likely due to an unwelcome lack of a Hollywood budget. But in the end the film provides only a modest spark in an otherwise dim movie-going season.

Mira Nair is one of the best directors. Her movies are different and deep. I liked the concept behind this movie. It addresses prejudices in different cultures. This should have been a really good movie. It wasn't. What spoiled the movie for me was the choice of the female lead. Sarita Chowdhary could not possibly pass as the daughter of the two parents on the screen (played by Sharmila Tagore who was one of the top actresses of her era in Bollywood, and Roshan Seth). If you see their features, they are angular. Sarita has a completely different face- thick lips, flat nose, rectangular face, darker skin than both parents. She did not even look like an Indian. That killed the whole racial difference theme of the movie. In the beginning we see a young Meena about 9 years old, in tears when her parents decide to leave Uganda. They were basically forced to leave their home and their belongings behind. What was most painful to all three of them was losing their Ugandan friends. Meena loved her African friends, and it is not surprising that she is attracted to an African American after moving to the USA, much to the chagrin of the resident Indians.The end was touching, however, and lifted the movie quite a bit. When the father goes back to Uganda, which he considers his true home, and feels love toward an African baby, he realizes that color does not matter. That was the high point of the movie. He also realizes that his past home is no longer his home. So the beginning and the end of the movie are good. The in betweens are not as strong. The accent was an issue. If Meena (Sarita Chowdhary) spent several years in Uganda, then UK, before moving to the USA, why did she not have some British accent? The parents accents were Indian. If the father was born in Uganda, he should have had a different accent (not Indian).It's not clear what profession the father had in Uganda, why he chose Mississippi and not one of the northern states, why the daughter was uneducated. The lack of education is very un-Indian. Culturally Indians (even those who live in other countries) place very high value on education. There are too many deficiencies in the body of the movie, and for me watching Sarita Chowdhary as Sharmila Tagore's daughter was just too much. She spoiled the whole movie for me. It was too unrealistic, despite a very good idea behind the movie.