A mockumentary in the spirit of Christopher Guest's 'Best in Show'. This has fewer laughs, but more heart. A 'Desi Idol' Hindi singing contest is sponsored by a meat company in New Jersey (hence the title). A very odd assortment of contestants, including a young Jewish guy, and a gay Indian rapper vie for the crown as we follow each of their stories.While clearly done on a tiny budget, the acting is all good, often better than that. And there is such an infectious good will to the piece that I forgave any rough edges. I didn't laugh a lot, but I smiled almost the whole time I was watching. And any film that can do that is alright by me!

And now for something completely different,from India. A film that isn't a Bollywood musical (but does feature music),isn't nearly four hours long,and,is in the English language (with the minor exception of a couple of lines spoken in Hindi,that is subtitled). The film is 'Loins Of Punjab Presents', a comedy about several groups of Indian immigrants,trying to compete for top honours in a talent contest,called 'Desi Idol',an Indian take on (guess what?).Desi,being a Hindi term for a victim of the Indian diaspora. We see several prospectives going through the various processes for being a contestant. Along the way are the usual monkey wrenches in the proverbial cogs:the ones that take up their own self perpetuating political agendas,and change the rules when it suits them (in short,the ones who always manage to screw things up for others,big time),the would be contestants who bomb out,to mention a few. This film seems to want to be shot in the Christopher Guest style "mockumentary" style (at first,but this is eventually dropped as the film's plot line develops). Besides the assortment of oddball characters (a would be Indian American rapper,a half caste singer,who sings in Hindi,although her handle of the language is nearly non existent,a talented teen aged singer,who is just a little too good for one of the other contestants,and my personal favourite,a young Jewish man who is obsessed by Bollywood musicals,as his girlfriend is Indian,herself),there are lots of songs by the various contestants,taken from various Bollywood musicals. Toss in all of the above,stir,and you have yourself a spicy,fun,good time film that will have you walk out the cinema with a smile on your face (as was the audience at the screening that I attended). No MPAA rating,but does contain some raunchy language,as well as some minor adult situations,and an unpleasant racial slur.

Manish Acharya's highly original comedy has the bounce, bubbling eccentricity, and perfect comic timing of the best of the screwball era. It's like a visit to an updated and internationalized version of the days when you could count on a movie for an hour and a half of fun and leave your cringe-protection gear at home.A movie-song singing contest takes places over the course of one weekend in a hotel deep in Indian-occupied New Jersey. The setup provides a sturdy structure for the kind of surprise-a-minute hilarity that gives screwball its velocity. Maybe something about Indian ex-patriate culture, as well as Acharya's talent, produces the lovely mix of naiveté and sophistication, the obvious and the unexpected (and the unexpected obvious, like the Indian-American guy whose job has been outsourced to India) that keeps all the balls spinning.Acharya (director, co-writer, actor) manages the much-harder-than-it-looks task of braiding together the stories of a set of at least a dozen contestants and side-characters in a way that keeps us consistently laughing about them, caring about them, and even thinking, in an off-hand way, about one or two things bigger than the contest outcome.In one of the film's many comic peaks, the slogan "Foreigner Go Home!!" is hurled at contestant Josh Cohen by fellow New Jersey residents, but the moment is just a stop on the road to a near-throwaway last word, both idiotic and profound, uttered by a man in crocodile-patterned Lurex, that dizzily pulls to the foreground a thought or two that have been there all along about who, in our country at its most diverse best, is inside, who's outside, and whether it matters if there even is an "inside" anyhow.If you're worried about having to sit through too much "Indian singing" – don't be! Very few songs are rendered all the way through, and, as in a Bollywood movie, the story almost always keeps going on during the song. And: the show-stopping bhangra rap song is entirely in English, as is the whole movie for that matter..PS for non-South Asians – the vindictive socialite, Rrita Kapoor, is played by Shabana Azmi, India's equivalent of Meryl Streep (apologies to both), a great and beautiful actress known for decades of roles in serious movies and also for courageous activities on behalf of social causes in India.

I saw the film quite by chance and was laughing out loud within the first 2 minutes. But to say that the film is very funny is to understate the case. It works on several levels thanks to deft observations of character supported by superb ensemble performances. Ostensibly about a group of hopefuls in a talent contest it explores much more than what the narrative declares. We see and, more importantly, feel the emotional trajectories of several lives as they jostle for their place in the spotlight. Each has a special, individual reason for being there. But, in the course of the few days of the contest, we see how essentially the journeys (rather than the end result) change, even define, these lives. The separate (but interlinked) stories propel the film on the narrative level. But if "Loins of Punjab Presents" had limited itself to simply telling these stories it would have fallen into the genre trap of the "feel-good" film. It would then have been enjoyable but ephemeral. The greater, and more lasting, joy of the film is the manner in which it springboards off the several dramas to comment on a range of contemporary obsessions. In a genre that is weighed down by cliché and triteness, this film stands out for being fresh,warm and, happily, the right length.