4/20/2004 » Film, Music, Dance

I saw 'Ella Enchanted' this weekend. It's a pale 'Princess Bride' clone with Cary Elwes playing the villain this time. As the heroes arrive at a wedding party in the land of giants (a Punjabi commentary?), you see—get this—Heidi Klum and others doing salsa to the strains of the Bollybhangra hit 'Sona Sona.' It's the instrumental bit at the end when the track pays homage to 'Hum Aapke Hain Koun.' Since I often inflict salsa-bhangra and bhangra-salsa upon others myself, I got a real kick out of this. It was like the film grabbing me by the chin and saying, 'Yo, listen up. This is for you.'

Jimi Mistry ('East is East', 'The Guru') played the Mirror, Mirror role as a boyfriend bound up in a magical book. He must've had a leading-man clause in his contract: take me out of the damn book, show me whole, and let me lead a big, Bollywood-style group dance a la 'The Guru.' Parminder Nagra ('Bend It Like Beckham,' 'ER') played the sympathetic desi best friend, like Sarita Choudhury in 'A Perfect Murder.' She had the most heartrending moment in the film, when Anne Hathaway, who resembles Jeanne Tripplehorn, is commanded against her will to make her friend go away. 'I could never be friends with an Aorthean,' or some such thing.

Ah, fantasy racism ('Say No to Ogrecide!'). There were actually a couple of cute, anachronistic touches in the film, which like 'A Knight's Tale' uses modern music and similar-looking heroes; Hugh Dancy is a dead ringer for Heath Ledger. A hand-cranked escalator and a computer gaming-like, 3D, animated map in a magical book were especially amusing. Be warned that the film doesn't come anywhere near 'The Princess Bride' for verbal sophistication, the target audience is pre-teens, and the special effects are totally cheesy; it's mindless fun.

Like the Hindi tracks on Virgin Atlantic, like the bhangra beats at Virgin megastore, I have to give this Ireland-filmed flick my standard benediction: God bless the UK.