Deepa Mehta’s satirical romp Bollywood Hollywood had its world premiere during this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. The film astutely subtitled “Nothing is what it appears to be,” is a laugher of a movie, although still enjoyable as a conventional Bollywood junk movie. Why would Mehta want to make this romp? I believe after the immense troubles meted out to her by the bureaucratic and political machines of India, enflamed by Thackerey Thugs (if this crowd is the saviour of Hinduism, God save Hinduism), Mehta needed to laugh and relax. What better way for a creative genius to relieve her tensions!

The movie is set in Toronto and the South Asian denizens of this great multi-cultural metropolis would be thrilled to be a part of this experience that promises to be nothing is what it appears to be. The viewer gets the added pleasure of enjoying the Hollywood spoofs also. Just like the way one counts the typos of that fabulous London (UK, of course) newspaper, Guardian, with great gusto, one also gets the intellectual satisfaction of determining whether Mehta is spoofing Hollywood or Bollywood.

The film revolves around the Seth family, a dead father, matriarchal grandmother (Dina Pathak) and Bollywood film loving mother (Moushumi Chatterjee), vapid sister aptly named Twinky (Rishma Malik) and the prodigal son Rahul (Rahul Khanna). The family is quite wealthy and the house is designed redolent of Bollywood films. Rahul of course falls for a white dame, the pop star Kimberly (cameo appearance by Jessica Paré) and the family is quite dead set against it. Fate thankfully intervenes and Kimberly dies while levitating, where else but in Hollywood. Rahul needs to find a girl in short order so that Twinky can get married to Bobby. So he enlists, with aid of his chauffer Rocky (Ranjit Chowdhry), the services of an escort Sue (Lisa Ray) who looks like an Indian. Rahul of course assumes Sue to be Spanish (no god-fearing Indian girl could be an escort in North America, could they?). To add to the spoof, Mehta makes Sue a Neruda quoting mysterious figure. Similarly, grandmaji seems to be bent on quoting Shakespeare at apt moments. Are you with me still? The story takes the typical Bollywood/Hollywood overtones and I will not go into more details (Do see the movie when it is released publicly in October).

I must admit that the movie was thoroughly enjoyable as a satirical romp, but Mehta was at her best as the writer of a flawless script. She also expected a lot from her cast, as it is difficult to jump across two opposite perspectives. Mehta should be commended for she managed to pull it off as it works as a spoof as well as a typical Bollywood/Hollywood film in equal measures.

Rahul Khanna, equally good in Mehta’s “Earth,” was superb as Rahul Seth (his own brother Akshay Khanna and that awful actor Sharukh Khan could learn the art of acting from Rahul). His dramatic training at the famed Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in New York is clearly obvious. Pathak, Chatterjee, Chowdhry and Kalbhushan Kharbanda (as Sue’s father Mr. Singh) were excellent in their roles. Lisa Ray (Bollywood bust in her previous film Kasoor) was able to pull it off, as the Neruda quoting Sue Singh. She was superb in those scenes where Bollywood was made fun off, but could not hold herself together when Hollywood was made fun off. The rest of the cast made up for her weak moments.

Let us hope that Deepa Mehta was able to gain enough R & R from this spoof so that she can tackle her final chapter ‘Water,’ of her ambitious trilogy.