Kermit the Frog once said "it's not easy being green", from the endless growing up Indian movies lately, it's not easy being brown either. There have so many of these "growing up brown in America" movies in the last decade, mostly low budget flicks that don't get a whole lot of press. The premise has nearly been run into the ground, traditional over bearing parents that are always in the wrong, rebellious kids who want to fit and date like everyone else and always in the right. One thing these movies have taught us for certain is this, if you're brown and growing up in America, you have a harder time assimilating into the mass culture then lighter skinned people. We've been told this over and over and it really does get tired. For young Indian Americans these films may perhaps be of deep cultural significance, loaded with in jokes that non-Indians may not get.
For much of white America, they will strip the film down to it's basics and call it a "country mouse meeting city mouse" story and think "meh, what's the big deal?" Probably gutting the Indian Americans who think they struck comic gold showing off the cool Indians vs. the over exaggerated fresh off the boat (FOB) immigrant Indians. This story is going to simply come across as a country kid moving to the big city to mainstream America, only with East Indians in it, and they will likely miss the deep rooted angst and confusion that Indians want to convey. The movie shows the Indian Americans as self assured, cool and all around well adjusted while the immigrated FOB Indians are socially clueless. Nevermind that the character of Hari as presented in this film would probably be considered a moron even in India, the filmmakers know they have to make Hari that silly of an FOB Indian to justify his mistreatment by the Indian Americans. To make more of the desired impact that the Indian American culture so desperately seems to want to make with mainstream film goers, a more concrete and weighted story has to be delivered with far more sincere actors. It would be interesting to hear what real people in India think of this film, as about 1 billion people are being derided and made out as ridiculous caricatures. Of course a braver movie would show regular Indian Americans mistreating and not including normal behaved and decently dressed immigrant Indians in their social activities for the sole reason of their own xenophobia and insecurities...but that would be hitting too close to reality and I doubt any writer/director would be that brave.
