Metacritic reviews

The movie starts out heedless in its desire to charm, but it winds up feeling constrained by self-consciousness, and more’s the pity.

It’s an amiable misfire. But Brie Larson sure can light up the screen, and she does so here — she’s a pleasant singer, too — and that’s enough to raise this from a one-and-a-half star movie to a two.

Instead of vying for a so-bad-it’s-entertaining categorization, it falls squarely into the hell of cinematic mediocrity.

Watching it is something like watching a play’s first full dress rehearsal or a gangly baby deer’s initial efforts to stand, where it’s the effort that’s more engaging than the achievement itself.

It is a terrible film, and it skirts (but does not cross) the line of offensiveness...but it is undeniably watchable in the same way you can’t turn away from a talent show featuring a medley of acts that are pretty awful but quite confident they’ve got something to share.

Basmati Blues is an inoffensive trifle. It does not warrant outrage; it’s not bold enough to risk it. Yet there is some heart, and undoubtedly, some ambition.

Though the film has minor charms (the highly regarded actress can sing, and co-stars Tyne Daly and Scott Bakula are seasoned Broadway musical veterans) Basmati Blues is the kind of easily forgiven early career move that is best released on home video and forgotten.

Shot before Brie Larson appeared in her breakout film Room, this fish-out-of-water musical set largely in India is the sort of unmitigated disaster that the actress would no doubt have preferred to stay under wraps.

Despite his attempt to graft an environmental message onto a traditional musical template, there's little about director Danny Baron's feature debut that feels convincingly organic to either the plotting or the characterizations.

Danny Baron's film awkwardly melds Bollywood romcom tropes with a half-hearted critique of the GMO industry.