CINEMA: Marigold

This Bollywood/Hollywood hybrid attempts to woo audiences from both East and West, but unfortunately, it falls between both stools and fails to convince. Marketed as a musical romantic comedy it stars Ali Larter (from TV’s Heroes) as bolshie American actress Marigold Lexton who travels to India to work on a film that she doesn’t realise has already been cancelled.

Needing money to get back to the States she joins the cast of a Bollywood musical being filmed in Goa and begins to fall for the film’s choreographer Prem (Salman Khan).  Needless to say, the course of true love does not run smooth and through a series of not very memorable song and dance numbers the would-be lovers’ feelings are revealed.

The problem is the plot is far too twee for sophisticated Western audiences, while Eastern audiences are used to much bigger and better staged song and dance routines. By trying to cater to both worlds, the movie plonks itself in the middle of no man’s land and resolutely stays there. The actors try their best but for all their efforts it plays more like it is made for TV than a big screen movie.      Dee Pilgrim