"Monsoon Wedding" Blogs and Blabs

This is another outstanding film by director Mira Nair, who has previously directed such wonderful films as Academy Award nominee "Salaam Bombay", the lush and erotic "Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love", and "Mississippi Masala". She is truly an artist, and her films are palpable with feeling and emotion that move the storyline.
The movie is set in New Delhi and takes the audience for a wild ride covering the last 4-5 days leading up to a big wedding between the daughter of an upper-middle-class Punjabi family and a "NRI" (non-resident Indian) who's an engineer living in Houston. They're meeting for the first time in the days before the wedding, which is only one of the movie's engaging storylines. My favorite was the romance between the goofy wedding planner and the family maid (culminating in one of the most romantic, make-you-weep moments I have seen in any movie). The movie also includes the requisite creepy uncle, who drives a disturbing storyline that helps take the sweet edge off the movie.
Director Mira Nair does a fabulous job introducing her characters -- they are so finely crafted that dialogue is totally unnecessary in a number of key scenes. The actors were wonderfully adept at communicating with little more than their eyes and hands.
The music is great and makes you want to get up and dance along with the characters (whose exuberance in the wedding scenes was such a joy to watch). The cinematography is lush and gorgeous.
This is a good movie, and is very entertaining. The characters are strong and each one is well defined in a short space of time, a credit to the writer and actors. However I feel that it tries to address a few too many issues, a strangely common failing of Western Indian movies. Why does the writer feel the need to address all the stereotypes and add a few non-stereotypical issues to fashionable value? Deceit, adultery, paedophilia, child abuse, prejudice, fornication, homosexuality, and more.. all too much for a one hour and forty-five minute film.
The theme relies on the strength, bond and values of family which are very predominant in Indian culture and Bollywood films.