I've only seen a few Bollywood movies, so my experience with them is limited. But even I, a German-American, could appreciate the humor of this movie and the way it poked fun at the Bollywood formula. I never expected it to be so funny and charming. I even loved the silly musical numbers. The Shakespeare-quoting grandmother was one of my favorite characters.My only experience with Deepa Mehta before this had been the wonderful trilogy Earth, Water, and Fire, so this was an unexpected surprise. I don't understand the people who are rating it so low. You can't take a movie like this seriously. Enjoy it for what it is.

Rahul is quite well off, hard working, young and handsome. However when he tells his mother and grandmother that he has been seeing a white woman, they bully him into letting them help him select a nice Asian girl – a promise he made to his dying father convinces him to give it a try. Naturally it is a disaster but he cannot get out of it now. Consoling himself in a bar he meets a woman called Sue – she looks a bit East Asian but maybe Spanish, regardless she could certainly pass for Asian if it wasn't for her very western attitudes and dress. It occurs to him that she may be able to help him and he offers her money to pretend to be his Asian girlfriend. She accepts but getting her dressed correctly is only the first step.Sold as an affectionate cross between the structure and style of an American (well, Canadian) romantic comedy and the Bollywood films, this film manages to have enough of each to be recognisable and still produce sufficient mutual good to be enjoyable. In truth, neither cinematic culture is that well represented here because neither is the best it has to offer but the mix still works for the most part. The story is pretty obvious but, aside from the odd moment here and there, flows well with a bit of spark and energy. From the "American" side of things it is engaging and occasionally sweet even if it plays pretty much to formula the whole way. The Bollywood stuff is mainly the song and dance routines and, although they are OK, they don't quite have the size and style of the best that Indian cinema has to offer – although the film still does well enough and the songs are quite cool.The cast take to the mixed material well. Khanna plays up the Indian background well in contrast with his Canadian home; he isn't great but he does the job. Ray is a lot more fun because she has a sassy character that works well with her as an actress. Her looks and her attitude make her an appealing character and actress and she helped the energy level of the whole film. The rest of the cast are so-so but nothing special. I enjoyed the turn from Pathak but Chowdry, Malik and Mann weren't that good.Overall this is an OK film that I quite enjoyed but not one that will still in my memory for that long. It has enough life to it to be entertaining without ever threatening to be that original, clever or memorable. Worth a look if you like Bollywood films because it does work as a slightly different take on them but generally it probably isn't good enough to draw a much wider audience.

B/H stands up as a comedy AND an affectionate parody of Bollywood formula romances. The very title underscores the love-hate relationship many contemporary South Asian filmmakers feel about the Hollywood hegemon (see http://www.thefilmjournal.com/issue9/bollywood.html ). As such, it offers a sly reworking of the Pretty Woman formula, with an Indian twist – which raises the question of why Mehta's writers chose THAT Hollywood movie to build a comic plot upon. One answer requires examination of how women, especially young women, are depicted in Bollywood movies, which valorize – even enforce – Ramayana-like ideals of female purity versus the reality and problems of female identity in a modern world. Compare Mehta's Fire. The comedy and parody in B/H offers a different take on a Mehta theme. The Shakespeare-quoting grandmother reflects another aspect of the film's comic concern with the clash between tradition and modernity – here, the kind of British-inspired education the grandmother would have received, which often required students to memorize whole scenes from Shakespeare (whose plays were and are very popular in India). The comic turnabout at the end might be examined in light of equally sudden turnabouts in movies like DDLJ, the difference being that the main blocking character at the end of B/H is Sunita herself. Her father, minutes before, reverses himself BECAUSE he has seen movies like that one. A very "filmi" intrusion into the comic plot, but (true to Mehta's sympathies) it is Sunita herself who becomes – for a moment – the blocking character whose needs must be recognized. It's a matter of HER identity, albeit within the framework of Bollywood comic romance. As such, her situation offers, for the perceptive, a bittersweet comic take on a question Mehta raises more seriously elsewhere. B/H is a parody, yes, but it has a serious side as well. Think about this while you laugh.

I enjoyed this film immensely, and found it a humorous take on second-generation Indo-Canadian life. The songs were enjoyable (my only complaint about the film is that the songs weren't subtitled - a bit frustrating for those of us that don't speak Hindi!), and I recommend the film highly - great fun!