Bride & Prejudice

Jane Austen's classic tale of love across the class barriers is relocated to India and plucked out of the 19th century to the present day.

The Bennets become the Bakshis, a contemporary Indian couple with four unattached daughters, living in faded splendour in the temple city of Amritsar.

Short of dowry money, Mrs Bakshi is constantly on the lookout for likely suitors, when into their world strolls Bairaj (Naveen Andrews) and his Yankee pal.

Darcy - who will be remembered to a generation of Britons as defined by a damp blousoned Colin Firth - has become a brash young American hotelier (Henderson).

His nemesis, the cad Whickam, stays British but is played by Canadian Daniel Gillies, while the object of their obsession is the eldest Bakshi, Lalita (ex-Miss World Aishwarya Rai).

To those familiar with the tale of the initially aloof Darcy, the free-spirited Elizabeth Bennet and the duplicitous Whickam, this will not add much to the sum total.

As you might imagine in a Bollywood adaptation, there's lots of strident sitar play and swirling saris in the inevitable set dance sequences.

However, the performances of the Western actors Henderson and Gillies are so bland it wouldn't have been a bad idea to force feed them curry powder to spice things up.

(Johnny Depp and Joaquin Phoenix were apparently considered for the roles and the subsequent casting suffers by comparison).

There's a tepid attempt to play off brash American capitalism (Darcy) against Indian spirituality (Lalita) but you just know they'll be cosying up after a few dramatic hurdles have been overcome.

Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha has reduced an intricate and nuanced love story into a standard Hollywood rom-com with Bollywood trappings.

There's nothing objectionable happening... but this is a korma when it could have been a vindaloo.

Tim Evans