Saturday, 16 November 2024 »  Login
in
»
Movies » The Inscrutable Americans Movie Review
I am at

The Inscrutable Americans Review

The Inscrutable Americans
Avishek Gupta / fullhyd.com
EDITOR RATING
6.0
Performances
Script
Music/Soundtrack
Visuals
NA
NA
NA
NA
Suggestions
Can watch again
NA
Good for kids
NA
Good for dates
NA
Wait for OTT
NA
A cliché makes sound business sense. It also saves the propagator of clichés from intellectual rigor. The motive behind adopting Anurag Mathur's 'The Inscrutable Americans' for a movie becomes comprehensible if we take these facts into consideration.

His hero, Gopal Kumar, scion of a conservative, affluent, small town business family, arrives in the 'promised land' for a year's course in Chemical Engineering. "After that, I am returning to use new technologies in our factory," he says. His family owns the National Hair Oil Factory, back in Jajau, Madhya Pradesh.

Gopal's guides to social adjustment in the US are Collected Letters From Penthouse, and the movies Deep Throat and Saturday Night Fever. A happy-go-lucky American youth, Randy, assists him in fathoming the culture-divide. But Gopal's deeply ingrained 'Indian' sensibilities (a cliché by itself) only help him in juxtaposing the apparent 'differences' in the ethos of the two countries.

Mathur's superficiality is rooted in his inability to break from the confines of the formula. So Gopal is predictably astounded by the enormity and quiescence of a shopping mall, as by the picture perfect American scenery. He enjoys haggling for prices, does well academically, dreams of 'laying' an American girl (but never succeeds) and discovers the underbelly of American prosperity.

In short, he does what an average viewer expects him to do. So when a person says "Watch your ass," Gopal wonders how he guessed his family owned a donkey. He's similarly confused why they 'beat' each other up while playing football and still call it a 'game' and wonders whether red-haired girls are 'red all over'. Such clichés are mixed well with some rather creative sequences in the book, but abound throughout the movie.

After a year, Gopal returns to India. He ends up viewing America through a romantic prism. An escape from Indian 'realities'. By positioning the diverse scenarios in a simplistic way, the makers seem to be rationalizing the phenomenon of brain drain.

Watching 'The Inscrutable Americans' is like reading a comic strip or watching a Mehmood or Govinda movie, where stereotypes are reaffirmed and the humor is loud. The movie fails to throw fresh insight on the lives of Indians living in America.

The leads thoroughly live their roles, but of the rest of the characters, the lesser spoken, the better. May yet prove to be an entertaining watch, but those who've already read the book had better stay away.
Share. Save. Connect.
  EMAIL
  PRINT
  SAVE
THE INSCRUTABLE AMERICANS SNAPSHOT
The Inscrutable Americans (english) reviews
USER RATING
10
1 USER
RATE
Rating is quick and easy - try it!
THE INSCRUTABLE AMERICANS USER REVIEWS
USER RATING
10
1 USER
Performances
Script
Music/Soundtrack
Visuals
NA
NA
NA
NA
Can watch again - NA
Good for kids - NA
Good for dates - NA
Wait for OTT - NA
Be the first to comment on The Inscrutable Americans! Just use the simple form below.
LEAVE A COMMENT
fullhyd.com has 700,000+ monthly visits. Tell Hyderabad what you feel about The Inscrutable Americans!
Rate Movie
[no link to your name will appear, overriding global settings]
To preserve integrity, fullhyd.com allows ratings/comments only with a valid email. Your comments will be accepted once you give your email, and will be deleted if the email is not authenticated within 24 hours.
My name:

Dissatisfied with the results? Report a problem or error, or add a listing.
ADVERTISEMENT
SHOUTBOX!
{{todo.name}}
{{todo.date}}
[
]
{{ todo.summary }}... expand »
{{ todo.text }} « collapse
First  |  Prev  |   1   2  3  {{current_page-1}}  {{current_page}}  {{current_page+1}}  {{last_page-2}}  {{last_page-1}}  {{last_page}}   |  Next  |  Last
{{todos[0].name}}

{{todos[0].text}}

ADVERTISEMENT
This page was tagged for
movie inscrutable americans
The Inscrutable Americans english movie
The Inscrutable Americans reviews
release date
Rajiv Punja, Enron Otcasek
Follow fullhyd.com on
Copyright © 2023 LRR Technologies (Hyderabad) Pvt Ltd. All rights reserved. fullhyd and fullhyderabad are registered trademarks of LRR Technologies (Hyderabad) Pvt Ltd. The textual, graphic, audio and audiovisual material in this site is protected by copyright law. You may not copy, distribute or use this material except as necessary for your personal, non-commercial use. Any trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.