Mira Nair, director of Salaam Bombay, pursues her calling as a cultural documentarian -- Idi Amin's eviction of Asians from Uganda in 1972, the proliferation of Indian-run motels in the American South ("How many times I got to tell you? They're not that kind of Indian!") -- in this romantic comedy about a black American Romeo and an immigrant Indian Juliet. So much so that she isn't finished filling in the background, or rolling through the credits, until approximately twenty minutes are up. The woman (Sarita Choudhury) has spirit, and the man (Denzel Washington) has charm, and the whole project has an abundance of good will, and yet the flow of life seems stiff, stagy, un-lubricated. Things warm up a little at the birthday picnic for the man's father, and a little more so with a sexy late-night phone call, but they never come near the reported temperature of full-blown passion. Roshan Seth, Sharmila Tagore. (1992) — Duncan Shepherd
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