WilliamofTexas I watched this movie one rainy afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed it. I appreciated Mr. Patel's character's desire to embrace the two clashing cultures and try to make them work for him. I live in a fairly rural area and don't get to meet a lot of Asians but am fascinated with other cultures. This movie revealed an aspect of a culture I probably will never get to experience. I highly recommend this movie.

MartinHafer In many ethnic groups in America, there is a strong expectation by families that their children will marry within their own ethnic group. However, in the case of "Meet the Patels", the push is MUCH more specific. According to this documentary, not only do these Indian and Indian- American families want their kids to marry an Indian...but they specifically want them to marry within their religion and caste! So, basically a Patel is expected to marry a Patel--and all have their original roots in the Gujarat region in India. So, with about a billion Indians, MOST of them are off limits because they aren't Patels. This necessitates either returning to India to look for a bride or finding another Patel living abroad.This story is specifically about one of these folks and his journey to find a wife now that he's nearing 30. The camera follows the guy to dating sites as well as dates across the United States. It all sounds really interesting, right? Well, unfortunately, it really isn't. While it's billed as documentary and a comedy, there isn't a lot in the way of laughs and, most importantly, I never really cared about any of the folks in the film. This isn't because I am not interested in Indians or Indian culture (I've watched several hundred Indian films---which is unusual for the average American). I just didn't find a compelling reason to care about this search. I did, however, like the little cartoon segments. There should have been more of them and they were cute.

Lisa Hankins I hope everyone goes out to see this film when it opens in late September. We were lucky enough to see it in our film club a few weeks ago and it rated the highest of any film we've seen! It's one of those stories anyone can relate to, but its about a young Indian man trying to find his soul mate, who decides to give "arranged marriage, Indian-style" a try. It mostly shows how much alike we all are and the film is hugely funny! There was a Q&A session afterwards with the whole family on Skype and it was nearly as good as the film! The parents are hilarious!! The film was made by their son and his sister, so was a family project and began as footage from a family vacation. What they did with that is amazing! Please go see this and take your family and be prepared for lots of fun!!

leiser18 I saw this film at my local film club. I didn't like it very much and found it rather boring and not that funny. The story is not that interesting. A 30-something Indian-American is trying to find a wife at the insistence of his parents. Ravi, who plays himself, had a "white" girl-friend, but they broke up. Later on, they get back together and the parents accept her. In between though, we see a lot of footage of on-line dating, going to Indian weddings in India, and other attempts to find a suitable woman to marry, and endless conversation between Ravi and his parents (that's where the boring part comes in). The camera work was terrible, obviously done with hand-held cameras. What I also found annoying that there were inserts of animation of the characters involved. Either make an animation movie or a regular one... the combination didn't work for me. All in all, I think this movie may speak to some people, but it did not to me. To me it was a waste of time.