jnal I just have to write about a scene I just saw in this movie where the old Indian guy is talking trash about Mexicans when the pretty girl mentions shes dating a Chicano. OMG! are you kidding me? an Indian talking BS about Mexicans saying that there "slum criminals who are illegal"? This country amazes me more and more and I've heard it all when an Indian talks trash about Mexicans.. haha. That Indian guy or as a matter a fact, the pig scriptwriter who decided to put that disgusting comment into the script, I think need a serious reality check! I think first that person needs to realize that if you're an Indian from the middle east in this country, you should know better to say something like that and get away with it.. when I promise you have equally been discriminated or will face worse discrimination. You need a mirror to see that you're just as brown as Mexicans and what gives you the audacity and nerve to belittle and speak that garbage! I think you need to go back in time a little .. say to 9/11 and see how you will get a serious beat down from racist white Americans or skin heads who will call you a terrorist piece of Sh^%$t and beat you to a bloody pulp for stereo typing you as the people responsible for 911. So the next time some Indian tries to make a comment like that towards Mexicans, I think you need a serious reality pill! Disgusting comment in the movie and I don't give a rats fat ass to see the rest of it. Good job director!

Shaun Hennessy (henfish) When the chillies in a spice shop get more on screen attention than the leading man in a romance, you've got yourself big, big problems. Here are just a few: She's not allowed to touch a human... SHE'S RUBBING HER COUSIN'S HAND 5 MINUTES IN! Does every Indian now living in San Francisco have a history blighted by parricide!? When a film relies on over 50% of it's dialogue through the source of spoken thought it is corrupt of imagination.On a more general note: Mistress of the Spices is a poor story poorly told. It's cliché ridden; the dialogue is shocking; the acting is unconvincing and the directing woefully one dimensional. Aishwarya Rai does indeed have stunning eyes - but does the camera really need to give us close-ups of them every 4 minutes!? There is nothing to recommend this febrile nonsense. It is patronising to both the Sub-Continent and the West and, as a metaphor, is as involving as if she'd have ran a DIY store. Actually...If you're a fan of film and want to see how to get everything wrong - watch this. If you think time is too precious, have a curry instead - it's infinitely more authentic and satisfying.

alan-culpitt What to say of this film? Well first the good bits. The story is an engaging fairy tale shot through with the kind of messy but engaging humanity that only India and Indians can bring. A sensuous feast for the eyes (I enjoyed the film whilst downing a bottle of wine with my other half) there are some gorgeous shots with piles of spices and herbs you can almost smell on the screen. Zhora Sehgal is always great and pops up in all sorts of films as "miscellaneous old Indian lady" and Aishwariya Rai is quite astonishingly loose-the-thread-of-what-you-were-talking-about beautiful.On the other hand Dylan McDermott is awful, utterly wooden and unconvincing as the architect-biker. Check out one shot where he looks utterly ridiculous with his crash helmet on. The ending's a bit of a disappointment too.All in all worth getting out on video and sitting back and revelling in the sensuous side of the film

rentalife Magical realism requires a deft directorial hand and a great screenplay that can present you with the absurd but still make you believe it. The Mistress of Spices had neither.First of all, the lead performances were OK. In Aishwarya's case I expected much worse, based on what I'd seen from her past roles. Here she played a woman reluctant to embrace love and it turned out believable. Dylan, already known to be a competent actor, delivered the occasional smoldering look necessary to convey "I'm falling in love."It was the poor treatment of the supporting characters that made this movie almost atrocious. The good-natured cab-driver's first scene seemed completely unbelievable because of the bad acting. The young Sikh teenager's transformation from dutiful son to gold-chained gangbanger was unintentionally hilarious, calling on caricatures rather than character development. And whoever fixed his turban needs to be fired. The grandfather's needling concern for his granddaughter's love life reeked of "Bend it Like Beckham" with the over-the-top parental figures nagging their children into the arms of non-Indians. The problem is, that while all these undeveloped 2-D characters would have been great in BILB, they ruined the atmosphere that the audience needed to believe in Tilo's magic. If you aren't grounded in the reality of the movie's world, then the "magic" part isn't special. The use of voice-over for Tilo's thoughts may have been necessary so that the audience could know about the different spices, but it just did not feel right. It indicated that the screenwriter never completely transcribed the story for the big screen. Inner voice works for books. Not as much for movies. The rules that Tilo lived by also came across as hokey and impractical for a store-owner in California. The fact that none of her customers, even traditional Indians, knew of her true nature kept the stakes low. At the very least, if there were people helping her stay inside the store and truly appreciative of her mystical skills (or truly dependent on them) then her conflict would have made some kind of sense.Now to SPOILERS: The blazing speed of the relationship fixes is mind-boggling. Tilo meets Haroun's neighbor, a woman who has barely spoken to Haroun. Pretty much the next day, Tilo is handing Haroun a wedding gift. Give it a little time please? The Sikh gangbanger suddenly agrees to take martial arts lessons rather than fire off that gun with that DANGEROUS GANG he just joined yesterday. Roundhouse kicks don't stop bullets! Doug's girlfriend suddenly shows up in Tilo's Indian spice store so she can find out how to cook for him. Then when she finds out that Doug loves someone else, she's just happy for him?They put way too much makeup on Aishwarya, who was meant to be playing the role of an unassuming natural beauty who supposedly couldn't leave her store or have romance. Tone it down a little bit so that when you finally have that big makeover scene, there's a real reason to be impressed! Strangest of all was Doug's back story about his estranged mother. It was so completely irrelevant. With such mystical tension and drama leading up to his deep dark secret, I am still left wondering :So your great grandpa gave you a magic feather...and???But the colors were pretty.