Customer Reviews

Kissing Cousins

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While I did enjoy the movie in a low key way, I found everything Roxanne F said in her review to be true. And the ending was badly done. I felt as if Amir was thrown with the friend's sister, sort of like a teenager being made to attend a dance with his mother's friend's icky daughter. The problem wasn't the actors themselves, but the writing.

This movie was awesome. It has some Indian flare to it, and had me cracking up through the whole thing. Very clever story and witty lines throughout. Why wouldnt you watch this! Great flick overall.

Saw this at the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival last October and I absolutely loved it. The comic bits were hilarious and the leads really delivered. Samrat Chakrabarti deserves more leading roles and Rebecca Hazlewood should be a starlet. Adding to the laughs are Jaleel White, Gerry Bednob and David Alan Greer. Brilliant casting.

If you're still not sure, check out the trailer.

My problems with this movie are threefold. One, Amir (the main character) is a "relationship termination specialist", which is fine if as an actual job prospect suicide-inducing, but he takes a picture of every single person whose relationship he terminates, usually in the middle of said person's breakdown, and the reason for this is never explained. Possibly Amir has some sociopathic tendencies, or possibly the scriptwriters need to realize that "quirky" and "possibly a sociopath" are not quite the same thing, and maybe if the audience members are left to their own conclusions on that matter the script could do with some tightening up. Also Amir never gets punched in the face in the various montages in which he takes pictures of grown men weeping like children while their feathered and chained handcuffs are returned to them from their SOs, and that is ridiculously unrealistic. Hell, even if we conform to the stereotypes and an eighty-year-old grandmother is one of Amir's unlucky "dumpees" on bequest of a client, even SHE would probably punch him in the face if he was taking a freaking PICTURE of her having her HEART DESTROYED. C'mon now. And Amir is smug and unfeeling enough in some of those montages to deserve it.

Two, Amir's cousin (who he thinks he is in love with) is not a good person. She is very flirty (sexually flirty) with him, and that's fine, because regardless of what this movie claims THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH FALLING IN LOVE WITH YOUR COUSIN (that will be addressed further in my third problem with this movie). She decides spur of the moment to lie to all of Amir's friends (smug married she calls them, and they are, as well as lacking in any real depth throughout most of the movie, though Amir's best friend shows some real depth at the end, albeit briefly) so she pretends that she and Amir are dating. However they develop a very close bond (they previously hadn't seen each other for twenty years) and Amir and his cousin both clearly grow to like each other (Amir more so, if only because he is the main character and we get his POV primarily) and after a party in which they "make out" under some mistletoe at the prompting of his coupled friends they both go back to his apartment and, drunk on eggnog and other alcoholic beverages, make it to at least 2nd base, possibly 3rd, at the prompting not of Amir but primarily of his cousin. Their "romance" ends when Zara (Amir's cousin) freaks out the next morning, tells Amir several different times that it's "gross" and "wrong" to have a relationship with one's cousin (at one point Amir tells her he's in love with her which freaks her out even more) and then they go back to Amir's parent's home for Christmas and Zara gives Amir a framed picture of the two of them with the word "cousins" along the bottom. Her justification for acting like she returned Amir's affections is this: You were such a cynical bastard I wanted to make you fall in love with me to prove that you could still feel, and then I broke your heart to prove even more that you still had one. Pretty messed up and WRONG. You don't need to make someone who is already emotionally damaged fall in love with you just to prove that their emotions still work, nor do you need to break someone's heart to prove to them that it exits.

My third problem with the movie -- two cousins falling in love isn't wrong. It's culturally ignorant (and therefore very american) to assume all societies think two cousins in love is "gross". British culture (and Zara is British) by and large does not take issue with cousin marriage at all. First cousins can get married there with barely any fuss (OBVIOUSLY THERE WILL BE EXCEPTIONS). Likewise Amir and Zara and their extended family are from India, another country where marriage between cousins is not uncommon, abnormal, or morally depraved. Even in the United States there are several states where it is LEGAL to marry your cousin, and most of them are actually the NORTHERN states (it is illegal to marry your cousin in BOTH Alabama and Arkansas fyi).

The movie overall wasn't absolutely horrible but it was very far from good. There were cameos from the actor who played Steve Urkel, Amir's BFF starred in an episode in the TV show Cold Case and one of Amir's apartment friends was the cop in the movie Jumanji. Many of the supporting characters (minus Amir's coupled friends, all caricatures) were quirky but in a real-to-life way, and there was some actually ethnic and cultural diversity, as opposed to white guys and girls 1 2 3 and 4 and token black/indian/asian guy or girl.

The movie, frankly, lacked three things. Compassion is the first, because real love between two consenting adults is not something to be treated like an abomination if even the two adults are first cousins; a good ending is the second, because the movie completely fell apart two thirds of the way through, never actually resolves anything (to do that a romantic relationship would have to be taken seriously and treated as though it were valid) and nearly unravels the GOOD two thirds of the movie; realism is the third, real adult life is messy and the situation between Amir and his cousin should not have ended with Zara saying GROSS like a six-year-old girl running away from cooties, Amir's friends alternatively saying "gross", laughing at him, and looking at him like a desperate freak for falling in love with his cousin, and Zara getting back together with a man from England we never get to know who serves no point in the plot whilst Amir hooks up with one of his friend's sisters, a character who is wholly unconvincing and unattractive while the actress herself slurs most of her lines and acts alternatively drunk or high throughout most of the movie (what a catch!)

I didn't need a happy ending to this movie (aka Amir and Zara dating like any other couple). I just needed to see the GIGANTIC ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM addressed, or NOT addressed but like ACTUAL HUMAN BEINGS would do, as opposed to the movie falling apart because of the obvious squeamishness of all involved. I am left wondering only one thing. What the hell was the point of this movie?

I saw this in an independent film festival in NYC. It was hilarious. The two leads are great and totally hit on some cultural themes with which everyone can empathize. It's a great romantic comedy, perfect to watch with your girlfriend. The guy who played Steve Erkel and David Allen Grier were both in it too and were non-stop comedy.

I saw this movie during an Asian American Film festival in San Francisco in 2008. I've been waiting for it to come out since the day I saw it and I'm happy that it's finally released. It's a great film and has an awesome story line~! Best watched with friends or with a loved one on a Friday/Saturday night.