Movie review: ‘My Brother’s Bride’

“My Brother’s Bride,” a bouncy and good-humored romantic musical comedy, telegraphs its plot within its first 10 minutes — leaving a mere 135 minutes to go. Yet debuting director Ali Abbas Zafar strings together such a constant rush of twists and turns, amid a plethora of pleasing musical numbers, that he makes the getting to the inevitable happy ending lots of fun.

It’s a stylish Bollywood crowd-pleaser with a provocative subtext revealing the toll exacted by those craving happiness but seemingly hamstrung by tradition and propriety.

Luv (Ali Zafar) instructs his brother Kush (Imran Khan) to find him a wife, confident that he and his brother have identical taste in women. Instead of a traditional demure Indian spouse, Kush, an assistant director dreaming of becoming a great Bollywood filmmaker, finds a free-spirited beauty improbably named Dimple (Katrina Kaif), whose boldness strikes both a contrast and a balance with Kush’s sweet, dutiful nature.

Set primarily in Northern India with a long climactic sequence in the beautiful city of Agra — with the Taj Mahal itself a key setting — “My Brother’s Bride” by and large has a refreshingly authentic background for its countless singing and dancing sequences, all of which reveal the dreams and longings of the key characters.

By the time Luv and Dimple’s impending nuptials are announced, Kush has fallen deeply in love with the bride to be. The rest of the film is taken up with Dimple and the initially reluctant Kush figuring out how to get around rigid middle-class mores to fulfill their love for each other without bringing scandal to their families.

Much is demanded of the cast, all of them splendid-looking in the Bollywood tradition, and they sing, dance and act with terrific stamina and imagination.

“My Brother’s Bride” is a lush-looking fantasy that also comments on stifling, outmoded mores.

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