Peepli [Live]

I'm a native American and saw this movie in a theater with maybe 30 Indians (sorry, I'm old enough to find multiple ironies in that sentence). Anyway, I went into this movie with no expectations. Though I've seen a number of Indian movies over the last few years, I knew nothing of this author or director. I laughed out loud more than I have for any Hollywood movie this year. My cohorts found it even funnier than I, but I guarantee you that you don't need to know that much about Indian politics or media to get most of this satire.

It starts with a farmer deciding to commit suicide to get his family the $2000 that may save his farm from foreclosure. From there, the media and government turn it into a circus, stepping all over themselves in their self-serving ways.

It suffers only in minor ways from a few slow spots and odd shifts in tone, but these are worth sitting through. It's currently showing here only at a suburban Atlanta theater that shows a combination of H-wood and B-wood. This should have been picked up by some American distributer when it showed at Sundance. Hopefully, enough people will see it and generate the buzz to get it to a wider audience.