There's a certain charm to this movie that I can't deny. It could be attributed to the fact that as a light hearted comedic drama, this one is filled with mostly Indian actors, plus it's co-written and directed by Lena Khan; who is also Indian. The diversity is nice. Having Danny Pudi as the leading man here is also really cool, and Rizwan Manji is great in his scene-stealing role as Babu. The movie's got a lot of heart, provides some good social commentary, it's a period piece set in the 1970s, plus the microwave also happens to be an integral part of the story. It's a pleasantly good watch.
As much as I'm praising this film now, there was a strong chance that I wouldn't have. To put it bluntly, the first half of the movie was kinda rough. It didn't seem to know how far of a drama it wanted to be, and it also didn't know how far it wanted to take the comedy. Tonally, it seemed confused with it's own direction, mixing an endearing plot about the Tiger Hunter Father, with some comedic bits that verges on being too over the top; the scene with a girl getting drenched in water immediately comes to mind. While there were clever moments here and there, the movie still felt a bit kludgy.
The premise of someone being a fish out of water that has aspirations in a foreign land, and is living in an apartment with his colorful room mates, does come off like just another situational-comedy. Despite the cultural bits that you don't regularly see in movies, the story itself has a lot of those sit-com derivatives, with a plot progression that is generally predictable. Even so, there is a certain comfort to watching a very familiar story, while traversing through the character story beats that we all have seen before. At around the half-way point, the movie seemed to realized that it really was just a sit-com, and worked around that fact. With that genre in mind, it turned things around, found it's footing, and gave us a delightful second half of the movie.
You can't underestimate a movie that has it's heart in the right place. Even if it does have flaws. From wanting to write off this movie as being a mistake, to singing it's praises as a very well intentioned story that should give you a big smile at the end, "The Tiger Hunter" proved itself as a worthwhile film to check out.
lovedit ENJOYED IT itsokayitsmehitsterrible
