It's A Wonderful Afterlife

It's A Wonderful Afterlife comes billed as a "comic feast that takes the phrase 'I could murder a curry' to hysterical new heights." This claim is incorrect on two counts - for one thing, a curry is responsible only for one of many murders in this movie. Secondly, there is not really anything hysterically funny about either the comedy romp concept at the heart of this film or it's clumsy execution.

Inspired somewhat by the old British Ealing comedy genre (the film itself is set in Ealing and Southall) and layered with homages to horror films like An American Werewolf In London and Carrie, director Gurinder Chadha's (who helmed Bend It Like Beckham and Bride And Prejudice) film focuses on a small Indian family. Roopie (Goldy Notay), Mrs Sethi's glum but conscientious daughter, is repeatedly unlucky in love, rejected by all the suitors foisted on her by her meddling mother. The overly-protective Mrs Sethi (Shabana Azmi) takes matters into her own hands, murdering through her cooking - or cooking implements - all those who scorned her daughter. But when the spirits of her victims start haunting Mrs Sethi, unable to move on, murderess and ghosts decide to team up to find Roopi a husband so they can all ascend to the afterlife.

The result of this clunky genre mash is at best endearingly silly, working most successfully when approached with no critical faculties operating at all. The jokes are of the banana skin pratfall variety, the comedy low-brow slapstick, and nothing at all is unpredictable. The ultimate low point has to be an odd and excruciatingly overlong Carrie homage scene at an engagement party, in which Linda (Sally Hawkins), following a drenching in punch, lashes out with a psychic attack on the onlooking guests (who are strangely unmoved by the experience once the lights go back on). The cast, at least, are not taking things at all seriously, with heartthrob actor Sendhil Ramamurthy, in particular, getting the tone just right with his hammy performance as the straight man of the piece, police inspector DS Murthy.