Monsoon Wedding review

Why you can trust GamesRadar+ Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.

Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival, Mira Nair's delightful ensemble piece is a mouth-watering masala of comedy, drama and romance. Set in Delhi during monsoon season, it details the rituals, crises and conflicts surrounding an arranged marriage intended to reunite an extended Indian family. But it's also a love letter to Delhi itself, a city where ancient tradition jostles with dot.com modernity to a soundtrack of Bollywood and bhangra.

From Robert Altman to PJ Hogan, weddings have always provided directors with scope for culture clash hilarity and cathartic revelations. Nair's spin on this well-worn formula is a perceptive critique of India's globalized aspirations. From the wheeler-dealer hired to erect the wedding marquee, to the college boy returning from Australia to find the girls more brazen than those he left behind, Delhi is portrayed as a city of contrasts, where corporate wealth rubs shoulders with appalling poverty and strict morality clashes with drunken revelry.

Oscillating between English and Punjabi and mixing documentary-style footage of urban India with song 'n' dance sequences reminiscent of Bollywood, Nair's picture mirrors the Dogme film Festen with its provocative child abuse subplot and shaky handheld photography.

But these are only a few of the ingredients that make up an intoxicating movie, the disparate elements of which converge to create a heart-warming and profoundly emotional climax. The cast is uniformly excellent, though Naseeruddin Shah deserves a special mention as the frantic father of the bride. As an ordinary bloke struggling to do the right thing by everyone he is both comic and tragic, ingratiatingly humble yet hugely dignified. A great actor giving the performance of his life.

A terrific ensemble cast make this one wedding you won't want to leave. It's not staple multiplex fare, but Monsoon Wedding has real crossover potential.

The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine. 

Latest in Documentaries
A Goofy Movie
On its 30th anniversary, A Goofy Movie is getting a Disney Plus documentary charting its "untold story" and why it still remains a "beloved classic" in 2025
The Wolf of Wall Street
The 32 greatest Leonardo DiCaprio movies
Grand Theft Hamlet
Video game theater reaches the next level in Grand Theft Hamlet, a GTA Online Shakespeare production where even the director can be killed
Hammer Films - The Heroes, Legends And Monsters
Late Star Wars actor Peter Cushing being brought back by AI for new documentary
The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee
The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee review: "A revealing exploration of a big screen icon"
Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (2024)
Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story review – "A moving portrait of a true-life hero"
Latest in Reviews
Photographs of the Agricola board game in play
Agricola review: "Accurate representation of the highly competitive and often unstable world of agriculture"
Photos taken by writer Rosalie Newcombe of the Shure MV7i microphone, within a pink and white themed room.
Shure MV7i review - convenience and excellence rolled into one superb sounding package
Key art for Atomfall showing a character in the English countryside looking at a nuclear plant some distance away
Atomfall review: "This isn't British Fallout – it's something much better than that"
Razer BlackWidow V4 Pro 75% gaming keyboard with purple RGB lighting on a desk setup
Razer BlackWidow V4 Pro 75% review: "a niche luxury"
A woman chasing a shining butterfly with a leaping cat on her shoulder in InZOI
inZOI review: "Currently feels like a soulless imitation of the worst parts of The Sims"
White Razer Basilisk V3 Pro 35K gaming mouse standing up against a green-lit setup
Razer Basilisk V3 Pro 35K review: "hampered by its predecessor"