Review: Meet The Patels

I accidentally saw the cutest Docuromcom last week. I didn’t even know that was a genre.

Ariel and I hadn’t been on a proper date in a long time.  And I recently saw an old commercial for Learning To Drive with Ben Kingsley and Patricia Clarkson.  DVR commercials will mess you up every time.  Fortunately, the Indie theater was still showing it, so we made plans for dinner and a movie after work.

Except suddenly our movie time was gone and we were stuck between some World War II movie and Meet The Patels.

Ravi Patel is an Indian-American living in L.A.  He was secretly dating a white girl for two years.  Right before his big trip to India, they break up.  Ravi’s parents were put together through an arranged marriage, and Ravi starts to wonder if arranged marriages have worked for hundreds of years, why wouldn’t it work for him.

Geeta Patel, Ravi’s sister decided to film his quest to find The One.

I don’t want to give too much of the movie away because it’s really cute.  But we learned soooo much.  Vasant Patel, the patriarch is delightful. Funny, caring, helpful.  He tells Ravi how Patels marry Patels and their people only marry Patels from three other villages.  We learned there’s Patel conventions.  They talk about colorism, which is prevalent in all minorities.  Geeta gives her off-camera commentary on how it’s even harder for her as a woman to be over 30 and single.

I read that the movie’s been optioned to be turned into a fiction piece, by Geeta and Ravi, so of course I”m going to be on the lookout for that as well.

But definitely hit up your local Indie spot for this one.  84% on Rotten Tomatoes!

 

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