West is west

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With incredible contrivances, the Brit-Paki plot is neither full comedy nor coming-of-age drama, neither culture-bridging nor racially sensitive.

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West is West, released in 2011, was a belated sequel to 1999's East is East, a semi-autobiographical comedy featuring the dysfunctional family of a mixed marriage in the north of English (Salford) in the late 1960s.

Punjabi-born Indian actor Om Puri returned in the role of Pakistani George Khan, grumpy owner of a chippy shop and husband of English Ella (Angela Bassett). It was his 205th credited film role in a 35-year career, her 54th, and their inter-racial love is still credible. Another Indian actor, Rajasthani Ila Arun, provides a strong third adult character as Khan's first wife.

The screenplay's central figures are the family's two half-English sons. The weak-willed elder brother can't find a wife back in his father's home village, while the teenager has coped with racism at school and divided loyalties outside by becoming a truant shoplifter. The father takes him back to Pakistan to force him to accept a Pakistani heritage.

Very much a storyboard construction with incredible coincidences and contrivances, the plot is neither full comedy nor coming-of-age drama, neither culture-bridging nor racially sensitive. There's a stereotypical wry English-speaking sage with no apparent livelihood and a smiling acolyte who becomes the teenager's pal, daughters who have no roles to play, and a nephew who on-screen purpose is never revealed. Loose ends are left loose, except for the older son being married off to a sassy village girl from Rochdale whom he'd never noticed.

Racial characteristics are not explored with wit or insights, and religious factors are ignored completely. Even in the plot's time setting (1976) it is not possible to believe that none of the characters would have thought and talked about Islam, Western materialism and ancestors. Such a world of semi-comic make-believe can just about be imagined in rural Indian Punjab (where the film was made) but not across the border in rural Pakistan.

[Retired UK TV series actor Ayub Khan-din, born in Salford, wrote East is East as an award-winning play, which was staged in London in 1997. It was soon filmed, winning more awards and many for Irish director Damien O'Donnell. Maybe it was better fun.]