Namastey London

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Brittish Brat meets Funjabi Boy

Namastey London (English: Greetings London) is a 2007 Indian romantic dramedy starring Akshay Kumar and Katrina Kaif. It also stars Rishi Kapoor.

Jasmeet "Jazz" Malhotra (Kaif) is the daugther of Manmohan Malhotra (Kapoor) and his wife Bebo, an Indian couple living in London. To her father's horror and her mother's secret pride, Jazz is, to all effects, a very western woman in looks, tastes, habits and heart. She is secretly dating her boss, the very rich and well connected British gentleman Charlie Brown (Clive Standen), so she sabotages any and every attempt her father does to settle her with Indian guys. However, Manmohan finally tires of what he sees as Jasmeet's "insolence", so he ropes the full family to a trip to India with the every intention of marrying her there.

Once in India, the Malhotras meet Arjun Singh (Kumar), the son of one of Manmohan childhood friends, and a very typical young Indian man that doesn't know any English. Jasmeet is strong-armed into getting married with Arjun. Under the advice of her friend Imran (Upen Patel), she accepts, upon the condition that the final documentation must be filled in England. Arjun has fallen in love with Jasmeet, so he immediately accepts the marriage, initially unaware that his bride has been forced into it.

But back in England Jasmeet surprises everybody by declaring that her marriage with Arjun is not valid (as there is no legal proof of the wedding), and that she intends to marry her boyfriend Charlie, who had already proposed to her. No one in her family takes this well, Arjun being hurt by this the most. However, Arjun considers himself married with Jasmeet and doesn't intend to lose her to any other man, so he begins a plan of his own...

Tropes used in Namastey London include:
  • Bad Date: the first scene of the film is Jazz sabotaging a Blind Date with an Indian guy set up by their parents by deliberately pushing all the buttons that make an Indian girl "unsuitable" so the guy she was sent to meet her stops pursuing her
  • Can't Act Perverted Toward a Love Interest: a variant: Jasmeet cannot bring herself to have sex with her fiancé Charlie but justifies herself and him to wanting to wait until their wedding night. It is actually a sign that her affections are turning towards Arjun
  • Could Have Avoided This Plot: after discovering that Jasmeet accepted to marry him because she felt forced to, and now being in a situation where he is stranded in a foreign country being the Unwanted Spouse, he directly tells Jazz that had she actually spoken to him the truth he could have stopped the wedding and set her free, and they wouldn't be in their current predicament.
  • Dating What Daddy Hates: Both Jazz and her Pakistani-descended friend Imran are dating British people, to their parents (and the parents of their partners) distress. Jazz ends up marrying an Indian man, but Imram manages to marry his British girlfriend, who ends up ingratiating and integrating with his family very well.
  • Freudian Excuse: The reason Jazz grew up so westernized was because her mother Bebo, having been shunned and socially isolated by her husband because of her weight and her lack of English knowledge, was determined that her daughter wouldn't suffer the same fate and encouraged her to mingle with English society.
  • It Seemed Like a Good Idea At the Time: Imran's advice to Jazz on how to deal with her Arranged Marriage (namely accept the situation, make it so the legal documentation doesn't get immediately processed, and then escape when back in a western country before they get a way to legally bind her) is not that bad of a plan when dealing with a forced marriage in a foreign country. Then he met Arjun and realized what the situation actually was (see above in "Could Have Avoided This Plot"), and that his advice actually complicated the issue.
  • Last Guy Wins: Arjun is introduced near the middle of the film, and he is the one who ends with Jasmeet.
  • Nice Guy: Arjun. Despite his frequent statements that he is married to Jazz even if the documentation isn't on his side, he refrains to lord her over it and is actually patient and calm with her, even defending her from bigoted comments (in contrast with her fiancé Charlie's increasing nervousness and his inability of stopping the racist comments his social circle trow at her), and at some point even willing to leave her free when it is too obvious that even after becoming friendly towards each other she doesn't want to stay with him. While he is genuinely a good, respectful man, he deliberately drowned up his anger and flirtiness and amped up his niceness as a plan to ingratiate Jazz towards him. It worked.
  • Please Dump Me: Jazz's strategy to deal with every South Asian man her family tries to set her with is deliberately acting in ways that turn off men of that culture. She even tries to do this to Arjun after their wedding and moving to England, by deliberately speaking in English around him and spending a lot of time with her British acquaintances.
  • Politically-Incorrect Villain: Most of the high-class British people in the second part of the film are indophobic and islamophobic, frequently throwing dismissive comments against the Indian and Pakistani characters. It culminates in a scene where Imran's future in-laws ask him to leave Islam and to change his name to a more common English one, who makes even their daughter call out on them.
  • The Reveal: Arjun knew English all the time. Foreshadowed by him reacting to an old man quoting Churchill's phrase about how Indian would be in the hand of goons once England leave the country by dropping a long list of Indian achievements.
  • Serial Spouse: Charlie. It's revealed that he has divorced twice already and intends to make Jasmeet his third wife.
  • Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace: a variant: on Jasmeet and Charlie's wedding, Arjun does this, with a speech where he proclaims his love for the bride... but instead of claiming that she should marry him, he wishes her luck. He says the speech in perfect English (which means that he understood perfectly everything that was said around him), and leaves, prompting Jasmeet to have a Love Epiphany and run behind him, leaving Charlie at the altar
  • Terrible Interviewees Montage: in India, the Malhotras are subjected to a series of terrible interviews with potential husbands for her daughter, all of the guys being some brand of annoying even by Indian standards.
  • Unwanted Spouse: Arjun for most of the film.
  • Wrong Guy First: Charlie