Third I 2014 Review: MEET THE PATELS Mixes Modern Love And Timeworn Tradition

Ravi Patel is an actor. He's one of those guys. You know, that guy. The guy who plays a doctor or a lawyer on TV, typical Indian American jobs. He's not setting the world on fire, but he makes a living and works consistently in a business that is really rough for the vast majority of people. That's something to be proud of, right? Well, in the eyes of Ravi's parents, he won't truly be successful until he's able to share his life with a woman and a family. An Indian woman. A Gujarati Indian woman. A Gujarati, Patel Indian woman. Uh oh.

Meet The Patels explores the seemingly archaic world of Indian matchmaking, commonly thought of as arranged marriages. The truth is actually something closer to an international dating service, and instead of you picking the candidates, your parents do, and they are pushy. Good lord are they pushy. Co-directed by Ravi and his sister, Geeta, the film benefits from an insiders look at a process not often seen by outsiders, and it's really not all that weird.

The process of finding a wife has evolved over the last several hundred years, but the basics haven't changed all that much. Ravi's parents seek out and vet hundreds of women in the marriage market, and try to find some that they think are compatible with their son. It's not like the old days when a man and woman wouldn't see each other before the wedding. These days it's almost like what most people consider dating, just with fewer drunken hook ups and regrets.

Marriage minded parents pass "biodata" sheets back and forth in order to whittle down the number of potential mates. A "biodata" is eerily similar to a resume for relationships. The biodata will give vital statistics, career information, skin color, languages, and likes and dislikes, and such. Kind of like a paper version of OKCupid, but with far fewer questions about whether or not you like butt plugs. While Ravi finds it extremely odd to have his entire life summarized on one page, it does serve a purpose, though he's not entirely convinced it'll work.

While Ravi is the main focus of the film, it's his parents, father Vasant and mother Champa, who provide most of the color. At 29, Ravi is far beyond the point at which a marriage should have occurred, and his parents, who appear to be in their 60s, are starting to get very anxious about the next generation of Patels. It is their drive to continue the family line that puts Ravi in all kinds of situations he never expected to be in.

Ravi is kind of like me, a first generation American who straddles the line between his family and cultural ties and his assimilated American self. He is one person while with his family, filial, doting, watching Bollywood movies and dancing at all the parties. However, when he's with his white American friends, he's the same as any other American kid, and he compartmentalizes those two identities like many children of immigrants do. When he leaves the family home, an unusual step for an unmarried Indian man of any age, the assimilated American side becomes his full time identity, so when he's thrown back into the world of matrimonial brokering, it's all the more shocking to his system.

The dichotomy between Ravi's American self and his Indian family's desires hits him harder than he'd ever expected. While he's initially reticent to jump into this madness, after a while he starts to see a way that this could actually work, though it never quite does. Ravi's bullheadedness prevents him from completely surrendering to the process, but he has moments of weakness and it's truly enlightening to both he and the viewer.

Meet The Patels isn't just some dry expose of an ancient cultural ritual, it's an entertaining, heartfelt, and occasionally surprising film that opens a window into a practice that spans the globe. The film isn't shot particularly well, a fact that Ravi apologizes for early in the proceedings, but it is never dry. Co-directors Geeta and Ravi are not afraid to put themselves out there and therein lays the warmth of the film. We are invited in, and if we laugh or are shocked, we are not alone, they are right there with us. Meet The Patels is a very funny look and some very serious business, and I highly recommend it.