Meet the Patels

The slight, but charming documentary — from brother and sister filmmakers Ravi and Geeta Patel — Meet the Patels is being promoted via a review quote calling it, “A real life My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” Whatever can be said about Meet the Patels, it is at least better than that. The main things linking to the two are the examinations of culture and an unfortunate tendency to be predictable. In that second regard, if you can’t tell how things are going to work out by the 20 — maybe 30 — minute mark, you probably haven’t seen many movies.

What we have here is a film of many slender delights. It’s something of a mish-mash. It’s a documentary, but an obviously often-staged and scripted one. It feels a bit like reality TV — though not in a bad way. Then again, it’s kind of a documentary rom-com — with injections of animated sequences that serve little function, but are cute. And finally, it’s a — lightweight — study in Indian culture and the problem of first-generation American children coming to terms with balancing that culture and that of their Westernized sensibilities. It may not be deep, and at times it comes across as a promotional film for Ravi Patel’s acting career, but it’s mostly an agreeable movie about agreeable people. That may be enough.

The film focuses on Ravi and his attempts to please his parents — and satisfy his own conflicted and confused ideas of what he thinks his life should be — by marrying not just an Indian girl, but one from a particular region, one where just about anyone is named Patel. (Ravi tells us at one point that Ravi Patel is about on par with John Smith over there.) Having just split up with his white girlfriend of two years — a relationship he scrupulously kept from his parents — he’s prepared (at 29) to enter into the Patel marriage market with the help of his well-meaning parents and the extended and extensive network of Patels. This is the thrust of the film, but oddly, the actual encounters that are generated by this method are given short shrift. That may be a good thing, because what little we see of them constitute the film’s weakest material. Meet the Patels is on better footing in its colorful, yet loving portrait of the immediate Patel family.

The film is also delightful when it wanders down paths that might otherwise be considered digressions. At one point, Ravi comments on the fact that he tends to be cast as a doctor in TV shows, and a quick look at his credits proves the honesty of that status. (Whether it really does provide his parents with the vicarious sense of having a doctor for a son is never examined, despite his claims.) There’s also a delightful animated sequence involving his…er…frugal father securing free motel lodging when he discovers the owners are — yes — Patels. The biggest problem — if it really is one — next to the predictability of the outcome, is that his sister, Geeta, is shoved to the edges of the film, and this despite the fact that the parents are equally concerned with her getting married. But this is largely, I think, because she’s operating the camera. I don’t want to oversell the film. It is, as I say, slight. But it is a pleasurable experience. Rated PG for thematic elements, brief suggestive images and incidental smoking.

Playing at Carolina Cinemas