Bride and Prejudice, Limitless, Paul, The Lincoln Lawyer

Mar 16, 2011 3:00 AM

BRIDE AND PREJUDICE

By any measure atrocious,

Bride and Prejudice

at least proves that, after

Bend It Like Beckham

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, director Gurinder Chadha has created an instantly recognizable anti-aesthetic. In place of narrative cohesion, there’s relentless girly cheeriness suggesting that Chadha’s main influence is

Three's Company

, with arbitrary PC chatter indicating that she also took in

All in the Family

. “Inspired by” Jane Austen in the same way that

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Orca

is redolent of Herman Melville,

Bride

offers a gaggle of giggly privileged Indian girls, headed by blue-green-eyed Lalita (Aishwarya Rai), looking for husbands. Among the prospects: a British backpacker, a relocated Indian fool, and an arrogant pretty boy who’s also “one of the richest men in America” (Martin Henderson). Guess who Lalita ends up with? With leadenly staged/choreographed musical numbers lacking in the kitsch magnificence of even a mediocre Bollywood production, where-are-they-now? globetrotting, and general narrative nonstructure, Chadha proves herself to be the perky femme heir to the Ed Wood throne of blithe incomprehensibility. (Ian Grey)

Screens March 19 at the Enoch Pratt Free Library’s Southeast Anchor branch at 1 p.m .

LIMITLESS

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Bradley Cooper, Abbie Cornish, and Robert De Niro star in director Neil Burger’s thriller about an experimental drug based on Alan Glynn’s 2001 novel

The Dark Fields

Opens March 18.

PAUL

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Shaun of the Dead

Hot Fuzz

partners Nick Frost and Simon Pegg co-wrote and -star in this comedy about a pair of British comic book fans who wander into something along the lines of one of those really wacky

X-Files

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episodes while touring the United States.

Superbad

Adventureland

’s Greg Mottola directs.

Opens March 18

THE LINCOLN LAWYER

Crime-fiction machine Michael Connelly gets only his second big-screen treatment with this adaptation of his 2005 novel that focused on Los Angeles defense attorney Mickey Haller, who offices out of the back of his Lincoln Town Car. Matthew McConaughey plays the thrice-married Haller, who finds himself getting tangled up with a wealthy client (Ryan Phillippe). Please don’t suck.

Opens March 18