Outsourced

source: Outsourced

I did consulting work for ten weeks last year in Hyderabad and Mumbai on a contract with IBM for BellSouth. (Got trouble with your BellSouth DSL? Plan on talking to "Rocky" in India.) This film brought back such warm memories of a wonderful country and its wonderful people. From the opening scene in the Mumbai airport with its marble floors and dirty white walls... to the teeming crowds waiting outside (I had one white face meeting me at 4:00 a.m. after flying from Orlando to Detroit to Amsterdam to Mumbai to Hyderabad, amidst the hundreds of brown faces clamoring for your attention)... to the little three-wheeled jeeps careening through the streets... the marvelous shots of Victoria Station and the Gateway of India... to the merriment of Holi. Not to mention the call center agents! This film (and the howls of laughter from those in attendance, at the 13th Annual South Asian Film Festival, here in Orlando at http://www.enzian.org/ ) made me want to pack up and go back tomorrow. "I'd kNowingly Do It Again!"

This is all bullshit. This movie is made to distort the image of India. I would like to tell all the people watched this movie to come and visit Indian IT companies offices and call centers. They are all State of the art buildings. They have shown a small house (half-built) with a cow tied there. What the hell this director wanna show to the people around the world. Come and see, we have all the facilities here in India now, and you won't find guys like the one shown in movie which is shown as future call center manager. We have quite smart guys with decent accent here in India, they all wear jeans etc.. you won't find a single guy wearing the formals in IT sector. This is the weird and worst ever shown image of India to the outside world. India has changed and remember this century belongs to two countries India and CHINA, whether you believe it or not. It is written on walls.

Couldn't bear to watch this movie for more than 30 minutes. Pretty boy, Josh Hamilton can barely act. He spends most of the time waltzing around with a dazed expression on his face. The movie is so full of inconsistencies. Believe that a call center will be set up in middle of a village with cows for company and you will believe anything. Most villages in India do not have access to electricity,let alone high bandwidth internet connections to support a call center. The tone is so supercilious. There was a very stoopid dialogue. 'Accept India and don' resist it'. (PUKE). Thanks, I must say for accepting us. We felt kinda lonely when you resisted us... That coy Ayesha Dharker was so irritating 'Youu neeed to learn Indian culture Todd'. Yeah baby, culture my posterior. What happens at the end of the movie. Did loser Todd start working with coy Asha at the village or did Asha move to u.s with Todd. I am assuming they would have found each other endearing enough to get married.

Outsourced starts out promising. An American manager is headed to India to train his replacement in a call center. There are some good shots of India and some good laughs involving the merchandise being sold through the center and the wacky cross-cultural misunderstandings. In general things appear to headed on a decent track. Then things start to unravel. The Indians turn from interesting characters into bad caricatures. The romance is forced and unsatisfying. The movie finishes with a series of scenes that are meant to be uplifting and fun, but are nothing anyone who has been watching movies for any amount of time hasn't seen.

I am not a fan of romantic comedies, specially "Friends" like ones because I think it is too pasteurized, politically correct. I thank God there is some nice romantic comedies with another spice that taste great for me and this movie is an example of it. Basically it show the cultural shock of a sad US call center manager sent to India to train an outsourced team. It is very nice how this movie shows the way the de-passionated yank finds the meaning of life in such different place and culture. I am Brazilian and I know some US people that comes here to visit the country and decided to stay and adopted Brazilian way of life. This movies shows very well this happening. If you want a very nice movie to watch when you are depressed with your work, pick this one ... and prepare yourself to be eager to travel to an exotic place after it ends.

The sweetest movie I've seen all year, full of funny cultural misunderstandings and whiffs of the foreigner experience. Amazing performances by Indian actors, especially a certain "Auntie G" who is the "Hyacinth Bouquet"/"Hostess with the Mostess" of Bombay. The fellow who plays Puri charms as consummate straight man to cross-cultural business humor. Loved that the company's products are American patriotic crapola, and that they still mean something to the striving foreign vendors. Much poetic poignancy between the laughs in this film. Josh Hamilton's character's evolution is believable and rewarding, reflecting a journey many more Americans need to take. Don't miss this trip!

The story is one of our age, one of disappearing jobs, forced intermingling of different cultures, and what it means to learn and expand in our world view. Because others have told the outline of the story, I won't redo that here, but rather focus on why I so completely enjoyed the film. I too saw it at the Toronto Film Festival, sitting in the first row because I was in the "rush" line. It speaks to the warm, human, and entirely charming story that I was able to actually stay with it from the perspective being practically underneath the huge screen, looking up, making sure my eyes were looking through the right part of my glasses. As a westerner who has traveled, worked, and loved being in India, I found the writing true to life and always seen from a positive angle. Todd's openness and vulnerability contributed to his steep upward learning curve, and was essential to his success there. We too must be open and interested if we want to live in a world that is increasingly global and challenging. I'm not sure how the romantic part of the story will be received in India, should the film get a distributor there, as I have found that most are pretty conservative regarding what they want to see on screen. But I wish the filmmakers all the success, and I hope they make many more films like this one.

I had an absolute blast watching this movie today. It was funny, moving and most of all, sincere. It would have been very easy for the filmmakers to fall back into stereotypes while writing and shooting this movie, but they skillfully steered clear of any pitfalls that plague so many other movies out there, especially in this genre. I got the chance to see this movie at a special screening at UW in Seattle today and join in a Q&A session with the writers (and director) John and George, Ayesha, who plays Asha, and a few of the producers. John, the director and co-writer, mentioned he had spent quite some time in Nepal and India during his student years. And although the story itself is a fictional one, the cultural shocks and experiences Todd goes through were largely based on John's own experiences during his time abroad. This seems to make for a very honest take on the nuances of this story. Luckily the movie not only focuses on Todd's shock of arriving in a completely new culture. The local people that Todd deals with on a daily basis also find they need to adjust to Todd's American way of running a call center. This makes for a balanced telling of a story about cultural differences and, maybe more importantly, the similarities. It may not be a groundbreaking movie by any blockbuster standards, but the sincerity seems to be coming straight from the heart. And that's something you rarely see in movies nowadays. This movie deserves all the attention it gets. So go see it! And if you like it, tell your friends.

One of the happiest surprises of this year's Toronto International Film Festival was this delightful, beautifully shot comedy, which is not only funny and touching but actually offers a few insights into Indian culture as well. Josh Hamilton is terrific as Todd, an American businessman who is less than thrilled to learn his Seattle office is going to outsource its work to a call center in India. He's even more perturbed when his boss makes it clear that Todd will be in charge of training the Indian workers to efficiently handle orders while sounding as American as possible; that's important since the firm markets all-American knickknacks, such as miniature flags, hot dog toasters and Wisconsin cheese hats. The culture clash that results is beautifully played and wonderfully written. This has the potential to be another MY BIG FAT Greek WEDDING, if it's handled properly. I hope it is. I've been a big fan of Hamilton for years and he deserves a big hit.