Meet the Patels is marketed as a documentary about Ravi Patel’s search for love through matchmaking. When Meet the Patels focuses on the family dynamics and Indian culture, it is a hit, but I am probably the only person in the universe who did not like movie.
I did not like it for two reasons. First, I happen to work in a field that gives me a bird’s eye view on people’s relationships, and I am 41 years old so while my personal romantic life may be lacking, I have plenty of friends and experience as a bystander guessing how things are going to work out. I knew that Ravi was going through the motions. To be fair, his sister, Geeta V. Patel, the co-director and the woman behind the camera, knew too. I was annoyed that he was wasting the women’s time on his parent’s dime to get some exposure for his acting career and to travel. He comes across as a judgmental and manipulative dude who thinks rather highly of himself, which he hopefully isn’t, but he is so dismissive of the women that he dates and inconsiderate in his relationship with his ex-girlfriend and his parents that it is hard to think otherwise. Audrey, dodge the bullet!
Second, I watch too many movies. The first time that I saw Meet the Patels, it was called 20 Dates. Meet the Patels and 20 Dates are about actors who have not achieved success in his acting career and in romance so they go on multiple dates to kill two birds with one stone. At least in Meet the Patels, everyone, except occasionally, Ravi is aware that they are being filmed. In both films, they find love.
I would have preferred if Meet the Patels was less disingenuous about what it was really about: an Indian American man coming to terms with introducing his white red headed girlfriend to his immigrant parents. I would have also loved if Meet the Patels was actually about Geeta, who seemed really interesting, but because she is also wise, she remains laconic and avoids the glare of the spotlight.
If Meet the Patels solely focused on family dynamics and the cultural contrasts of living in America and India, I would have loved it, but unfortunately to make the film more marketable, it becomes a shameless rip off of an almost forgettable movie from the 90s and an inadvertently exploitive of those that Ravi purports to love.