It's a WTF Afterlife

The title -- It's a Wonderful Afterlife -- promises you touching emotional moments and if not those, a lot of fun. It carries with it the reputation of Gurinder Chadha who, though tired and jaded in her last two outings, is still remembered as a bright spark of talent.
What you're stunned to discover is that you're saddled with a shockingly regressive tale of a woman burdened by her daughter's fat: how will she find a man -- any man -- if he cannot tell her breasts from her stomach? And the Indian's compulsion to get her daughter married supposedly justifies murders: Mrs. Sethi (Azmi) kills every person who rejects her daughter because of her weight even as she moans about it herself.
What is surprising is that Gurinder Chadha makes the daughter, Roopi, completely lacking in character. Is Mrs. Chadha going through a self-hate phase? Did her family give her grief while she was single and she's venting it all out on Roopi? Take a look at the protagonists of Mahi Way and Drop Dead Diva. They are fat and have their moments of self-doubt. But they still enjoy themselves. They are spunky, sassy, love to pamper themselves, their hair, their skin and by wearing good clothes. They walk tall. Roopi shuffles. She doesn't look like she even runs a comb through her hair or glances into the mirror when she walks out. Her job? She doesn't seem to derive any pleasure from it for she never talks about it. It is made very clear right from beginning to end that this character boils her self-esteem down to her size and shape and only when a man comes into her life does she proudly flaunt her cleavage.
And the man who does come into her life? Drop-dead gorgeous Sendhil Ramamurthy (of Heroes fame) who plays a cop set on Roopi's trail for the series of Asian murders taking place in the community. He gets to know Roopi and brings her her redemption: he falls in love when he is forced to look beyond her appearance and into the person that she is underneath all those thick layers. It's shocking that Chadha didn't get someone pasty white to play the part. She might as well have played up on the Indian obsession with gora skin instead of giving it merely one line.
Chadha obviously watched a lot of Ealing comedies while she was writing this script. These comedies came from the British Ealing Studio in the 40s and 50s and used horror as a laughter tool. So in Afterlife you have guts busting and spraying doctors with undigested Indian food, ghosts moving about with their heads skewered and mouths stuffed with chapatti dough, and -- horror of horrors -- a Carrie sequence at the end. Unfortunately, the lines and effects are light years away from being good enough to prop it all up. Chadha was also pregnant at the time she wrote the script so perhaps her hormones played havoc with her just as food plays havoc with the characters in the movie. Food is ever-present in all her movies but in Afterlife, it makes you want to throw up whatever you ate last.
There is a best friend, too. Sally Hawkins is Linda who becomes enamoured of India Exotica Inc and changes her name into Gitali. Is there any point to her? Mmmmmm, yes she gets doused in cherry punch and makes food fly at people towards the end of the movie.
Azmi looks the part -- the tired, distraught mother who only wants to die in peace but her fat daughter just won't allow her to. For once, she does not sound uncomfortable mouthing English lines, but alas, the role is shocking. Yes, we know that a bulk of the Indian community, here and abroad, are every bit as regressive as the ones shown in this movie, and a whole lot worse, but the maker's attitude that it's all good and A-ok is what made me squirm.
If Chadha wanted to reveal the farcical Indian obsession with getting hitched (once again) she ought to have leaped a decade back to her old, spunky, energetic self. Here, she looks like she simply wants to punish Roopi for being as fat as she is. That just makes me wonder how she coped with her size in her family.