Four Samosas

When a wanna-be rapper learns his ex-girlfriend is engaged to his worst rival, he decides to try to win her back by stealing her wedding diamonds from her father’s safe, all with the help of three of his misfit friends.

The characters have a justification for this plan, but still… there’s just no getting around the fact that this is a really stupid idea, not to mention a little too try-hard to be wacky, and that makes it hard to get with the character’s actions. It’s a comedy, so it’s supposed to be silly obviously, but sometimes dumb is just too dumb.

And too try-hard.

Which is the film’s main problem.

That Four Samosas culminates in a big talent show, where some sincere songs are sincerely performed, and some sincere dances are sincerely danced, all in a sincere effort to honestly convey the boundless depth of the main character’s love for his ex-girlfriend, but instead teaches him that the true gift was the friendships that he made along the way, should tell you pretty much everything you really need to know about this film.

For the most part, this is a cute but pretty flawed teen comedy heist pic set in the L.A. neighborhood of Artesia (AKA "Little India”), featuring a pretty much all Indian cast, that is mostly a rehashing of that classic story of four weirdos finding each other and becoming a family as they chase their little dreams.

So… you’ve definitely seen this film before.

Very obviously rooted in writer/director Ravi Kapoor’s worship of Wes Anderson’s myriad and distinctive visual quirks and storytelling styles, all while using the same tried but true formula that has brought us so many other films… Dope, American Pie, Good Boys, Superbad, Euro trip, Booksmart, Can’t Hardly Wait, Better off Dead, and on and on and on… and like all of those films, there’s some good moments and there’s some not-so-good moments, there’s some good jokes, and there’s a bunch of not-so-good ones. It’s definitely charming, and the cast is great, but ultimately it all adds up to much less than the sum of its parts.

Four Samosas is cute, but it is nothing special.