Disapproving families – whether their gripe be with love (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), football (Bend it Like Beckham) or, erm, whale-riding (Whale Rider) are seemingly all the rage these days. If youve seen any of the afore-mentioned films and you can probably add East is East to that pile as well then youve effectively seen Suzie Gold, the brainchild of one-time Ali G scribe Richard Cantor.
Summer Phoenix plays the title character, a Jewish girl living with her family in North London who, at just 23 years of age, is going through something of a premature mid-lie crisis. While her sister prepares for marriage, shes left on the shelf, her best chance at coupledom coming in the form of slimy catering boy Anthony (Iddo Goldberg).
Of course, you dont have to have seen an advance copy of the script to know that, when her Prince Charming does finally come along, theres going to be a minor detail about him that her family just arent going to go for namely, that hes not Jewish. So shes left to romance TV researcher bloke Darren (Leo Gregory) in secret, all the time terrified of what her frankly bigoted rellies will make of it all.
Though not unwatchable by any means, the whole thing has an ethnic-comedy-by-numbers feel to it, latching onto a formula weve seen used more successfully elsewhere and failing to do anything new with it. Suzies probs are easy to sympathise with, but she only ever comes across as a fairly nice girl who just isnt an interesting enough character to warrant the focus of an entire movie. Phoenix plays her with a look of boredom etched permanently on her face, and with no sparky dialogue or funny situations to work with, its almost forgivable.