The Namesake

last updated 8 January 2015

Mira Nair has created a masterpiece, said Ruthe Stein in The San Francisco Chronicle. The Indian-born director has adapted Jhumpa Lahiri's sweeping novel about an Indian immigrant family's life in America into a 'œdeeply moving saga' that spans continents and decades with uncanny ease. 'œNair has maintained the book's universality—it could be about the clash between any immigrant parents and their born-in-the-USA offspring—while vividly portraying Indian customs she knows so well.' She finds a surprise star in Kal Penn, said Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. Best known as one of the shaggy-haired stoners in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, he plays it straight here as Gogol Ganguli, a first-generation Bengali-American who grows from callow teen to snobbish Yale student to mature, married professional. While convincingly portraying a conflicted young man desperate to fit in, the New Jersey'“born actor makes Gogol seem 'œas homegrown as Mickey Mantle.' He certainly proves himself an actor to watch, said Stephanie Zacharek in Salon.com. But the film's finest performances are delivered by Irfhan Khan and Bollywood star Tabu, as the parents Gogol only grudgingly comes to appreciate. Nair's beautiful, sprawling, episodic work occasionally wanders off-track, but these two actors' scenes together 'œare so lovely and so deeply believable that the movie's other flaws momentarily melt away.'

Rating: PG-13