A minor storm has cooked up over in the United States over the “cross-over” film Marigold, starring Salman Khan and Heroes actress Ali Larter.

According to the American South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) blog, two journalists attracted the ire of Marigold’s director Willard Carroll after they wrote not-so-flattering reviews of the film.

In the e-mails, Carroll speaks of “morally bankrupt journalists” and appears to threaten Tsering and another SAJAer, Aseem Chhabra, with a ban from most Hollywood movie screenings.

To support his point, Chhabra describes Khan’s performance in “Marigold,” a movie about an American actress trying to make it in Bollywood.

Khan is very dull and he almost sleepwalks through the film. He suffers from the same flaw as Rai – the inability to match English dialogues with Bollywood acting.

…
Carroll then sent Chhabra an e-mail accusing the reporter of violating press rules by printing his opinion before the review date. “We’ll make certain that you’re on the no-screening list for as many studios as possible,” the director wrote in the email.

We have no doubt that it probably happens in the UK too. Though the sentiment on this side of the pond seems to be that most journalists in the Asian media fall over themselves to publish positive reviews on anything that comes their way. True or not? What do you think?

Incidentally, Marigold was partially reviewed in the Observer newspaper too here. The critic could barely bring himself to devote more than a paragraph, dismissing it as: “the worst of both worlds”. So much for cross-over appeal.

With Salman Khan now facing legal problems back in India, maybe he thought this film would be his ticket out of the country? Maybe not.