By Sangeeta Kumar

It’s been a while since a movie ends sooner than you’re ready for it to - not because the script lacks completeness, on the contrary, because it has much to offer. Loins of Punjab, a musical comedy, directed attentively by Manish Acharya, explores “issues of belonging, of defining home, of self-image” without the smug moralizing or the faux accents and clichéd references one usually endures from the Desi-American genre.

The main narrative of the film revolves around a weekend spent by contestants gathered at a New Jersey hotel to compete in the ‘Desi Idol’, a singing competition sponsored by the pork-loin conglomerate – ‘Loins of Punjab’.

The innocuous but brilliant scene where the head of the conglomerate is on stage and flicks a switch in front of the company founder’s portrait setting a cheap rotating lamp into motion, heralds the contest and the clash of sub-cultures.

The script by Manish Acharya and Anuvab Pal, replete with riotous one-liners, nudges the viewer to relish the all too familiar oddities within the diaspora.

The cast, headlined fabulously by Shabana Azmi as the ruthless socialite Rrita Kapoor, includes Turbanotorious BDG, a gay Sikh Bhangra rapper (Ajay Naidu), Jameel Khan, as Sudash Bokade, the over-sexed event organizer with a handlebar moustache, Samrat Chakrabarti, a second generation desi beat-boxer Trance Sen (Tansen anyone?), Ishitta Sharma as the talented but timid Preeti Patel with her pushy clan donning their ‘Preeti Patel is #1′ T-shirts, the non-Hindi speaking, Bollywood-fixated actress (Seema Rahmani) and finally the Indophile Josh Cohen (Michael Ramiondi).

Go see it! The film is not perfect by any measure but it’s worth every moment of the ninety odd minutes.

Loins of Punjab is currently playing at the Quad and Imaginasian.