Todd Anderson (Josh Hamilton) is in charge of product fulfillment at Western Novelty, a Seattle company whose call centre is suddenly outsourced to India. In his words, 'What I really do is sell kitsch to rednecks, and now I have to train some other schmuck to do it." That’s the premise of this light romantic comedy; it’s simple stuff, but it’s admittedly mildly amusing and entertaining.
Todd flies to Mumbai, and heads to the village of Gharapuri, where he is supposed to train the staff to adopt fake American accents and get the average MPI (Minutes Per Incident) of phone orders down to six. In the interest of flogging plastic bald-headed eagles and the like, they practice famous lines from Hollywood movies. Also in the mix is Purohit (Asif Basra), a local manager for whom career success and marital plans are interdependent, but the most stubbornly individualistic local employee is Asha (Ayesha Dharker, in a role several light years away from her titular protagonist in The Terrorist). She’s got presence, she’s beautiful and Todd is of course impressed"¦
What follows is slow moving, and incorporates a cringingly predictable love story, but Hamilton has an easy charm, and the theme of cultural incomprehension is well handled, at least insofar as it concerns Todd’s ignorance about India. The joke about the ambiguity of the word 'rubbers", however, is one that could have been gladly left on the cutting room floor. What makes the film watchable from beginning to end is India itself. As backdrops go, it’s about as richly colourful and diverse as they come. Hindu rituals, village street life and (briefly) urban bustle all divert the eye. Outsourced is a forgettable comedy, but it’s not a bad travelogue.
Filmink 3/5
