Magical realism requires a deft directorial hand and a great screenplay that can present you with the absurd but still make you believe it. The Mistress of Spices had neither.<br /><br />First of all, the lead performances were OK. In Aishwarya's case I expected much worse, based on what I'd seen from her past roles. Here she played a woman reluctant to embrace love and it turned out believable. Dylan, already known to be a competent actor, delivered the occasional smoldering look necessary to convey "I'm falling in love."<br /><br />It was the poor treatment of the supporting characters that made this movie almost atrocious. The good-natured cab-driver's first scene seemed completely unbelievable because of the bad acting. The young Sikh teenager's transformation from dutiful son to gold-chained gangbanger was unintentionally hilarious, calling on caricatures rather than character development. And whoever fixed his turban needs to be fired. The grandfather's needling concern for his granddaughter's love life reeked of "Bend it Like Beckham" with the over-the-top parental figures nagging their children into the arms of non-Indians. The problem is, that while all these undeveloped 2-D characters would have been great in BILB, they ruined the atmosphere that the audience needed to believe in Tilo's magic. If you aren't grounded in the reality of the movie's world, then the "magic" part isn't special. <br /><br />The use of voice-over for Tilo's thoughts may have been necessary so that the audience could know about the different spices, but it just did not feel right. It indicated that the screenwriter never completely transcribed the story for the big screen. Inner voice works for books. Not as much for movies. The rules that Tilo lived by also came across as hokey and impractical for a store-owner in California. The fact that none of her customers, even traditional Indians, knew of her true nature kept the stakes low. At the very least, if there were people helping her stay inside the store and truly appreciative of her mystical skills (or truly dependent on them) then her conflict would have made some kind of sense.<br /><br />Now to SPOILERS: The blazing speed of the relationship fixes is mind-boggling. Tilo meets Haroun's neighbor, a woman who has barely spoken to Haroun. Pretty much the next day, Tilo is handing Haroun a wedding gift. Give it a little time please? The Sikh gangbanger suddenly agrees to take martial arts lessons rather than fire off that gun with that DANGEROUS GANG he just joined yesterday. Roundhouse kicks don't stop bullets! Doug's girlfriend suddenly shows up in Tilo's Indian spice store so she can find out how to cook for him. Then when she finds out that Doug loves someone else, she's just happy for him?<br /><br />They put way too much makeup on Aishwarya, who was meant to be playing the role of an unassuming natural beauty who supposedly couldn't leave her store or have romance. Tone it down a little bit so that when you finally have that big makeover scene, there's a real reason to be impressed! <br /><br />Strangest of all was Doug's back story about his estranged mother. It was so completely irrelevant. With such mystical tension and drama leading up to his deep dark secret, I am still left wondering :So your great grandpa gave you a magic feather...and???<br /><br />But the colors were pretty.