New York City. Hispanic-American Carmen and Nigerian-American Bolude are best friends since childhood, and both lost their mothers. They travel to Sydney for Bolude's wedding with Australian Tommy, but Bolude's father Akin, who is against the marriage, refuses to fly there from Lagos unless she can find a hundred welcomes from different places for the occasion. Bolude thus contacts different ethnic and religious groups in Sydney to gather these welcomes. Carmen falls in love with Ant. When Bolude admits she bought a house in Sydney and plans to stay living there, she has an argument with Carmen because they will now be separated. Bolude finds more than enough locals welcoming her via Internet, and Akin shows up there, but then they decide to have a wedding in Lagos. Bolude remains with Tommy in Sydney, while Carmen returns to New York City.
The independent buddy-comedy-drama film "Carmen & Bolude" works thanks to the charm and chemistry of their two main stars, the uplifting Michaela Carattini and Bolude Watson, though they are not able to patch up every omission from the movie. Carmen, a Hispanic-American, and Bolude, a Nigerian-American, who travel to Sydney for Bolude's wedding, represent a sort of double identity dispossession spanning three continents, and their efforts to somehow reconcile their culture, tradition with their modern way of life and their own private aspiration form the foundation of the storyline. With the two protagonists juggling with these different parameters and trying to find a balance, the movie manages to extract a good deal of humor and portray them as sympathetic characters in the first half. The first half starts off in a funny way—in a NY subway train, a random passenger comes too close to Carmen, so she grabs his hand, holds it and announces loudly to everyone: "Ladies and gentlemen, I just found a lost hand on my ass! Does anyone know to whom it belongs?"
Another amusing moment is the disastrously culturally insensitive "meet the parents" lunch sequence in Sydney, where Carmen and Bolude are annoyed that Tommy's mom calls Bolude "Blue", and which leads to this exchange between Tommy's grandmother and dad: "I'm just really very happy she speaks English!" - "Mom, seriously! American is not English!" They both then burst into laughter, while nobody else at the tables does, leading to an awkward silence, until Tommy's dad says: "Why are we the only two people laughing?" One genius, hilarious moment that shows the reverse: Carmen uses a kippah from a synagogue for her push-up bra. The movie loses this snappy humor in the second half, though, as it becomes more serious, but less inspired, while the melodramatic scenes of first Bolude crying, and then Carmen crying, feel forced and strained. Likewise, it wasn't quite clear what Bolude's father wanted to accomplish by sending her on a wild goose chase in finding a "100 welcomes from a 100 different places" for the wedding, except that it was an excuse for him to avoid the event. The finale ends on a rather standard note, without much of an expected bang, and about 20 minutes could have been cut to alleviate the pacing issues, but "Carmen & Bolude" still have enough positive energy to carry this sweet film.
Grade:++
