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Chicken tikka masala has long been established amongst the nation's favourite dishes. It's hard, though, to imagine this low-budget British film of the same name becoming quite so popular. If something this undercooked turned up at your table, you'd have every right to send it straight back. Preston-based Asian Jimi (Chris Bisson) is forced into engagement with a family friend by overbearing parents. But there's a problem: Jimi's gay and it's at the wedding party where he's determined to put things right.

The latest in an otherwise strong line of Anglo-Asian films, Chicken Tikka Masala falls short on several fronts, lacking the laughs of East Is East, the infectious enthusiasm of Bend It Like Beckham, or the sensitivity of the two-decades-old My Beautiful Laundrette. An 18-year-old "award-winning poet", Roopesh Parekh, provides precious little poetry in a screenplay seemingly written under the influence of too many alcopops. Everyone - even Hindi film veterans Saeed Jaffrey and Zohra Segal - seem to talk and act like hormonal teenage boys.

"FEELS LONGER THAN MOST THREE-HOUR BOLLYWOOD EFFORTS"

Theatre director Harmage Singh Kalirai keeps matters resolutely domestic for his movie debut. Cramped for the most part in colourless living rooms, kitchens or stairwells, the film's 90 minutes come to feel longer than most three-hour Bollywood efforts. Brief trips to locations such as football grounds, shopping malls and lap-dancing bars break up the boredom, but the best one could say is that Chicken Tikka Masala does for Preston what the sitcom does for Runcorn.