Most of us already know that, no matter how Midwestern the agents’ accents may sound, many of those telemarketer calls that interrupt at the most inopportune times aren’t placed from an office on North American soil, but from massive call centres in India. The same world of Indian call centres that was effectively explored in the documentary Bombay Calling serves as the setting for Outsourced, a romantic comedy from director John Jeffcoat.
Todd Anderson (Josh Hamilton) is a bored call centre supervisor in Seattle, who spends his workdays shilling gaudy novelty items over the phone. When his company decides to outsource its telemarketer jobs to India, Todd hangs on to his job by agreeing to travel to the new call centre to train the Indian recruits, and is told he can’t return stateside until he reaches a lofty sales goal. Initially resistant to India, Todd commits all kinds of cultural faux pas and reacts badly to the local food, but before long he’s making friends, doing funny dances and, of course, falling in love.
While Outsourced easily could have come off as a lame reverse version of Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America, it’s actually far better than your average comedy based on cultural misunderstanding. While the Indian characters do come off as a little too sweetly naive and the narrative indulges in a stereotype or two for comic effect, Jeffcoat (who also co-wrote the script) does a great job of portraying Todd’s transformation from a cynical American into a more open-minded citizen of the world. The characters are intensely likable, particularly Asha, Todd’s love interest, and the filmmakers take advantage of the colourful setting throughout the film. Also, while the plot is predictable, its details aren’t, which makes for a greater sense of believability.
While the controversy surrounding outsourcing and globalization is touched on, Jeffcoat doesn’t use the film as a soapbox. Despite the inclusion of a love story and the aforementioned funny dancing and learning of life lessons, things never get too sticky or sweet. Rather, this is a feel-good movie that actually leaves viewers feeling good, which is a far more rare occurrence than it should be.
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