Mistress of Spices

Starring Aishwarya Rai and Dylan McDermott, the movie is an adaptation from a book, and a story about an age - old tradition of 'spice-ology'.
A young girl, Tilo, with premonitionary powers is abducted by thieves to help them find gold. She escapes to 'first mother' who has the power of reading spices. Spices help a mistress of spices to help the people who come in distress. Being the mistress of spices requires following 3 rules - never to use spices for own desires, never to step out of the store and finally, never to touch skin. After learning the skill, Tilo leaves for America to practise her skill.
She helps her customers to have better lives by providing them with the spices that she senses they require. She combines her premonition skills to find what happens in their lives and the spices 'talk' to her to give her advice. She lives behind her store and is following the rules very faithfully until..
Doug comes her way and she breaks all the rules, against her definite resolve. The spices punish her by punishing her customers. Now she has to let her spices know that she isn't leaving them, but only wants both them and Doug.
I had watched the movie with high hopes, but the story ended up being quite bland. And the 'magic' was no where to be found. I was even wondering at times if the cast themselves understood some of the dialogues. Doug's character was totally westernized and Tilo was mentioning some of the spices in Hindi and I was wondering what was happening in Doug's head. Either he wasn't even listening to her or he was just dumbfounded with what he was hearing.
There was some element of magic which was hard to believe and the constant mind talking of Tilo's was a little distracting.
As always, Rai came as a model and stunned the screen as one, but her skills as an actress have to go a long long way. Sometimes, I found myself thinking, what exactly did she just do?
McDermott looked very good in this movie. I think the rough looks look good on him for a good boy and when he is clean, he looks well fit for a villain. (I also discovered one of my co-workers, HI, is an rounder version of him).
A movie I would have skipped if not for the fact that it was Gurinder Chadha's movie.