It’s self–discovery-by-numbers in this post-globalization rom-com about a Seattle call centre manager who must train a new team of employees in India, where the company he works for has outsourced its labour on the cheap. Being the cynical cubicle drone that he is, Todd (Josh Hamilton) is bemused by the irony that his company peddles patriotic knick-knacks, and that training his own replacement — one who will work for the equivalent of $11,000 a year — will likely cost him his own job. He also doesn’t much care for India: it’s hot, the water gives him the shits and he can’t get a cheeseburger anywhere. And so on.
Outsourced isn’t fuelled by a culture clash so much as a cultural bumper car ride. Todd may be a tad pissy about it but he’s also a Gen-X Everydude — likely well educated, liberal and unfulfilled. His mild ethnocentrism is quickly melted away by the warmth and humour of his Indian crew — and by Asha (Ayesha Dharker), marked as his love interest the moment she impresses Todd over with her smarts and eyelashes. Their gentle, shared learning curve makes for a pleasant enough movie undermined by its own predictability and generic music cues. Amid the surface scan of the niceties and hassles of both American and Indian life, there might be the faint wonder as to what Whit Stillman could’ve done with an idea like this in his prime. Otherwise, Outsourced demands very little.