Film

In Outsourced, Seattle telemarketer Todd (Hamilton) is dispatched to India; his colleagues’ positions are being relocated to the subcontinent, and it’s his job to train the replacement team. That’s no easy task: Donning the mantle of a boorish American, Todd resents having his name pronounced “Toad” and chafes at local customs and food. He grows disillusioned with his staff, particularly when a cow wanders into the office. He doesn’t believe Indians can replicate an American sales-per-minute rate, or at least won’t if they keep hawking “rubbers” when they mean “erasers.”

Needless to say, Todd will soon fall in love with India, and perhaps even develop a crush on one of his employees (Dharker). But however good-natured it may be as a comedy, Outsourced is at cross-purposes as advocacy. The skeptical-foreigner-learns-lessons formula actually undermines the anti-outsourcing stance: Todd discovers that globalization bridges cultural gaps, that Indians are indeed excellent workers and that they do, in fact, need the money. (Labor laws are never mentioned.) The film’s ambivalence is, in a sense, preferable to the sanctimony of a straightforward polemic, but it leaves a sour aftertaste. One wonders if a similar feel-good movie could have been set in a Honduran sweatshop.