Curries work well as you can prepare them before hand and they are fairly fail proof. Use a curry paste and coconut milk and fresh herbs. Then have rice, poppodums, mango pickle, yogurt dressing/sauce etc For dessert you could make a black rice pudding- very easy and very yummy with mango (canned).
Or like suggested a pasta bake or lasagne with a green salad and garlic bread. Then you could do a tiramisu for dessert. Again can be prepared the day before.
As you see I generally pick a theme (Italian, Indian, Greek etc and stick to it)