Legally this counts as a Christmas movie.

 

 

 

You can add Gurkha (2019)  to the long list of movies where I have seen the Indian remake but not seen the American original, so I cannot tell you how well this Tamil action comedy captures the subtle nuances of Paul Blart: Mall Cop.  I can only look at the movie in front of me.

 

The titular Gurkha is Bahadur Babu (Yogi Babu), though the opening sequence quickly establishes that he is the son of a Gurkha father and a South Indian mother, because Yogi Babu does not look at all like a member of the Gurkha community.  Bahadur and his fellow Gurkhas provide security for their neighborhood in Tamil Nadu, but they are not respected, so Bahadur decides that he will become a police officer, and specifically a police officer like Singham.  

 

Bahadur does not become a police officer.  He doesn't make it through the first night of training before ACP Harris Jayaraj (Ravi Mariya) throws him out, along with the equally hopeless aspiring police dog Undertaker.  Bahadur then gets a job with Shaktimaan Security, a small private security company owned by Kavariman (Manobala).  (And the terrible commercials for the security company just reminded me of how much I miss Shaktimaan.)  Initially he's assigned to provide security for a house, and he wanders next door and meets instantly falls in love with Margaret (Elyssa Erhardt), who happens to be the American Ambassador to India.  

 

Bahadur never gets a chance to confess his love or even really get to know Margaret before he's reassigned to work at a large shopping mall; he nearly quits before he learns that Margaret visits the mall regularly for her yoga class.  He's assigned to work with an older security guard named Usain Bolt (Charle), who shows him the secret room which the security cameras don't record where they can hang out all day, a secret room which I am sure will not be important in any way later.  When Margaret's bag is stolen, Bahadur and Undertaker (mostly Undertaker) manage to recover it, and he manages to befriend Margaret, though she does warn him that as a career diplomat she could never marry an Indian citizen because it would require her to give up her job.

 

And then the terrorists show up.  In theory they are a band of disgruntled former soldiers, though leader Thyagu (Raj Bharath) has his own agenda.  They launch a fairly sophisticated scheme to lure a large crowd of civilians into the mall's movie theater with free tickets to Bahubali 3 and a large gift certificate, and then they strike!  Margaret is the real target, but after killing a couple of hostages for emphasis they demand a small ransom from the government within an hour.  When the government can't get its act together in time, the terrorists turn to crowdfunding, demanding a much larger ransom form the people of Tamil Nadu with a four hour deadline, which is probably the most genuinely interesting thing in the entire movie.

 

 The police won't go in, because some of the hostages lured in by the promise of Bahubali are the wives of high ranking police officials, including the wife of ACP Jayaraj.  Most of the security guards are forced out early in the siege, and the halls of the mall are being patrolled by flying camera drones.  Only Bahadur, Usain, and Undertaker are left to save the hostages - it's basically Die Hard with slapstick, and whether you like the movie or not is going to depend on your tolerance for broad South Indian comedy.

 

That said, tone is an issue.  Bahadur is a big goofball with a funny dog, but while he's mucking about people are dying.  Even the hostages alternate between stark terror and comedy bits, though Thyagu and his men are at least consistently serious.  Bahadur's level of competence also varies wildly, swinging from action hero to buffoon as the script requires, and sometimes literally swinging from a firehouse dangling from the roof.

 

On the plus side, the movie never suggests that Margaret (the ambassador) and Bahadur (the mall cop) end up together; my suspension of disbelief can only stretch so far. 

 

Just hosting a picture. Don't mind me.

 

Dating is hard.

 

Indoo Ki Jawani (2020) opens as an ordinary sex comedy.  Indira Gupta (Kiara Advani), affectionately known as "Indoo", is the most beautiful girl in her neighborhood, the object of desire for all the local teenage boys and middle-aged men who should really know better.  It's annoying more than anything else.  Indoo is far more interested in her boyfriend Satish (Raghav Raj Kakker), who in turn is interested in only one thing.  Indoo wants to wait for marriage, while Satish promises that he'll talk to her parents on the morning after.  Indoo's best friend Sonal (Mallika Dua) is a neverending font of bad advice, and she convinces Indoo to just get it over with, but Indoo walks in on Satish and another woman instead.  Sonal isn't done, and instead convinces Indoo to find a one-night stand on "Dinder".  After messaging some terrible men, Indoo finds Samar (Aditya Seal), an aspiring musician from Hyderabad, and invites him around the house when her parents are out of town.

But this is Bollywood, and genre boundaries are really loose guidelines at best.   While Indoo enjoys her awkward date with Samar, occasionally calling Sonal for more awful advice, the police are tearing the city apart searching for a pair of Pakistani terrorists.  And at the worst possible time Samar drops his passport, and Indoo learns that he's not form Hyderabad in India, he's from Hyderabad in Pakistan.  Indoo has seen too many movies and jumps to all of the wrong conclusions - he grabs a knife and orders Samar to leave her house, then drags him back inside when she realizes that the neighbors are watching and will jump to wrong conclusions of their own.

Spoiler - Samar is not really a terrorist.  It's not really that much of a spoiler, really. The movie throws some red herrings in that direction, but Samar is a consistently decent guy, and from a dramatic standpoint he pretty much has to be; Indoo is stewing in some unexamined prejudice, and she really needs to be proven wrong.  She is, but not before a stream of mistakes, including inviting the actual terrorist inside to keep an eye on Samar.

This is not really an action movie.  There are a few fight scenes, but they're short, and Samar fights like a desperate man who doesn't really know what he's doing but hopes he can overwhelm the enemy with persistence and a bit oif luck.  The terrorist plot is really just an excuse to lock these to in a house together so they can talk, and they do.  They get to know each other better, and Indoo learns a valuable lesson about judging by appearances.  Ultimately it's a silly romance with engaging leads and a really strange premise.

 And of course they never get around to having sex, because that wouldn't be funny.

 

 

Chandra the Vampire Slayer

 

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As the title implies Lokah Chapter One: Chandra (2025) is the start of yet another cinematic universe, combining superhero trappings with Malayalam folklore and myth.  That means that there are mid- and post-credit scenes to set up future entries in the series, as well as an extended cameo form the protagonist of the next planned movie, but that's the future, and I am just looking at the movie in front of me.

 The movie features a Bond-style cold open, with Chandra (Kalyani Priyadarshan) stealing an unknown but important item and then fighting an assassin working for an organization called Ishtar.  (This is the last time that Ishtar will be mentioned in this movie.)   Chandra wins, and after an animated credit sequence showing her adventuring through various places and time periods, she arrives in an unnamed Indian city which looks an awful lot like Bengalaru, where her contact Prakash (Nishanth Sagar) instructs here to lie low and rest for a while.  And Chandra does exactly that.  She loves in a small apartment, works nights as a waitress, and spends her spare time reading a book called "They Live Among Us," a supposedly comprehensive look at the supernatural world.

And then there are the neighbors.  Sunny (Naslen) lives across the street.  He's unemployed and spends his time hanging out with his friends Venu (Chandu Salim Kumar) and Naijil (Arun Kurian).  The trio seem to live in an entirely different genre than Chandra; "three layabout guys have misadventures" is practicially iots own subgenre in Indian cinema.  Sunny catches a glimpse of Chandra and is immediately smitten, but he doesn't get a chance to talk to her until they wind up in the same autorickshaw.  Sunny finally manages to start a conversation, and winds up inviting Chandra to Naijil's birthday party.

While Chandra is trying her best to lay low, she can't stand by while well-connected thug Sundari (Viahnu Priya Thoppil) threatens one of her coworkers with acid.  She smashes the acid flask in his hand and quickly knocks him unconscious.  Unfortunately, Sundari is the younger brother of Gajendran (Shivajith), a local politician who also runs the city's organ trafficking ring.  Gajendran hands the case over to Nachiyappa (sandy), a corrupt and deeply misogynistic police officer.  

The birthday party goes well (apart from a visit by Nachiyappa, looking for illegal drugs), and Sunny strikes up an odd friendship with Chandra.  There is something strange about her, though - she only goes out at night, Sunny's cat is terrified of her, and the sight of blood makes her visibly uncomfortable.  Also she doesn't seem to eat and she never drinks . . . wine.  After Chandra is ambushed by Sundari and a group of organ traffickers, Sunny tries to rush to the rescue, only to watch in horror as she grows fangs and bites throats, then asks him to help dispose of the bodies.  

 Chandra finally admits the truth - she's a yaksha, which for the purposes of this movie means she's a big ol' vampire.  Actually she's a specific yaksha, Kalliyankattu Neeli,  whom some fear as a monster and others worship as a goddess.  Sunny is sworn to secrecy, and this might be sounding a bit like Thamma.  The tone is pretty different, though - Thamma is a part of the Maddock Horror Comedy Universe, and it shows.  Chandra is funny at times, but the overall tone is darker.  Chandra defends the oppressed, but she's still dangerous, and Sunny knows that.

And things get worse.  Nachiyappa realizes that Chandra is responsible for Sundari's death.  There's fight, Nachiyappa is bitten, Sunny is shot, and everybody  runs away.  Sunny and Chandra are labelled as terrorists, the police get closer and closer, and Chandra's old friend Michael (Tovino Thomas), a Chathan (though the subtitles call him a goblin) has to temporarily save the day with his mastery of illusions before running off to star in the next movie.  And Nachiyappa is starting to change . . .

 There is a lot going on in Chandra; it feels less like a movie than an entire season of a supernatural action series crammed into two and a half hours.  The pacing isn't the only thing that's uneven; Michael's scenes represent a noticeable shift in tone, which goes away at the same time he does.  On the other hand, there's a lot to like here.  Vampires/yakshas as a metaphor for the underprivileged fighting back is interesting, and Kalyani Priyadarshan is a strong lead.  The film looks great - the city has a fantastic neon noir style, and the action scenes are frequent and elaborate, but it's still easy to see what is going on.  And I like how different this is from the Maddock movies - there's room in the cinema for different takes on Gothic heroism.

Live and Let Fry

 Spy movies are big in India at the moment, and Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos (2026) is a movie about spies.  It's not a part of the Spy Universe, though, and it is a long way from the hyper-masculine world of Dhurandar and Dhurandar: The Revenge.  This is a quirky spoof, part Hot Fuzz, part Quick Gun Murugun, with a dash of Steve Martin's The Jerk.

The movie opens in Goa in the 70's, as eccentric gangster Jimmy Mario (Aamir Khan), who is so cool that he has his own theme song, is gleefully trying to murder a pair of British secret agents (Simon Fielder and Andrew Sloman).  It doesn't go well - Jimmy is fatally wounded, and so is Subhakai (Sumukhi Suresh), the agents' maid.  Subhakai leaves behind an infant son and the agents promise to take care of  him, while Jimmy's young daughter takes up his ring and  claims his criminal empire.

 Years pass.  The baby has grown up to be Happy (Vir Das).  Happy wants to become a spy, just like his dads (did I mention that they're a couple?) but he's failed the entrance exam for MI7 multiple times.  Still, Happy is a skilled ballet dancer and he makes amazing sandwiches, so he's more or less, well, happy.  He does have a lingering feeling that there is something missing in his life, and there's a reason for that - his fathers haven't even told him that he's Indian!

Happy gets his chance to be a spy soon enough.  British scientist Beatrice Fafferbaum (Maya Rachel McManus) has vanished in Goa, and MI7 chief Kenneth Mole (Benedict Garrett) decides that Happy is the perfect agent to find her.  Of course he'll need to be trained first - he doesn't even speak Hindi, so he's given a crash course in the language, and Mole then flips a big switch to change the language of the movie from English to Hindi, because the fourth wall is more of a gauzy curtain, really.  The inevitable training montage includes clips from a number of Bollywood movies as Happy learns valuable skills like holding out his arms like Shah Rukh Khan, a move guaranteed to win any woman's heart.

Mole also reveals the dark secret about Britain's involvement in modern India: before Independence India was a major part of the British economy, and now the British make money by secretly controlling the fairness cream industry.  Happy doesn't want to think about the implications just yet, but Jimmy's daughter, now calling herself Mama (Mona Singh) wants to branch out from her position as criminal overlord of Goa and launch a homegrown super-fairness cream of her own, created by a captive Doctor Fafferbaum and advertised by international supermodel Milind Morea (Imran Khan).  

Happy arrives in Goa and meets his contact Geet (Sharib Hashmi) and teen supergenius Roxy (Srushti Tawade.)  He also falls hard for  local dancer Rupa (Mithila Palkar).  Rupa seems to like him too, but her survival instincts are so finely honed that she automatically slaps him every time they so much as touch fingers, she slaps him.  Still, Happy bumbles through the investigation while wooing Rupa and becoming more and more connected to his heritage.

Obviously Happy is going to face hardships, but eventually up his game and wind up saving the day.  It doesn't look like you might expect, though; while this movie has some ridiculous action scenes, Happy never becomes an action hero - at the end of the movie he's still a sweet and gentle goofball who saves the day with an Iron Chef-style cooking competition rather than a gunfight.  It's a refreshing change from the sea of brutal manly action currently dominating the box office.

 

Believe it or not, I'm walking on air.

 

 A Flying Jatt (2016) is a classic superhero story, with colorful costumes, a secret identity, and a character arc that starts with clumsy flying and ends with a kung fu fight in space.  That doesn't mean it's a good movie, but it does mean that there's always something going on.

 Rakesh Malhotra (Kay Kay Menon) is rich, powerful, brilliant and arrogant; he's basically Single Dad Lex Luthor, dividing his time between his toxic chemical business (I'm not sure what he's supposed to be manufacturing, but he produces an awful lot of toxic waste) and his precocious young daughter (Mahi Milan.)  Malhotra wants to build a bridge across a lake to allow his factory in Punjab to dump toxic waste more efficiently, but the locals won't sell their land, because the project requires cutting down a sacred tree.

Fortunately the tree is defended . . . by feisty hard-drinking widow Mrs. Dhillon (Amrita Singh), who owns the land the tree is located on.  Mrs. Dhillon has two sons - Rohit (Gaurav Pandey), who is not the designated protagonist, and Aman (Tiger Shroff), who is.  Aman is a study in contradictions; he's a skilled martial artist who teaches karate at the local school, but the kids don't respect him and he's being bullied by Goldy (Sushant Pujari), the violin teacher.  He's in love with his colleague Kirti (Jacqueline Fernandez) but can't bring himself to tell her how he feels.  And he's a devout Sikh, but he's too embarrassed to live as a Sardar, and has disappointed his mother by cutting his hair and refusing to wear a turban.

Malhotra tries buying off Mrs. Dhillon, then tries threatening Aman.  Neither tactic gets him what he wants, so he puts out a hit on the tree, hiring scary mercenary Raka (Nathan Jones) to chop down the tree late at night during a dramatic thunderstorm.  Aman happens to be there at the tree, praying for his mother's safety, and they fight.  Raka gains the upper hand but lightning strikes just as he's about to kill the young man; Raka flies into a convenient vat of toxic waste and is definitely dead and not going to come back with pollution-based superpowers, while Aman is thrown into the tree.

And in the morning Aman wakes up from a deep sleep, completely unharmed.  After a confrontation with more of Malhotra's goons it becomes clear that he now has superpowers, so Mrs. Dhillon rents a bunch of superhero DVDs for research and they experiment to discover just what Aman's powers are.  It's a diverse powerset - Aman can fly (though he's still afraid of heights), he's strong and fast and heals almost instantly, he can temporarily absorb the qualities of physical media, allowing him to play the violin and dance like Michael Jackson and/or Sunny Leone.  Mrs. Dhillon makes Aman a costume, and he takes the name "Flying Jatt," which was his late father's nickname back in the Shaolin temple.

And then the movie settles into Greatest American Hero-style shenanigans for a while, as Aman learns to be a hero while fighting crime and saving people from disasters throughout Punjab while protecting his secret identity.  He also finds himself in a love triangle with himself, as Kriti falls head over heels in love with the new superhero while assuring Aman that he's still her best friend.  

The good times don't last, though.  In a completely unexpected development, Raka emerges from the toxic waste with pollution-based superpowers.  Aman beats him a few times but Raka feeds off pollution, and he keeps getting stronger.  Soon he has the upper hand, seriously injuring Aman and boasting that he cannot be defeated anywhere on Earth, because pollution is everywhere.

A Flying Jatt is juggling two main themes.  Aman's personal journey as he grows into a hero and learns to embrace his culture is compelling; in context the line "It's twelve o'clock" hits hard.  Punjab as a setting also adds a bit of interest - we do get glimpses of how a superhero operates in a more rural context rather than spending all their time in a big city.

On the other hand, the environmental message is handled with all the subtlety of an episode of Captain Planet.  The main takeaway is that pollution is bad, and we should stop it somehow.  And then there's Raka.  He's mean, he likes hurting people, and he wants more pollution so he can become more powerful, and that's pretty much it.  He's the final boss, but he's not a compelling antagonist.

This movie is reasonably entertaining nonsense, but there are frustrating hints that it could have been more. 

The Life and Loves of a Nice Lady

 Despite some superficial similarities in plot, Biwi No. 1 (1999) is not based on Faye Weldon's dark feminist fable The Life and Loves of a She-Devil.  On the other hand, it is pretty blatantly inspired by the 1989 movie She-Devil, which pretends to adapt Weldon's novel.  It's an adaptation of an adaptation, and the results are decidedly mixed.

 Pooja (Karisma Kapoor) lives a happy life in her spacious house with her husband Prem (Salman Khan), her children Rinku and Pinky (Master Shahrukh and Baby Karishma), her mother-in-law Sushila (Himani Shivpuri), and their dog Tiger.  Prem is a successful advertising executive (very successful - their house is huge!), Pooja is the perfect housewife, and everybody's just really, really happy.  

Prem is looking for a new model for the agency, and just as he's describing his ideal candidate (5'8", brown eyes, and a 36-24-36 figure - Prem is a simple man) aspiring model Rupali (Sushmita Sen) walks in, and she's 5'8" with brown eyes and a 36-24-36 figure.  She gets the job, and Rupali and Prem keep meeting by "coincidence."  In another movie Rupali would be a greedy gold-digger pursuing a married man, and she does tell her smitten photographer friend Deepak (Saif Ali Khan) that she's looking for a man who can support her in comfort, but it's Prem doing the pursuing here, and Rupali doesn't yet know that he's married; Pooja was too busy to go to the movie with him one time, so he decided to plummet headlong into adultery.

Prem arranges a trip to Switzerland for himself and Rupali, and at the airport he runs into his old friend Lakhan (Anil Kapoor) and his lovely wife Lovely (Tabu), who are also on their way to Switzerland.  naturally wackiness ensues, and after a series of farcical events Lakhan has learned that Prem is having an affair, while Rupali has learned that Prem is married. Prem manages to smooth things over with the old "My parents forced me to marry a mentally unstable woman, but I really love you, baby!" routine, and they all return to India.

For some unfathomable reason Lakhan decides to keep Prem's secret, while Prem buys Rupali a house and a car and uses her for all of the agency's modelling work, and he keeps on lying to absolutely everybody.  It can't last, though, mostly because Prem is a numpty.  Tiger the dog discovers Prem celebrating Karva Chauth with Rupali and brings Pooja to the scene (because this is the kind of thing that dogs do in Bollywood) and Pooja gives her husband an ultimatum: give up Rupali or leave the house.  He leaves the house.

Pooja is heartbroken, but Lakhan has realized his mistake and promises to bring Prem home.  It doesn't work, so instead he urges Pooja to fight back using the weapons at her disposal, starting with the children.  Soon Pooja drops Rinku and Pinky off at her estranged husband's doorstep, telling him that they're his children and she doesn't want anything to do with them. The children immediately start acting up. (In this movie the children are in on the plan, while in Weldon's novel they're just naturally horrible.)  Next, she drops off Prem's mother, who is also in on the plan.

 On paper Prem owns 49% of the advertising agency, while Pooja owns 51%.  Pooja takes advantage of this by firing Rupali, which ,means that Rupali has been forced into the role of housewife and mother, while Pooja is pretending to be young and carefree, wearing Western clothing and even putting together a portfolio of modelling shots.  Prem is becoming jealous, and Pooja is just getting started.

Or she would be, but here's the thing.  Weldon's novel is the story of a woman scorned who takes revenge on the people who wronged her, taking everything that belonged to other woman Mary Fisher.  The 1989 movie wasn't anywhere near as dark (or as good) but it was still a black comedy about revenge.  Biwi No 1 was directed by David Dhawan, who is anything but a feminist, and Pooja isn't interested in revenge, she just wants her man back. That changes everything.  The goal is to preserve the marriage at all costs, and nobody really stops to question whether Prem is worth the bother.

Biwi No. 1 features a fantastic cast, and also Salman Khan at his most annoying; It is a minor miracle that Sushmita Sen manages to make Rupali a sympathetic character when the script is against her.  The songs are mostly good (apart from the title song), and the movie is occasionally funny, but I have never seen an adaptation undercut the spirit of the original work this comprehensively.