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.

He's not a tame lion.

 

 

 Mahavatar Narsimha (2024) is an animated Hindu devotional movie.  As usual with devotional movies, I am not qualified to judge the theology, so I will be looking at the movie as a story rather than as an expression of religious faith.

 

The movie establishes almost immediately that despite the animation it is not primarily aimed as kids, as the lovely Diti (Vasundhra Bose) interrupts the meditations of her husband, the sage Kashyapa (Dinesh Varma) to ask him to give her a son right now.  Kashyapa explains that it is an inauspicious time and any child conceived might turn out to be a demon who will threaten the entire universe, but Diti is really insistent, so he goes along with it.  And the next morning he angrily announces that Diti has conceived demonic twins who will threaten the entire universe.  When the twins are born they are taken away to be taught by the sage Shukra (Also Dinesh Varma), the guru of the asuras.

 Hiranyaksha (Sanchit Wartok) and Hiranyakashipu (Aditya Raj Sharma) grow up to be powerful leaders, spreading terror across the land. Hiranyaksha decides to provoke Lord Vishnu (Uplaksh Kochhar) by kidnapping the Earth goddess Bhumi (Nehal Pandey.)  Vishnu incarnates as the great boar Varaha, who rescues Bhumi form the bottom of the ocean and defeats Hiranyaksha in a great duel across the earth, sea, and space.  

 

Hiranyakashipu is furious, but Shukra tells him that he's no match for Vishnu, and advises him to perform penance in order to gain enough merit to gain a boon from Brahma (Abhishek Sharma).  Hiranyakashipu takes his advice, and spends years performing a penance that is so powerful that it threatens the world, so Brahma appears to grant the boon.  Hiranyakashipu has his carefully considered wording ready, asking for great spiritual and temporal power, and that he could not be killed by any of Brahma's creations, whether god mortal or beast, by any weapon or by hand, indoors or outside, during the day or the night, on Earth or in the heavens.  The overly specific boon is granted, and Hiranyakashipu goes on to conquer the world and the heavens, capturing the gods and proclaiming himself ruler of the universe.

However, during the penance, Lord Indra (Dixoan Shah) was worried about potential heirs to the throne of the Asuras, and kidnapped Hiranyakashipu's pregnant wife Kayadhu (Priyanka Bhandari), placing her in the custody of Sage Narad (Harish Moily), who teaches her to pray to Vishnu.  

Years later Hiranyakashipu has recovered his family and now rules the universe, devoting himself to punishing Vishnu's worshipers in his free time, but his five year old son Prahlad (Haripriya Matta) is gentle, saintly, and absolutely devoted to Vishnu, despite his father's best efforts.  Prahlad absolutely will not renounce his devotion, leading to an ever escalating feud between father and son.  Finally a frustrated Hiranyakashipu orders his son's execution, but the boy is protected by the power of Vishnu, and as the attempted executions become more and more elaborate, it becomes clear that Vishnu will have to incarnate once again, this time as the lion-man Narsimha (Harjeet Walia) for a final battle between good and evil.

 One advantage of using animation to make this sort of movie is scale; the action can be as big as the original stories demand.  the action here is huge; in an early battle Hiranyaksha personally destroys a fleet of flying battleships and it's a footnote, something he does on the way to the main event.  The final battle between Narashimha and Hiranyakashipu is epic, and surprisingly gory.  The movie absolutely delivers in terms of spectacle.

However, while the violence is spectacular, it isn't the main focus.  This is a story about faith, but it's also a story about resistance, and the real battle is the battle of wills between father and son.  And of course the outcome is never in question - Hiranyakashipu is a fine mustache twirling villain, but Prahlad is almost terrifying in his simple devotion and his determination to persist even when the entire world is apparently against him.  It's as much a character piece as it is an epic.

Some kissing, but not a lot of France.

 

Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari (2025) is not a close adaptation of the Hollywood movie French Kiss, but there are strong similarities.  Sunny has the same basic premise, this time with two people pretending to be a couple in order to win back their respective exes, but it does ask another question:  What if they were jerks?

"Jerks" may be a bit strong.  Sunny (Varun Dhawan) is kind of immature, but he is genuinely heartbroken when his girlfriend Ananya (Sanya Malhotra) turns down his Bahubali-themed proposal because she doesn't feel ready for marriage, and he's even more heartbroken when he learns that she's now engaged to the immensely rich and handsome Vikram (Rohit Saraf).  He mopes for a while, then does some digging and learns that Vikram has also recently broken up with his girlfriend of twelve years, Tulsi (Janhvi Kapoor).  

Tulsi is a schoolteacher who always considered herself plain and boring, and Vikram's terrible family have never approved of her.  She's absolutely devastated by the break-up, though she struggles to put on a brave face.  And then she meets Sunny, who lays out the obvious (if terrible) plan: Sunny and Tulsi will pretend to be a couple who are "accidentally" staying at the same resort where Vikram and Ananya are holding their wedding, and the exes will be so jealous that they call of the wedding and comer back to their former loves.

They set off, with Sunny's best friend Bantu (Abhinav Sharma) in tow, and the plan actually works really well; Vikram and Ananya are properly befuddled, and Sunny and Tulsi keep getting invited to the wealthy couple's many, many wedding functions, making them very jealous over the course of three musical numbers.

Both Tulsi and Sunny are aware that they're being very manipulative, and Ananya and Vikram are both nice people.  Our protagonists are interfering with a wedding, which can have real social consequences, rather than seeing off a nasty gold-digger.  On the other hand it is an arranged wedding rather than a love match; Vikram and Ananya are still getting to know each other, so they don't know about things like Vikram's potentially fatal allergy to fish.

If you have ever seen a movie before, you can probably guess how this is going to end, and especially if the movie you've seen was Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna.  This is a very Karan Johar sort of movie (though Johar only produced this one, and makes a cameo appearance) so there will be plenty of noble self sacrifice, longing glances, silly bickering, and references to other movies.  I am a fan of old school Karan Johar movies, so I am here for that.

However, there's an issue.  Tulsi and Sunny are aware that they're manipulating people and breaking up a wedding for their own purposes, but they're still doing it.  And even after they inevitably fall for one another (without telling each other, because that would make things too simple) they continue to disrupt the wedding, hoping to provide each other with a happy ending.  I honestly preferred Vikram and Ananya.

But the character I was really invested in was Rakhi (Manini Chadha), the wife of Vikram's brother Param (Akshay Oberoi).   Rakhi was a gifted fashion designer before giving up her career to please her mother-in-law (Monika Kohli), and she's been offered a prestigious internship in Paris but the family won't let her go.  It's a heartbreaking little subplot that the movie never properly resolves.