Oh Darling! Yeh Hai India (1995) is two movies for the price of one. The first movie stars Deepa Sahi (last seen around these parts as Maya Memsaab,
and yes, she does keep her clothes on this time) as a prostitute with a
heart of gold who decides to take the night off. She quickly picks up a
starving, homeless aspiring actor with a heart of gold (Shahrukh Khan)
and makes a deal with him: She’ll buy him food if he can show her a
good time. (As in “entertain her”, but the thematic implications are
certainly there.) She is quickly given the name “Miss India”, but the
actor is never named, so I’ll just call the character “Shahrukh”.
The second film stars Amrish Puri as Don Quixote, an insane criminal mastermind with a heart of . . . well, not gold exactly, but he does occasionally show concern for someone other than himself. Quixote is dreaming the impossible dream; he loves India so much that he wants to possess it, and he has a needlessly complicated scheme to make his dream come true. The Prime Minister of India has just resigned in disgrace, leaving the country in the hands of the President (Anupam Kher). Quixote just happens to have five surgically created duplicates of the President handy. Of course, he only needs one, so he kills them off at random with the Remote Control of Doom until there’s only one left. (They don’t actually call it the Remote Control of Doom, but that’s what it is - it’s a remote that can disintegrate people or start riots or blow up buildings at the touch of a button. No would-be ruler of India who is named after the protagonist of a four hundred year old Spanish novel should be without one.)
At first the two plots are completely independent, but they do begin to intersect - Miss India and Shahrukh are pursued by the “Son of Don” (Javed Jaffrey), who takes his costume and dance style from Michael Jackson’s fedora era, and who is as desperate to possess Miss India as his father is to possess the country. Later, Shahrukh and Miss India literally stumble into Don Quixote’s scheme, and Shahrukh is the only one to notice the President being replaced. After seeing this, the pair quite sensibly run away for more dark comedy and social commentary, but they can’t help but be dragged into the nefarious plot yet again, all leading up to a climactic and completely over-the-top confrontation that makes Mr. India look like a regency tea party.
Having watched Oh Darling, I am 99% sure that, while leaving the theatre after a showing of The Mark of Zorro, future writer/director Ketan Mehta saw his parents brutally murdered by an overly subtle metaphor, and has devoted his life to making sure that no one ever meets the same fate. Early in the film it becomes clear that Miss India is a symbol for India as a nation just as “Shahrukh“ is a symbol for the common Indian man, and at first the metaphor is handled very subtly. By the end, though, the villains are trying to ravish Miss India on stage while simultaneously selling the country to the highest bidder, and you know, we get it. No need to spell out the metaphor any further.
All of which leads to the real duality of Oh Darling! Yeh Hai India; it’s not just a completely wild and over-the-top action movie, it’s a wild and over-the-top action movie with pretensions. Don Quixote has a snake tattooed onto his bald head, but he also has a mirrored room where each of the film’s villains go to soliloquize and reveal their respective psychological dysfunctions. Shahrukh engages in complex metaphorical discussions with Miss India, and he also uses a fire hose as a weapon.
While the effect is decidedly uneven, it’s also strikingly original. Oh Darling! is full of things I’ve never seen onscreen before, and the plot avoids many of the old Bollywood and Hollywood clichés. The film is never as smart as it wants to be, but it’s certainly entertaining.
The second film stars Amrish Puri as Don Quixote, an insane criminal mastermind with a heart of . . . well, not gold exactly, but he does occasionally show concern for someone other than himself. Quixote is dreaming the impossible dream; he loves India so much that he wants to possess it, and he has a needlessly complicated scheme to make his dream come true. The Prime Minister of India has just resigned in disgrace, leaving the country in the hands of the President (Anupam Kher). Quixote just happens to have five surgically created duplicates of the President handy. Of course, he only needs one, so he kills them off at random with the Remote Control of Doom until there’s only one left. (They don’t actually call it the Remote Control of Doom, but that’s what it is - it’s a remote that can disintegrate people or start riots or blow up buildings at the touch of a button. No would-be ruler of India who is named after the protagonist of a four hundred year old Spanish novel should be without one.)
At first the two plots are completely independent, but they do begin to intersect - Miss India and Shahrukh are pursued by the “Son of Don” (Javed Jaffrey), who takes his costume and dance style from Michael Jackson’s fedora era, and who is as desperate to possess Miss India as his father is to possess the country. Later, Shahrukh and Miss India literally stumble into Don Quixote’s scheme, and Shahrukh is the only one to notice the President being replaced. After seeing this, the pair quite sensibly run away for more dark comedy and social commentary, but they can’t help but be dragged into the nefarious plot yet again, all leading up to a climactic and completely over-the-top confrontation that makes Mr. India look like a regency tea party.
Having watched Oh Darling, I am 99% sure that, while leaving the theatre after a showing of The Mark of Zorro, future writer/director Ketan Mehta saw his parents brutally murdered by an overly subtle metaphor, and has devoted his life to making sure that no one ever meets the same fate. Early in the film it becomes clear that Miss India is a symbol for India as a nation just as “Shahrukh“ is a symbol for the common Indian man, and at first the metaphor is handled very subtly. By the end, though, the villains are trying to ravish Miss India on stage while simultaneously selling the country to the highest bidder, and you know, we get it. No need to spell out the metaphor any further.
All of which leads to the real duality of Oh Darling! Yeh Hai India; it’s not just a completely wild and over-the-top action movie, it’s a wild and over-the-top action movie with pretensions. Don Quixote has a snake tattooed onto his bald head, but he also has a mirrored room where each of the film’s villains go to soliloquize and reveal their respective psychological dysfunctions. Shahrukh engages in complex metaphorical discussions with Miss India, and he also uses a fire hose as a weapon.
While the effect is decidedly uneven, it’s also strikingly original. Oh Darling! is full of things I’ve never seen onscreen before, and the plot avoids many of the old Bollywood and Hollywood clichés. The film is never as smart as it wants to be, but it’s certainly entertaining.
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