Bhooty Call - Om Shanti Om

Unlike most of this month's movies, Om Shanti Om (2007) is not a horror movie in any way, shape or form.  It's a masala flick, a heady mix of comedy, romance, reincarnation revenge melodrama, and enthusiastic celebration of all things Bollywood.  It makes the cut because it also features the rare Reverse Scooby Doo, in which our scrappy heroes fake a haunting in order to scare Old Man Mehra into confessing to a murder.

Om Prakash Makhija (Shahrukh Khan) is a "junior artist", an extra who makes his living through bavkground parts in the glsmourous world of 1970's Bollywood.  He has a loyal best friend, Pappu (Shreyas Talpade), a loving and overdramatic mother (Khiron Kher), and a dream.  One day he will be a big star, live in a big house, and get to meet Shanti (Deepika Padukone), the famous actress that he worships from afar. 

 Om gets the chance to meet Shanti sooner than he expected, when there's a fire on set and he leaps through the flames to rescue her.  She's grateful, and agrees to spend one evening with him.  With Pappu's help, he pulls out all the stops, and arranges a magical evening on an empty set.  Shanti is delighted, and they part as friends.

But Shanti has a secret; she's secretly married to producer Mukesh Mehra (Arjun Rampal).  When Om finds out, he's heartbroken, but lets her go and, after a sad song, throws himself into his acting.

Unfortunately, Mukesh also has a secret: he's engaged to another producer's daughter, and can't have Shanti around to spoil things.  She pleads with him to reconsider, but it goes badly.  Really badly.

Mukesh burns the set down with Shanti inside, then as he leaves sends some goons to make sure she doesn't escape.  Om turns up at just the right time, tries to save her, is beaten by the goons, burned, blown up, and then hit by a car.  he dies.

And thirty years later, Om Kapoor is a big star living in a big house.  Life is great, apart from his severe pyrophobia and the crazy old lady who keeps showing up at his film shoots claiming to be his mother. 

And then Om goes to a film shoot at an abandoned studio that burned down thirty years ago, and meets his father's old friend Mukesh, and the memories of his last life all come flooding back.  He tracks down his previous mother and Pappu, and they come up with a plan.  Om will recruit Mukesh to produce the film he abandoned thirty years ago, then they will use a duplicate Shanti to convince him he's being haunted, driving him to confess to her murder.  And soon enough they find their duplicate Shanti when clumsy, start struck Sandy (also Deepika Padukone) auditions for the lead.

Writer-director Farah Khan clearly loves Bollywood, and this movie is stuffed with all the things she loves about it.  In all my years of watching Bollywood, this is the Bollywoodest bit of Bollywood that I have ever witnessed.  And it is well made.  Khan made her name as a choreographer, and the dance numbers are frequent and lively and shot with a choreographer's eye; the last number recaps the entire plot so far in a splashy Broadway style number which doubles as an exemplar of "I know what you did and I'm gonna get ya" because she's Farah Khan, and she can do that. 

And then there's Shahrukh Khan.  Khan is a gifted actor, but he rarely has a chance to demonstrate that fact; people want to see his carefully crafted persona, and so that is what he delivers.  Fortunately, he's really, really good at delivering his carefully crafted persona, and Om Shanti Om was written to play to his strengths.  SRK deserves some special credit for the celebrity cameo-filled song "Deewangi Deewangi", which requires him to establish distinct relationships with thirty one different celebrities, all in the space of a few seconds each, while dancing.  He manages to communicate a lot through small gestures.

Om Shanti Om is packed with the things I love about late Nineties/early Oughts Bollywood, and manages to cram in most of my favorite actors in the bargain.  It's one Johny Lever cameo short of the full experience.