John Woo presents Jane Austen's 'Persuasion'

 If you're looking for a Bollywood Christmas movie, pickings are decidedly slim.  There's Bada Din, which is fantastic and which I reviewed years ago, and there's Hide & Seek, an okayish slasher movie featuring a killer Santa prowling through a deserted shopping mall, but after that you have to settle for vaguely Christmas adjacent movies like Dilwale (2015), set in largely Christian Goa, in which Christmas lasts just long enough to rip off a scene from Love, Actually.

 

Let's start with Veer (Varun Dhawan.)  Veer works as a mechanic in the garage owned by his brother Raj (Shah Rukh Khan.)  Veer is a simple soul; he likes fast cars and . . . well, that's pretty much it.  Fast cars.  Until, that is, he meets Ishita (Kriti Sanon), and immediately falls in love.

One night while out on the town the pair run afoul of a gang of drug dealers.  Veer beats them up, but later they ambush him and beat him badly enough to put him in the hospital.  At which point his older brother Raj, gentle, responsible Raj, covers his face, tracks the drug dealers to their lair, beats them all up, then burns their merchandise.  When the goons say that they work for King (Boman Irani) and he'll have his revenge, Raj tells them to look for Kaali.

And we flash back fifteen years to an unnamed city in Bulgaria, where two crime cartels are battling for control of the city, one run by Dev Malik (Kabir Bedi) and one by Randhir Bakshi (Vinod Khanna) and his son and right hand man, Kaali (SRK).  

During a car chase, Kaali accidentally hits a woman named Meera Dev Malik (Kajol) with his car, and if you noticed her surname, you're paying more attention than Kaali is.  Kaali is fascinated by her, and she is surprisingly open-minded about the whole "brutal gangster" thing, so he wages a full Shah Rukh Khan charm offensive and apparently wins her over. 

 

It's obviously a trick.  Meera is Dev Malik's daughter, and ambushes Kaali and his men during a gold shipment.  On a whim, she leaves him alive.  Soon after, he saves her from falling off a cliff (long story) and she falls for him. Will she be able to win him back?  Yes, thanks to the most expensive musical number in Bollywood history.  They resolve to tell their respective fathers about the relationship, and it goes badly.

 

The movie flashes forward to 2015 Goa.  Veer wins Ishita's heart thanks to the aforementioned scene from Love, Actually and the nice young couple decide to tell their respective family, starting with Raj.  Raj is delighted, and goes to meet with Ishita's sister to formalize the proposal, only to discover that the sister is Meera.  The young lovers find themselves suddenly star-crossed, and since it is really, really obvious that Raj and Meera have a history together, they resolve to get their older siblings to fall in love . . . again. What could possibly go wrong?

Let me deal with my Festivus grievances before I get to my Christmas delight.  Boman Irani is a fine actor, more than capable of playing a genuinely menacing character.  That's not what he does here; King is a buffoon who is consistently played for laughs, and because he's the designated villain for the Goan sections of the story, that undercuts a lot of tension.

More seriously, because we see the flashbacks almost entirely from Raj's perspective, we understand his perspective and actions in a way that Meera can't, which means that he comes across as noble and self-sacrificing, while she seems like a terrible person.  The fact that she is still somewhat sympathetic is entirely due to the strength of Kajol's performance.

 

And that leads me to the Christmas delight.  The plot may be a bit muddled at times, but the cast is stellar.  I would happily pay good money to see Shah Rukh and Kajol read the phone book together.  It's not just their well-publicized chemistry; the pair work best when they are playing grown-ups with grown-up concerns, balancing their responsibilities with their love lives.  It gives the relationship more weight than you get when Shah Rukh is cast opposite a youngster like Anushka Sharma or Deepika Padukone.

The first time I watched Dilwale, it struck me as a version of Romeo and Juliet gone wrong.  On a second viewing, though, it seems more like something out of Jane Austen.  He's too proud, she's too quick to judge, and they're both missing a key piece of information which will help them unravel their competing priorities.  More gunfights than you usually see in Austen, though.

Actors never stay in the jeep.

 Sometimes you can just look at a character in a movie and see that they're doomed.  In Main Khiladi Tu Anari (1994), that character is Arjun Joglekar (Mukesh Khanna, who will always be Shaktimaan to me.)  Arjun is an incorruptible supercop and thorn in the side of drug kingpin Goli (Shakti Kapoor.)  He's also a devoted family man, with a wife (Beena Banerjee) that he just learned is pregnant, and a spunky younger sister, Shivangi (Raageshwari).  And of course he's in a big budget Bollywood movie, but played by an actor who is mostly known for his television work.  He's doomed.

Goli asks bar dancer Mona (Shilpa Shetty) to lure Arjun to her apartment and offer him a bribe.  She does, and Arjun refuses the money and delivers a lecture about honor and duty which, to be fair, is exactly what Shaktimaan would do. And then Goli and his henchmen walk in the door and kill him.  Traditionally, the actual hero (usually another cop) enters the movie at this point, vows to take care of his fallen comrade's family, and spends the rest of the movie seeking justice and maybe finding love in his spare time.  And that's exactly what happens here.

Said actual hero is Arjun and Shivagi's brother Karan (Akshay Kumar), who is also an incorruptible supercop, but he's played by a film actor so he's probably safe.  Karan quickly convinces Mona to testify against Goli, but before that can happen Goli uses a helicopter to sneak up on them and shoots her dead.  And even though Karan saw the whole thing, Goli is too powerful and connected to be charged with a crime without hard evidence.  (The testimony of a police officer who witnessed everything directly isn't enough.)

While he waits for another chance to take down Goli, Karan busies himself with actual police work, and by actual police work I mean he hears about a corrupt and mob-connected film producer assaulting aspiring actresses, so he goes to the man's office and beats him to a bloody pulp.  Film star Deepak Kumar (Saif Ali Khan) happens to be there to see the beating, and he thinks that Karan is so incredibly cool that he must play him in a movie.  Deepak makes arrangements to shadow a reluctant Kumar in order to research the character.

Meanwhile, Kumar stumbles across Basanti (also Shilpa Shetty), a street performer who happens to look exactly like Mona.  Suddenly Deepak is useful!  Deepak trains Basanti to impersonate Mona, then they install her in Mona's old job and apartment so that she can spy on Goli's organization.

(Side note - Basanti is very obviously based on Hema Malini's performance as Geeta in the long lost twin drama Seeta Aur Geeta; she dresses like Geeta, speaks like Geeta, and even even threatens to demolish a police station like Geeta.  However, she's named after Malini's character in Sholay.)

And while Basanti is risking her life in the figurative lion's den, Karana nd Deepak . . . mostly muck about and engage in buddy comedy hijinks.  There's a lot of bickering, and each man has his own deeply problematic romantic arc.  Shivangi is a Deepak Kumar fan, but they only realize how big a fan she is when she cuts herself badly while trying to carve his name into her hand.  Apparently this level of extreme devotion is just what Deepak is looking for in a woman, because before long they're talking about marriage.  Karan is an obstacle, but Deepak tries to deal with the problem by tricking Karan into falling in love with Basanti, a plan which revolves around getting Karan drunk and then, in the morning, convincing him that he had taken advantage of Basanti.  It's . . . it's not good.  Shaktimaan would not approve.

Dysfunctional courtship is kind of a hallmark of mid nineties Bollywood, and, as usual, once the respective relationships are established with their respective dance numbers, the characters start acting like relatively reasonable people again.  It does take a little while to get there, though.

Icky romance isn't the only nineties trope on display here.  The plot is lifted from an American movie that I haven't seen (The Hard Way), the film meanders from genre to genre, there's a board meeting of international criminals, Goli has a right hand man with a distinctive look and a stupid haircut, and Johny Lever, Kader Khan, and Shakti Kapoor all have significant roles.  (Much to my surprise, Shakti Kapoor isn't terrible here.)  It's like a microcosm of the Bollywood of nthe era; mostly big dumb fun, but there are elements that have not aged well at all. 

The fly who loved me.

 The reincarnation revenge drama, like the snake movie, is one of those subgenres you don't normally see outside of India.  (Sometimes reincarnation revenge dramas are snake movies!)  It's a fairly simple formula: our hero is brutally murdered, but he comes back in his next life to defend his loved ones and avenge his own death.  Of course, they tend to have the same problem.  It takes time for the reincarnated hero to grow up and get into revenge-taking shape, so no matter how you dress it up, in the end you have a virile young hero beating up an old guy.  Eega (2012) finds a way around the problem, though, and it is clever.

Nani (Nani), a poor but charming fireworks salesman, lives across the street from Bindu (Samantha), who works for a charity and creates micro-art in her spare time.  (All of this will be important later.)  Naturally he loves her, but she studiously ignores him.  He is convinced that she's just playing hard to get. (Ugh.)

Bindu's charity needs money, so she approaches suave businessman Sudeep (Sudeep).  Sudeep is happy to help, because he is a sexist creep who believes that he can have any woman in the world and who probably murdered his wife.  Sudeep doesn't just donate money; he hangs around and feigns interest in the charity's work, all to get closer to Bindu.  He is worried about Nani, though.  And he is right to be so, because Bindu really has been playing hard to get. (UUUUGHH.)

Before Bindu can tell Nani how she really feels, Sudeep's men kidnap him, and Sudeep steals his phone, reads Bindu's romantic text messages aloud, then kills him.  Fortunately, Nani is immediately reincarnated . . . as a housefly, which means it's time for a quick change of genre as Nani explores his strange new oversized world.  He eventually winds up in Sudeep's office, though, and immediately regains his memory, so it's time for REVENGE!

Or not.  The tiny fly literally bounces off Sudeep.  Nani settles for an ongoing campaign of harassment, leaving Sudeep twitchy and paranoid.  But despite his best efforts (including a car crash), it's clear that he's going to need some help.  Thanks to Bindu's powerful magnifying equipment (because micro-art) and some spirited gestures, Nani explains who he is and what happens to him, and Bindu immediately joins Team Kill Sudeep. She makes him tiny armor and weapons, there's a training montage, and I suddenly find myself wondering exactly who the target audience for this movie is.

For the most part, Nani's crusade against Sudeep is played for laughs; it's more Tom and Jerry than The Punisher.  Nani's early experiences as a fly are very light-hearted and filled with wonder as well as danger.  And there's a light framing story in the opening credits, with a father telling the tale of the bad man and the fly to his young daughter.  And yet the hero is murdered onscreen, Nani and Bindu are planning to kill Sudeep, and the final confrontation is brutal and bloody.  Is this a particularly violent kid's movie, or an unusually whimsical action movie?  I don't know.

What I do know is that Eega manages to neatly sidestep the "beating up an old guy" problem.  You can't help but be the underdog when you're a literal housefly.

Legal action!

 Bollywood is better known, but the Telugu film industry produces some of the most innovative and exciting films in India, often kicking off major cinematic trends for the subcontinent; Bollywood is still trying to make its own Baahubali, and many new Bollywood pictures are remakes of Tollywood films.  Tollywood has a reputation for films of epic scale and high quality . . . now.  Vicky Dada (1989) comes from a different time.

Vikram (Nagarjuna) is a young, idealistic law student.  He'd better be idealistic; his mother Srividya (Srividya), a judge, raised him to respect the law and seek justice whenever he can.  Vikram does have a bit of a temper, especially when his girlfriend Shyamlee (the incomparable Juhi Chawla) is threatrened.  But I'm sure this will have no negative consequences.

Shyamlee is called away to tend to her ailing sister in America.  Vikram graduates, and immediately begins work as a prosecutor.  His first case (tried in front of his mother, which is far from the worst conflict of interest in a courtroom scene in this movie) involves Savitri (Radha), who has been accused of prostitution.  Vikram wins easily, because he is good at lawyering, but when he realizes that Savitri was framed as part of a land grab masterminded by corrupt politician Ranganatha Rao (Ranganath), he pays her fine and uses his lawyering skills to stop the land grab.

Thwarted, Rao calls on crimelord Prabhakar (Tiger Prabhakar) for help.  Prabhakar sends his goons, one of them kills a guy, and Vikram vows to bring the killer to justice.  Prabhakhar uses his corrupt influence to threaten the eyewitnesses, and the goon is set free.  Vikram doesn't give up, though.  He and his sister, the plucky aspiring reporter Rekha (Vara Lakshmi), team up to find out more about him.  Unfortunately, Rekha decides to break into Prabhakar's evil lair and film him.  She's caught and kidnapped, but not before she mails a cassette tape to Vikram, revealing what's happened.

Vikram has Prabhakar arrested, and prosecutes the case.  (Again, in front of his mother, which also means that both the prosecutor and judge are related to the victim.  And yet that's still not the worst example of conflict of interest in the movie.)  Prabhakar gets off, thanks to some genuinely ridiculous legal trickery, and because Vikram was provoked into throttling the defense counsel, he's suspended.  Vikram declares that he doesn't want to be a lawyer anymore anyway, and runs off to become a violent (but stylish) vigilante.

Vigilante stuff happens.  Vikram and his dog wage war on Prabhakar's criminal empire, beating up vast quantities of henchmen and picking off the gang's lieutenants one by one, then using his lawyer skills to get off scot-free. Yes, I'm kind of glossing over the vigilante action, but the movie does as well, because surprise!  This is actually a romance!  Shyamlee returns from America and wants to continue their relationship, but Vikram dispenses justice on a freelance basis now, and feels he no longer has anything to offer her, so he pushes her away.  Savitri, meanwhile, has fallen hard for the man who has saved her so many times.  It's a good old fashioned love triangle, with occasional action scenes.

About halfway through Vicky Dada, I realized that it's probably not a very good movie.  The plot doesn't really make sense, the action scenes are enthusiastic but sloppy, the court scenes are enthusiastic but really sloppy, the dance numbers are phantasmagoric, and why does Prabhakhar have a jeep with an infinite number of rockets, anyway?  More seriously, the movie indulges in some of my least favorite eighties Indian movie tropes, particularly the hero's sister meeting a dire end in order to motivate the hero.

And yet, bad movie or not, I was glues to the screen the whole time.  Maybe it's the fantastic cast, who treated the wobbly material with a respect that it may or may not have deserved.  Maybe it's the sheer enthusiasm of the thing.  Maybe I just wanted to see what the hell the dancers would be wearing in the next number.  Whatever the reason, Vicky Dada is possibly bad but definitely watchable.

This is a Yama fanblog now. Time I admitted it.

I've joked before about the Yama Cinematic Universe, but Yamaho Yama (2012) takes the joke one step further; an early scene involves a brief flashback to the events of Yamadonga.  The rest of the movie doesn't really follow through, of course.  There's no real connection between the two films, apart from Yama and Chitragupta.  Still, Cinematic Universe or not, this is one of Yama's nest outings in terms of character development.

This time, Yama (Srihari) is introduced in an action scene, attempting to collect the soul of a very powerful and evil undead CGI ascetic.  It's a puzzle fight of the sort that Hercules used to get into; Yama has the full use of his divine powers (including heat vision, apparently), but he has to use the right power in the right way to stop his undead opponent from continually coming back to life. Once that's sorted, Yama heads back to Yamalok and sings a song about how he's really great, and also he treats all humans equally in the end, no matter who they are.  This will be important later.

Meanwhile, Yama's wife (Sithara) has a problem.  All of the other goddesses have been teasing her because Yama has no mortal worshipers.  Yama gently explains that he's the god of death, and so the living want to keep him as far away as possible.  She's not convinced, but they are interrupted by the sound of a young boy on Earth offering prayers to Yama.  Suddenly he has a devotee after all.

The boy grows into Balu (Sairam Shankar), who is also introduced with an action scene, wrestling a bad CGI leopard in order to save a little girl, and then performing a dance number with the leopard in order to convince it to save itself and go back to the jungle.  (This will not be important later.)

After the leopard wrestling, Balu's grandmother (Rama Prabha) insists on shipping him off to America - not actual America, of course.  This is Filmi America, where the Statue of Liberty is in California, Las Vegas is a few minutes away, the city is a mix of beaches and shopping malls, and every important character speaks fluent Telugu.  Balu is a charming scoundrel, so he's soon living (platonically) with the beautiful, rich, and clearly smitten Nisha (Sanjjanaa Galrani.)  And when I say clearly smitten, I mean an hour after meeting Balu she sings him a song about the various ways she would like him to touch her body.  It's about as subtle as an overly literal simile.  

Balu spends his days scamming the good citizens of Filmi America.  He briefly bonds with bright, beautiful and charitable medical student Swapna (Parvati Melton) over his devotion to Yama, but when she finds out that he's a conman, she's disgusted, and declares that any god should be ashamed to have a worshiper like him.  That's enough to start the other goddesses teasing Mrs. Yama again, so Yama must take action.  It's time to go . . . to America!

Yama and Chitragupta (M. S. Narayana) go to America.  Wackiness ensues; there are fish-out-of-water jokes, and Yama briefly dresses up as Batman.  More importantly, Yama discovers that Balu is indeed a scoundrel, but he has a good heart and is absolutely sincere in his Yama-worship.  Yama decides that the best way to reform Balu's character is to marry him off to a good woman, so he arranges for the God of Love to make Balu fall for Swapna.  (The business with the Love God is kind of pointless, honestly, because Balu already had a thing for Swapna.  Nisha never really stood a chance.)

After some work, Balu finally manages to charm Swapna.  The problem is that Swapna has an admirer back in India.  Jinda is a bloodthirsty thug who is methodically killing all the men in Swapna's village in order to eliminate the competition.  Swapna returns to India in order to stop the bloodshed.  Balu follows her, because he's the hero and that's what the hero does.  Balu issues a bold challenge to Jinda, but he is destined to die, and Yama cannot help him since he is bound to treat all humans equally, as was clearly established in his first song.  (See, I told you it would be important.)

The special effects in Yamaho Yama are not great.  The jokes are pleasantly dumb.  The performances are really broad.  But the character of Yama himself is pretty interesting.  As always, Yama is bold, boisterous, and clever rather than smart.  However, unlike other Yama movies, he's never treated as an antagonist.  He's always rooting for Balu, and forms a genuine bond with his lone devotee, but cannot and will not let that keep him from his duty.  In other words, Yama has an actual character arc for once, rather than just moving the plot along.  It's a refreshing change.

Family drama. With dacoits.

Amitabh Bachchan rose to stardom in the early Seventies playing a series of angry young men, virtuous heroes fighting a lonely, doomed battle against societal injustice and a corrupt system.  Young Amitabh wasn't always angry, though; his character in Zameer (1975) is downright jolly at times, a charming rogue with a heart of gold fighting his own con gone wrong, along with the occasional bandit.

Millionaire Maharaj Singh (Shammi Kapoor) loves horses and guns, but he really really loves his wife Rukmini (Indrani Mukherjee) and their three year old son Chimpoo (Master Chimpoo.)  It's hard to find really competent staff, so when a group of bandits attack his stud farm, he's forced to defend it himself.  And he does, shooting and killing one of the bandits in the process.

 Unfortunately, the bandit he killed was the son of bandit leader Maan Singh (Madan Puri), who takes his revenge by kidnapping little Chimpoo.  Maharaj and Rukmini spend the next twenty years grieving; the film indicates the passage of time with a montage of untouched birthday cakes.  At this point, Rukmini has serious heart problems, and Maharaj has stepped back from the business in order to care for her.

 And the film cuts to Badal (Bachchan), who has just been released from prison.  Badal is bright, charming, and deeply cynical.  He claims that he'll do anything for money, but almost the first thing he does onscreen is steal from the rich and give to the poor.  Badal has a definite talent with guns and horses, and he is definitely not Chimpoo, because he doesn't have Chimpoo's birthmark.

However, he's good enough for Ram Singh (Ramesh Deo), a disgruntled former employee of Maharaj's.  Ram Singh hatches a scheme to pass Badal off as Chimpoo, then when the family's "long lost son" gets his hands on the family fortune, they can split the cash.  Badal doesn't have anything better to do, so he agrees.  The first step is to tattoo Badal with a copy of Chimpoo's birthmark.

Along the way, Badal meets a group of college students, and immediately falls for Smita (Sairu Banu.)  She's pretty taken with his singing and wild-horse-taming skills as well, but Badal has a job to do, so he makes his way to the stud farm.  He gets a job, and after some finagling manages to "accidentally" reveal his fake birthmark to Maharaj.  He is quickly recognized as the long lost son and heir.

But there's a problem.  Actually, two problems.  After spending time with Rukmini and Maharaj, Badal realizes how deeply wounded they are by the loss of their son, and how cruel this particular con really is.  And it turns out that Maharaj and Rukmini have a daughter as well - Smita.  Badal has a new and loving family, but he's lying to them, and he can't leave without breaking their hearts, and can't pursue the woman he loves because everybody thinks she's his sister.  He's trapped in his own con, and the only way out is to find the real Chimpoo.

While Bachchan's character is clearly the protagonist here, it's actually Shammi Kapoor who gets top billing.  And he probably deserves it, too; while Badal's character arc is pretty straightforward, Kapoor acts the hell out of his part as Generic Dad, infusing the character with a profound vulnerability.  This is silly escapism rather than cutting social drama, but the performances lend the movie a certain weight.

 

I would like to see them conquer the Martians, though.

 As an American, it's really hard for me to judge just how offensive Santa Banta Pvt Ltd (2016) is.  Santa and Banta are the "stars" of a series of jokes in India, rather like Sven and Ole in the Midwest.  At best, the Santa Banta jokes present the Sikh community as naive, boisterous, but ultimately brave and good-hearted hicks, which makes it a strange subject for a film.  The movie does open with a dedication to the Sikh community, and there's a lot of dialogue towards the end about how Sikhs are brave patriots who are the first to defend India, but our heroes are still naive, boisterous, but ultimately brave and good-hearted hicks.  

This Santa (Boman Irani) and Banta (Vir Das) are unemployed layabouts who spend their time drinking and crashing parties in search of free food.  After Santa is forcefully reminded of his lost love Billoo (Neha Dhupia), the pair resolve to reform and get honest jobs.  And they do!  They immediately get a job driving a truck . . . which turns out to be a front for liquor smuggling.  Santa and Banta are arrested, but are promptly bailed out by RAW agent Arvind (Vijay Raaz), who is in Punjab looking for two missing agents, codenamed Santa and Banta.

Arvind has the wrong Santa and Banta.  He knows he has the wrong Santa and Banta, but he packs them off to Fiji anyway, mostly to annoy his boss Hanumanth (Tinnu Anand.)  Our heroes are supposed to be rescuing a kidnapped ambassador (Ayub Khan), but instead they sort of bumble around and annoy the various suspects (mostly Ram Kapoor and Neha Dhupia again), like Columbo if there were two of him and they both really were stupid.  Fortunately, actual and hyper-competent RAW agent Cutie (Lisa Haydon) and less competent but skilled supervisor Akbar (Sanjay Mishra) are there to watch over them.

They also keep running into another cultural stereotype; Nepali expat and aspiring crime lord Chooza (Johny Lever), who is convinced that Santa and Banta are there to capture him, and plans to stab them with his kukri.

There's a lot of plot in this movie, and none of it matters.  The movie is a vehicle for jokes, and some of them are funny.  The cast is full of veteran supporting actors; Boman Irani is the biggest name here, and he actually manages to give Santa a tiny bit of gravitas.

However, I don't think Santa and Banta being Santa and Banta really adds anything to the movie, apart from a sliver of name recognition.  It's a fish out of water comedy set in Fiji, and so the leads could be from literally anywhere in the world except for Fiji; dumb guys are a universal phenomenon, so there's no need to dabble in stereotypes.

I mean, with the price of meat what it is. When you get it. If you get it.

 Compile a list of Shakespeare's top five tragedies, and Titus Andronicus . . .probably won't be on it.  It's a brutal play, modeled on the revenge melodramas that were fashionable at the time, in which terrible people do terrible things and eventually meet a terrible fate.  The play has  bombastic and bloody charm, but it lacks a certain nuance when compared with, say, Hamlet.  The Hungry (2017) is a different story.

The film opens with a New Year's Eve party, attended by two families.  The Ahujas consist of wealthy patriarch Tathagat (Naseeruddin Shah), hapless son Sunny (Aejun Gupta) and spirited daughter Loveleen (Sayani Gupta).  The Ahujas are joined by Tathagat's right hand man Arun (Neeraj Kabi).  The Joshis, meanwhile, consist of widowed mother Tulsi (Tisca Chopra), golden child Ankur (Suraj Sharma), and her other son, Chirag (Antonio Aakeel).  The families are close; Tulsi is the daughter of Tathagat's old business partner, Ankur and Loveleen are in a relationship, and Sunny is nursing a hapless crush on Tulsi.  During the party, something goes terribly wrong, and Ankur is discovered dead, an apparent suicide.  

Two years later, Tathagat is released from prison (for white collar crimes) just in time to preside over the preparations for Sunny's and Tulsi's wedding.  Sunny is happy because he may be a coked-up loser, but he's finally landed the girl of his dreams and a place in the family business.  Tathagat is happy because Tulsi agreed to sign a very generous prenuptial agreement.  Loveleen is happy because her obnoxious boyfriend Bentley (Karan Pandit) is present.  And Tulsi is grimly determined, because she knows Tathagat is responsible for Ankur's death, and she and Arun have hatched a plan to wipe the Ahujas out.

Chirag is not a part of the revenge plan, and so Tulsi is horrified when he shows up at the wedding unannounced.  Before she has a chance to explain things to Chirag, he gets into an argument with Loveleen which ends in an act of horrifying, brutal violence.  (I am not kidding - I was genuinely horrified by the brutal violence.)  Tulsi asks Arun to send Chirag back to London while she cleans up his mess, but neither of them quite succeed.  Loveleen manages to leave a clue for her father, and he starts cooking up a revenge scheme of his own.

Meanwhile, the film keeps flashing back to the New Year's Eve party, revealing more and more of what actually happened to Ankur.  And there are several loving shots of fine food being carefully prepared, just to ensure that if you know Titus Andronicus at all, you know exactly where this is heading.

The Hungry isn't an exact adaptation of Shakespeare's play; the characters (apart from Ankur and Loveleen) are still terrible people doing terrible things, but they are motivated by more than the simple love of evil, and the film has some of the nuance that the play is lacking.  Making the Tamora equivalent the protagonist rather than Titus is also a new and interesting twist.

However, one thing the film and play definitely have in common is violence.  Not elegant, stylized violence, nasty and brutal violence perpetrated on helpless people, with graphic and lingering effects.  If you choose to watch this movie, be prepared.

Bhooty Call - Sardaar Ji

Normally, I like to end my annual Bhooty Call with something really scary, but this year the real world has been entirely scary enough for my tastes, so I'm going with something different.  After all, ghosts are exciting, but sometimes, they need to be busted.  That's when you call Sardaar Ji (2015.)

Bilal (Ali Kazmi) and Ruksana (Anita Kailey) live in London, or possibly Birmingham or Leicester - the geography isn't always clear.  They are rich and happy and blissfully in love, so their wedding is going to be a big event; the Queen is expected to attend, and they've booked a "castle" for the ceremony.

The problem is, the place is haunted.  However, the invitations have already been sent out, and the Queen has already accepted, so the wedding absolutely must happen at the appointed place and time in order to preserve the royal honour.  They try a team of American ghost hunters and an exorcist from Africa, but they fail.  It's clear that they need someone absolutely fearless, who won't ever quit once they've accepted the mission.  Obviously, they need a Sardar.

The Sardar in question, is Jaggi (Diljith Dosanjh), a highly efficient exorcist.  He can rid a building of a ghost in just a few minutes, forcing it into a bottle and carrying it home.  He actually keeps the bottled ghosts around and talks to them sometimes, often flirting with the ghost ladies, but he hasn't yet found that one special lady ghost that he can . . . keep in a bottle on the shelf and occasionally talk to.  Yeah.  Moving on.

(I think the intention here is to showcase that despite his bravado, Jaggi isn't confident around actual women.  Flirting with ghost girls is safer, because it can't lead to anything serious, while courting a living woman means making yourself emotionally vulnerable.  It's a bit clumsy, but I'll allow it for now.)

Despite his successful ghost busting business, Jaggi is happy to drop everything and fly to England in exchange for a large sum of money.  Jaggi enters the house,m but instead of the exotic English blonde ghost he was expecting, he meets and is immediately captivated by the beautiful and very Punjabi Pinky (Neeru Bajwa.)

 

Wait, wrong picture.

Pinky tries to drive him away, but Jaggi is experienced and persistent.  He tracks down Pinky's mother (Sunita Dhir) to learn all he can about her, then returns to try again to convince her to leave.  They settle into an uneasy truce, and Pinky agrees to leave if Jaggi will bring her a dancer named Jasmine Gill (Mandy Takhar.)

Jaggi finds Jasmine, and utterly fails to make a good first impression.  However, she teaches a salsa class, so he tries to sign up for her class.  She doesn't want to accept him as a student, both because the class has already started and because she thinks he's kind of a creep, but reluctantly agrees to let him join the class if he can demonstrate basic salsa proficiency.  Since he doesn't know salsa at all, that means it's back to Pinky for remedial salsa lessons.

 

When it comes time for the actual test, though, Jaggi chokes.  Salsa dancing involves touching an actual, living human girl, and he just can't do it. At the last minute he manages to save the situation with his bhangra skills, because there's no problem that can't be solved with judicious application of bhangra.  

 

Jaggi spins a story about learning salsa to impress his fiance, Lucy Spanish (you wouldn't know her.  She goes to a different school) and the lessons begin.  As Jaggi and Jasmine grow closer, he realizes that he has feelings for this actual, living human girl, and he feels terrible for lying to her.  Of course, Jasmine has been keeping secrets as well, especially about what happened to Pinky.

 

The supernatural elements take a back seat to relationship drama here.  The romantic triangle is a bit clumsy at times, and the "collecting ghost women like Pokemon", but the movie does do a good job of showing just how terrifying it can be to open yourself up and make a connection with a real person..

Bhooty Call - 1920 London

 1920 London (2016) is not exactly a sequel to 1920.  The movies in the 1920 franchise are unrelated stories, the only real connection being the basic premise of people being possessed by ghosts in a historical setting.  In this case, the historical setting is London in 1920, or at least London in a vague year which is supposed to be 1920 but includes costume and design elements drawn from the late Victorian era all the way to the early 1960s.  However, I don't think historical accuracy was a real priority.

 Newlyweds Shivangi (Meera Chopra) and Veer (Vishal Karwal), an honest to goodness Rajastani princess and prince, are happily settled in London.  Veer is just finishing up his law degree, and everything is wonderful. . . until a package from home arrives, containing a mysterious amulet.  Suddenly there are whispers in the night and shadows on the stairs, and everything takes a turn for the spooky.

 Now, I've seen a lot of these "possessed by a ghost movies: the original 1920, Bhoot, Raaz, Machli Jal Ki Rani Hai,  and those are just the ones that I can think of off the top of my head.  Most of them start in the same way; a young couple experience some sort of life change which results in the wife being left at home, at first everyone thinks she's going a bit Yellow Wallpaper, but it turns out that she's possessed, so her husband must team up with an unconventional spiritual advisor to drive out the angry spirit. It is a surprisingly gendered subgenre.

But that is not what happens here.  Veer hears strange noises at night and discovers an empty rocking chair, and Veer suddenly starts behaving strangely, eventually leaving him nearly comatose and wracked with extreme muscle spasms.  Shivangi rushes him to the hospital, and the doctors diagnose tetanus, but Shivangi's servant Kesar Maa (Sushmita Mukherjee) notices that all the portraits of Veer in the house have developed spooky blacked-out eyes, so she diagnoses ghost, and suspects that Veer's stepmother is responsible.

Shivangi returns to Rajastan to consult with her family, and the family hires a Tantric (Gajendra Chauhan), who attempts an intercontinental exorcism involving the secret shadow world that lies behind the mirror.  (Not a particular mirror, all mirrors.)  He fails, and tells the family to seek out a more powerful Tantric, Mewar Baba (Sharman Joshi.)  This is a problem, because back when Mewar Baba was plain old humble shepherd Jai Singh Gujjar, he was Shivangi's star crossed lover.  (This movie puts the "ex" into exorcist!)

Since the breakup involved Shivangi's testimony sending him to prison for a crime he did not commit, Jai is reluctant to help.  Shivangi eventually wins him over by reminding him that he would agree to help literally anybody else, and the pair are off to London.  In order for the exorcism to work, Shivangi must complete a series of dangerous rituals, but there's something Jai is not telling her, and she's not being entirely honest with him either.

I can't really say that the choice of which spouse gets possessed utterly transforms 1920 London; it definitely impacts the film, but in the end , the plot is fairly typical for a bhoot movie.  (Apart from the other big twist.)  Still, there are some decent scares here, including a very tense scene involving a lemon, and it is interesting to see which genre elements are played with, and which ones are played straight.

Bhooty Call - Saboot

The Ramsay family made their name in Bollywood with a string of low budget supernatural thrillers like Purana Mandir and Purani Haveli, movies which feature broad comedy, cheap props and costumes, and reasonably attractive young people trapped in a secluded location with an unconvincing supernatural monster.  Saboot (1980) is not one of those movies, despite the murderous ghost.

Newlyweds Asha (Vidya Sinha) and Vikas (Vinod Mehra) are enjoying a bit of morning canoodling when Vikas gets a call from his old friend Anand (Navin Nischol).  Anand is leaving the country, but invites Vikas to fly out and meet him before he goes.  Vikas agrees, but his plane crashes and there are no survivors.

After his death, the factory he owned and managed reverts back to his father in law, Dharamdas (Trilok Kapoor).  Shady businessman Dhanraj (Prem Chopra) wants to buy the factory, but at the last minute Dharamdas cancels the sale, deciding to keep the factory in the family as a monument to his son in law.

Dhanraj is not the type to take no for an answer, though.  When Dharamdas is on a business trip, Dhanraj boards the train, accompanied by four of Dharamdas's employees, Manmohan (Roopesh Kumar), Ashok (Narendra Nath), and Rita (Padma Khanna).  They force him to sign over the factory, then stab him and bury him in a shallow grave in the jungle.  Rita notices that he's not quite dead yet, and warns the others that when someone is buried alive, their spirit will return to take revenge.  They don't listen.

Years pass.  Asha's younger sister Kaajal (Kaajal Kiran) is returning home when someone steals her purse.  Anand arrives, beats up a whole gang of goons in order to retrieve the purse, and introduces himself as Inspector Anand.  She is quickly won over by his doughy middle-aged charm, and soon they are engaged.

Meanwhile, Dhanraj is having a hard time sharing.  The other conspirators demand their share of the ill-gotten gains, and he reluctantly agrees to pay them off one at a time, starting with Manmohan.  Manmohan dies that night under mysterious circumstances, and Anand is called in to investigate.  All signs point to "Angry Ghost," but Anand instead suspects Ajit Roy (Om Shivpuri), long time employee and friend of the Dharamdas family.  Which does make things a little awkward.

 Despite the ghostly trappings, Saboot isn't really a horror story, it's a mystery.  It's not a very hard mystery, but it does rely on people making decisions that make no sense at all.  There's just as much cheese as in the Ramsays' more famous films, but it's cheese in the service of a different genre.

Bhooty Call - Go Goa Gone

 Go Goa Gone (2013) has a refrain of sorts; at various points in the film, our hapless slacker heroes stop and ask themselves "What do we know?  And what have we learned?"  Here's what I know: Go Goa Gone is a zombie movie with the soul of a stoner comedy, or possibly a stoner comedy with zombie trappings, or maybe it's a butterfly dreaming it's a man.  It is not a movie that feels obligated to respect genre boundaries, in any case.

Roommates Luv (Vir Das) and Hardik (Kunal Khemu) are having a bad week.  Luv has cleaned up his act, resolving to give up booze and drugs, focus on his job, and finally propose to his girlfriend Priyanka (Meenal Thakur), only to discover that she's been cheating on him the whole time.  Hardik, meanwhile, has embraced his hard partying lifestyle, only to be fired when the boss catches him smoking and (attempted) canoodling in the office.  They both need a break, and when they learn that responsible roommate Bunny (Anand Tiwari) is going to Goa on business, they invite themselves along.

In Goa, Luv meets Luna (Puja Gupta) and is immediately smitten.  And while Luna is not especially smitten in return, she does invite the boys to join her at a secret party being held on a nearby secluded island.  The party is hosted by Russian mobster Boris (Saif Ali Khan), who is using the party to launch  a new, experimental drug.  Most of the party-goers take the new drug, but Luv, Hardik, Bunny and Luna don't have the chance.  Which is just as well, because by morning all the people who took the drug have turned into zombies.

Our heroes are not really prepared for zombie fighting, though they do manage some small but hapless heroics before they are rescued by Boris, who cheerfully explains that "I keel dead people."  And if you've seen a zombie movie before, you've got as fair idea of what happens next.  They squabble.  They run from zombies.  Boris shoots a lot of zombies.  Luv nearly gets himself killed with a stupid plan he lifted from Shaun of the Dead.  Still, they have a goal: the gang reached the island by boat, so if they can reach the boat, everything will be fine.  Right?

Now, what have I learned?  Zombie movies have a reputation for nihilism.  The end of the world brings out the worst in people, strangers can't be trusted, you have to do whatever it takes to survive, and even then, some idiot is going to be zombiebit and not bother to tell anyone.  On the other hand, Go Goa Gone has all the gore and violence you'd expect from a zombie movie, but it somehow ends up much more optimistic than usual; yes, the hapless protagonists spend a lot of time bickering, but they still pull together, take risks to protect each other, and actually manage to grow and become better people in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.  It's not the sort of emotional arc you expect to see in this kind of film, but I will take it.

Bhooty Call - Petromax

 Petromax (2019) is a movie about a house.  It's quite a nice house, really; comfortable, well lit, and obviously well-loved.  Meera (Tamannaah) lives there with her father (K.S.G. Venkatesh), her little sister Nivetha (Monekha Siva), and household sort-of-servant Santosh (the IMDB has failed me again.)  They are a wonderful loving family, and blissfully happy, until they realize that the house is haunted, and soon after discover that actually, they are the ghosts.

Saravanam (Prem Kumar), who owns the house, wants to sell, but he can't get a good price because word of the apparent haunting has spread.  He's forced to rely on a quartet of unlikely ghostbusters: kindly bartender Senthil (Munishkanth), mild-mannered family man Thangam (Kaali Venkat), aspiring actor Kaali (TSK), and partially deaf security guard Nandha (Sathyan).  While the quartet are not especially brave or clever or competent, they each have a particular flaw that makes them hard to haunt:  Senthil has a heart condition and on the advice of his doctor he reverses his emotional reactions, laughing when scared and crying when happy; Thangam is a boozy Popeye, transforming into a fearless and not very smart macho man when drinking; Kaali responds to stress with movie dialogue and filmi bravado; and Nandha is not only hard of hearing, he has literal night blindness, so he can't see or hear anything the ghosts are doing.

The plot sounds simple, but that is because I am avoiding spoiling any of the big twists.  I will say that while the movie will quite gleefully use misdirection to conceal important plot points, everything makes sense in the end.  

Despite the twisty plot, though, Petromax is not a terribly deep or innovative film.  It's not really trying to be; it's just a horror comedy, light on the horror, heavy on the comedy.  Still, it's a good horror comedy, drawing much of its humor from an engaging cast of quirky human and ghostly characters, which gives even the sillier scenes a bit of emotional heft.

Bhooty Call 2020

 As if this year hasn't been terrifying enough, it's time for our annual Bhooty Call, a month long celebration of the ghosts of Bollywood (and other cinema of the subcontinent.)  Time to sweep out the haunted haweli, because we're having company.

Art films in SPAAAAACE!!!

Cargo (2019) is what they call blue collar science fiction: stories about guys in jumpsuits (and sometimes women in jumpsuits - Ellen Ripley is an exemplar of the type), in space, doing unglamorous work and dealing with isolation and the hostile nature of the void.  Sometimes blue collar science fiction heroes have to deal with killer aliens or talking bombs, sometimes they have to save the last forest in existence, and sometimes they are forced to watch cheesy movies and try to keep their sanity with the help of their robot friends.  And Cargo's jumpsuit clad working stiff is a rakshasa charged with managing the transition of human souls from one life to the next.

Prahastha (Vikrant Massey) has been alone on Pushpak 634A for a very long time, since shortly after the Human-Rakshasa peace treaty.  He leads a very structured and simple life; he greets the human souls (the "cargo") that appear on Pushpak 634A, heals them, erases their memories and sends them on to the next life, and he writes (and does not send) long letters to his lost love Mandakini (Konkona Sen Sharma.)  Life is simple.  And then supervisor Nitigya (Nandu Madhav) informs him that he's been assigned an assistant.

Yuvishka (Shweta Tripathi) doesn't make a great first impression; she's trained in the latest procedures, rather than Prahastha's practiced techniques, and worse, she's a fan.  But after a rocky start, the pair grow to respect and like one another, and start working together well.  And then a meteor storm hits and everything starts going wrong.

And that's basically the plot.  Which is okay; this movie is focused on character rather than action, and those characters mostly have long conversations.  It's slow and sweet and deeply strange, as our all too human rakshasa protagonists marvel at the range of humanity, from an overly focused businessman to Ranchandra Negi (Biswapati Sarkar), the International Loneliness Detective.  

While the International Loneliness Detective is only a very minor part of the plot, he does embody the movie's theme.  Everybody is looking for a connection to the people around them, and I appreciate the fact that the movie does not limit itself to romantic connections.  Yuvishka and Prahastha in particular have no romantic chemistry at all.  Instead, they're friends, and the movie treats that friendship as something that is important and worth fighting for.  In space, even a demon needs a friend sometimes.

A brief review of 'Bobby Jasoos'

 I'm a bit under the weather, but I had to say something about Bobby Jasoos, since it is quirky and delightful.  Expect a proper review next weekend.

It's no great secret that I love schmaltz, so it should come as no surprise that I loved Bobby Jasoos (2014), perhaps the cuddliest detective story I've ever encountered.  Vidya Balan is, as usual, effortlessly charming as Bobby, a middle-class spinster from Hyderabad who wants to become a private detective and pursues her dream through a combination of moxie, bloody-mindedness, and an unexpected knack for disguise.  Ali Farza plays Tasawur, her increasingly befuddled client and also possible love interest.  There is an actual mystery here, and it's handled well, but the real tension comes from Bobby's strained relationship with her father (Rajendra Gupta.)

This isn't a big, dramatic movie, it's small and intimate and character focused and a great deal of fun.

I hope the third movie has a Wolfman.

 Endhiran played a bit with superhero tropes, but at heart it was a movie about a scientist tampering in God's domain, a big budget Frankenstein for a new audience.  So it's no surprise that in the sequel, 2.0 (2018), our artificial man meets Dracula.  And by Dracula, I mean the vengeful ghost of a mild-mannered ornithologist, returned from beyond with the uncanny power to control cell phones.

 Doctor Vaseegaran (Rajnikanth) is still making robots, despite the disastrous robot rampage that ended the last movie, but this time he's being a bit more responsible; at the very least, Nila (Amy Jackson) is programmed with Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.  Nila is designed to be a "Nice, Intelligent Lovely Assistant," only mildly superhuman compared to her predecessor, Chitti (Rajnikanth), but much better at interacting with humans.  (Meanwhile, Vasee's long-suffering girlfriend Sana (Savitha Reddy) is miles away and only ever appears as a nagging voice on the phone, presumably so we don't notice that she isn't played by Aishwarya Rai anymore.)

And then every cell phone in Chennai suddenly activates and flies up into the sky, forming a huge flock of phones before vanishing into the upper atmosphere.  The government assembles a scientific council to try and figure out what is happening, and Vaseegaran immediately suggests reactivating Chitti, but other scientists disagree, especially Doctor Bohra (Sudhanshu Pandey), who happens to be the son of the bad guy from the last movie and is still a little mad about his father's grisly death.

And speaking of grisly deaths, the phone flock starts killing people.  Very specific people, all involved in the cell phone industry.  By the time the flock has reshaped itself into a kaiju-sized eagle and starts ripping up cell towers, the scientific council decides that maybe reactivating Chitti isn't such a bad idea after all.  Chitti saves most of the city, then Doctor Vaseegaran and his robnot pals track the phones down and discover that the swarm is powered by the spirit of ornithologist Pakshi Rajan (Akshay Kumar), who has vowed to punish humanity for the mass death of birds.

Using the power of positive ions (and Ghostbusters ripoffs) Pakshi's spirit is captured, and everything is great.  There's a ceremony!  Tearful speeches are given!  Everybody just decides to forget about all the people Chitti killed in the last movie!  But Doctor Bohra is not happy, and releases Pakshi.  The ghost possesses Vaseegan's body, using it to go on an anti-cell phone rampage in the heart of the city.  Chitti charges to the rescue, but because he can not bring himself to harm his creator, he is quickly dismantled.  Then Pakshi turns into a weird human-bird-cell phone hybrid and flies off.  As one does.

Two of the three protagonists have been taken out, but Nila is still on the job.  She repairs Chitti, then inserts the red chip from the last movie that activates his evil "2.0" persona; after all, while Chitti can't bring himself to harm his creator, 2.0 is delighted to do so.  And, as in the previous movie, 2.0 creates an army of duplicates to help him, meaning a return of the Giant Hamster Ball of Doom, though sadly no giant snake.  The movie itself frames this as a clash between Good and Evil, but it's really a battle between "Amoral Jerk With a Relaxed Attitude Toward Collateral Damage" and "Well-Meaning But Genocidal Zealot Who Has Things to Say About Ecological Balance."  

Let me get the bad stuff out of the way first.  Sana wasn't exactly a deep and well-rounded character, but here she's reduced to an offscreen caricature of a jealous, nagging girlfriend.  It would have been better to leave her out of the movie entirely.  And then there is the science, which is bad for a movie about a robot fighting a ghost.  The movie has a valid point to make about the delicate balance of life and how much we depend upon the creatures that share our world with us, but then it tries to make that point with a load of pseudoscientific gibberish that even the evil cell phone executives can't help but point out is not scientifically proven.  And of course negative ions are not evil, they just have extra electrons and want to share.

However, nuanced characterization and scientific accuracy are not the main draw here.  This is a movie built to deliver spectacle, and it does exactly that.  The early scenes of cell phone murder are effectively creepy, making light seem more sinister than darkness.  And yes, there are robots.  And the robots fight things, in a variety of spectacular ways.  It is a movie that knows exactly what it wants to be.

Vintage cheese.

 Half Ticket (1962) is a bit older than the Bollywood movies I'm familiar with, but it does have an absurd premise and a cast which includes some of my favorite supporting actors.  How could I resist?

Vijay (Kishore Kumar) is the youngest son of industrialist Lalchand (Moni Chaterjee) and he's clearly supposed to be a charming free spirit, but most of the time he's an annoying twit.  After a series of Vijay's wacky and allegedly hilarious pranks, Lalchand has had enough, and decides to marry off his wayward son.  A match is quickly arranged, and then Lalchand agrees to allow his son, the notorious prankster who does not want to get married, to meet with his potential father-in-law alone.   This turns out to be a bad idea, as Vijay promptly torpedoes the match. Furious, Lalcjhand tosses him out of the house.

Vijay wants to travel to Bombay, but he can't afford a full price train ticket, so instead he disguises himself as a child, a process which involves plying an actual child with candy and ice cream and then stealing his clothes.  (There are elements of this movie which . . . have not aged well.  At all.)  It's an absurd plan, and it starts to fail almost immediately, since the man at the ticket desk is not willing to sell a ticket to an unaccompanied child, even an unconvincing one.  Luckily for Vijay, passing stranger Rajubaba (Pran) intervenes, claiming to be "Munna's" uncle, and Vijay gets his half ticket.  Unfortunately, Rajubaba is secretly a diamond smuggler, and has planted a large gem in Vijay's pocket in order to get it past the station police.  

Vijay spends his time on the train acting like an exaggerated caricature of an obnoxious child, while trying to avoid the creepy older guy who is posing as his uncle and showing a strange fascination with his pockets.  (As I said, certain elements have not aged well.)  After giving Rajubabu the slip, Vijay sneaks into the private room of Rajnidevi (Madhubala), who is happy to shelter the weird kid for the night.

Once in Bombay, Vijay stops acting like a child (hooray!) and instead starts looking for a job.  Of course, it's a big city, times are hard, and he's still an annoying twit, so it takes a few tries.  Meanwhile Rajubabu and his girlfriend Lily (Shammi) are combing the city, looking for Vijay and the diamond that he does not know he has.  There are disguises and counter-disguises (at one point Pran puts on a grey fake beard and wig, and winds up looking uncannily like his future self; I've never seen old age makeup get that close to the way the actor will eventually age) and chase scenes and Vijay keeps bumping into Rajnidevi without either of them realizing that she is the potential bride he ran away from.

I am happy to suspend my disbelief and pretend that there are people who are fooled by Kishore Kumar pretending to be a child, but even if you are willing to accept the ridiculous premise, the plot doesn't really hang together.  But that's okay, because this is a farce; the plot is only there as a vehicle to get the characters into absurd situations.

Half Ticket was a big hit when it came out, but that was nearly sixty years ago, and the movie is definitely a product of its time.  Still, I can see traces of how Sixties Bollywood evolved into the Bollywood I know; while Vijay was completely over the top, he's clearly an ancestor of Shah Rukh Khan's carefully polished comic persona.  And there were some familiar faces.  I'm actually a big fan of Pran (a Pranatic, if you will) so it was a delight to see him being young and suave, along with a ridiculously young Helen in a surprisingly wholesome item number. 

The answer is forty two. Correct?

Shakuntala Devi (2020) is loosely (if the disclaimer at the beginning of the movie is to be trusted, very loosely) based on the life of author, astrologer and mental calculator Shakuntala Devi, popularly known as the Human Computer.  It is the story of a fierce and fearless free spirit living life on her own terms, which can honestly be kind of terrifying.

Shakuntala is born into a poor Brahmin family in Bangalore, and from a very young age she demonstrates an amazing proficiency with mental mathematics.  Her father (Prakash Belawadi) sees an opportunity, and soon Shakuntala is supporting the family by touring local schools and demonstrating her skills.  Young Shakuntala (Spandan Chaturdevi) is particularly attached to her sister Sharada (Jiya Shah) and is devastated when Sharada suddenly dies.  Shakuntala blames her parents for not taking her sister to the hospital, and grows up angry.

After a few misadventures (including shooting a guy), adult Shakuntala (Vidya Balan) moves to London, where she meets Spanish mathematician Javier (Luca Calvani), who helps transform spunky village belle Shakuntala into the confident and sophisticated Shakuntala Devi, mathematical superstar.  And while the relationship with Javier fizzles out eventually, her career takes off; Shakuntala is wealthy and successful, touring the world to show people that she is good at math.

At a party, Shakuntala meets Paritosh Banerji (Jishu Sengupta.)  They fall in love, get married, have a daughter, and settle down in Calcutta.  Everything is wonderful . .  for a while.  Shakuntala decides that she misses performing, and heads back on the road, at first leaving baby Anu with Paritosh.  She finds that she misses her daughter, and so decides to take her on tour, which leads to the marriage collapsing.

So Shakuntala and Anu travel the world together.  But the trouble with free spirits who live life on theoir own terms is that sometimes they expect everyone else to live life on their terms as well.  As she grows up, Anu craves a sense of stability; she wants to lead a normal life, but normal is not something that Shakuntala Devi, the Human Computer, is willing to consider.  As an adult, a frustrated Anu (Sanya Malhotra) leaves to build her own life, but Shakuntala is willing to do anything to bring her back, even if that means they both end up in court.

As a performer, Vidya Balan has a light, effortless charm; I've seen her in a number of movies, and she is consistently delightful.  That's a useful talent to have when you're playing a woman who is so often smug and selfish.  Shakuntala is not always likable, but it's very hard to look away.

I'm not going to speculate about the actual Shakuntala Devi, who by all accounts built quite a life for herself, but movie Shakuntala reminds me of Shakespeare's sister.  Not the pop group, and not William Shakespeare's actual sister Joan, but Judith Shakespeare, the hypothetical equally talented sibling from Virginia Woolf's essay "A Room of One's Own."  Like Judith, Shakuntala is tremendously talented, but because of who she is, she's cut off from the traditional channels for that talent; she can perform at a school, but not attend one, appear before university maths departments and scholarly societies, but not join them.  Shakuntala gets a much happier ending than Judith does, but I can't help but wonder if the life of Shakun Dev would have been less complicated.

A boy's best friend is his mem.

English Babu Desi Mem (1996) is not a romance.  Yes, it was promoted as a romance.  Yes, it was made in the Nineties, when romance reigned supreme in Bollywood, and yes, it stars Shah Rukh Khan, the undisputed King of Romace, and yes, the movie begins and ends with a wedding, but it is not a romance.  It is a love story, however.

The Mayur family have been settled in England for generations, and they have made a lot of money.  But while family patriarch Gopal (Shah Rukh Khan with grey hair and a silly fake mustache) is happy to be rich and English, oldest son Hari (Shah Rukh Khan with long hair and a different silly fake mustache) . . . well, his heart is Hindustani.  He wants to embrace his cultural traditions and give money to charity, and the family has plenty of money to give to charity.

Gopal decides to deal with his wayward son by getting him married, but Hari flees to India . . . in a single engine prop plane, a plane which explodes in a burst of stock footage before reaching land.  Hari survives and is nursed back to health by Katariya (Rajeshwari Sachdev).  Since his family already thinks he's dead, Hari decides to stay and marries Katariya.  They are blissfully happy for a couple of years, and then they are caught in a terrible fire and both die, leaving their newborn son to be raised by Katariya's much younger sister Bijuriya, who is only a child herself.  (I think the young Bijuriya is played by Baba Brahmbhatt, but it's hard to tell.)

Kindly lawyer Madugar (Saeed Jaffrey) and many of the other residents of the colony promise to provide support, but Bijuriya basically supports herself and her nephew, first by performing odd jobs and selling balloons, and later, after she's grown up enough to be played by Sonali Bendre, by dancing at Banjo's Beer bar.  She and her beloved nephew Nandu (Sunny Singh) are poor, but utterly devoted to one another.

Then Madugar sees a TV interview with wealthy but snobbish British industrialist Vikram Mayur (Shah Rukh Khan with a terrible English accent but no silly mustache) and realizes that Nandu is actually heir to a tremendous fortune.  He tricks Vikram into coming to India and reveals the truth about Hari's fate and Nandu's existence.  Vikram is delighted to learn he has a nephew, and is charmed by Nandu when he accidentally meets the kid.  Bijuriya, meanwhile, is terrified that this English jerk is going to take her son away; Vikram is rich and respectable while she is poor and a bar dancer.  There's no question that she would lose a custody case.

Vikram tries to impress Nandu with his wealth and privilege, along the way genuinely bonding with the kid, but he can't really compete with the only mother Nandu has ever known.  But Madugar has clearly seen too many movies, and takes each of the feuding pair aside to suggest that they try being charming instead.  It kind of works, and Vikram and Bijuriya start to enjoy one another's company.  Unfortunately, Nandu assumes that that means they're in love, and makes arrangements for the wedding.  When he tells Vikram it . . . doesn't go well.

Now, this is a movie.  Of course Nandu gets what he wants in the end.  But while Vikram and Bijuriya are clearly attracted to one another, there's never any point at which they seem to be in love.  Instead, it's all about the kid.  They both adore Nandu, and they're willing to do whatever it takes to make him happy, even if that means ending up together.  Love, as they say, can come later.

Hong Kong Family Theater

Like a lot of seventies Bollywood action movies,  Lahu Ki Do Rang (1979) has a really complicated backstory to get through before the action starts in earnest; it's also a complicated family drama about a very complicated family.  Here's the short version: In 1943 Hong Kong, Shamsher Singh (Vinod Khanna) has deserted from the British Army, instead joining Subhas Chandra Bose's revolutionaries in order to throw the British out of India by force.   While fleeing from the dastardly Brits, he barges into the house of Suzy (Helen), and she shelters him for the night.  And then another night, and so on.  Six months later, it's time for Shamsher to return to India.  Suzy is pregnant, but will not stand in his way, and he promises to bring her and their child to India once his work is finished.

Back in India, Shamsher explains things to his wife Ladjo (Indrani Mukkherji), then gets to work.  In short order, he's betrayed and murdered by Shankar (Rajneet), who uses the opportunity to rob the bank and steal enough gold to fill the trunk of a car.  Then Shankar is betrayed by his sidekick Mac (Mac Mohan, by far my favorite Bollywood henchman), who sinks the car in a lake before shooting himself in the knee and surrendering to the police.

Years pass.  Mac is released from prison.  Shekhar, now going by the name Devi Dayal, sends his stepdaughter/reluctant henchwoman Roma (Shabana Azmi) to collect him, and find out where the gold is.  meanwhile, Shamsher and Ladjo's son Raj (also Vinod Khanna) has become a policeman, dedicated to finding his father's killer.  And Shamsher and Suzy's son Suraj (Danny Denzongpa) has grown up to be a cynical street-smart martial artist and professional diver who will do anything to provide for his mother, even if it means going to work for some rich Indian jerk who needs him to a sunken car filled with gold.

And then things start to happen.  Suraj is hired by some rich Indian jerk to locate a sunken car filled with gold.  He does, but Shekhar/Dayal needs capital for the next stage of the plan, so Suraj is left to hang out in India for a while; he befriends Shabbo (Baby Shalu), an orphan, pickpocket, and easily the most competent character in the film.  He also has time to fall in love with Roma, but can't work up the courage to say anything to her, despite Shabbo's coaching.

Meanwhile, Mac is murdered, surprising no one.  But the killer leaves his wallet at the crime scene, which eventually leads Raj to Roma.  He disguises himself as a photographer and basically stalks her until she falls in love with him.  But while Raj gets the girl and valuable information, a heartbroken Suraj throws himself wholeheartedly into his henchmaning, believing that if he can't have love, he can at least provide for his mother in style.

"Long lost brothers, but one is a cop and the other one is a criminal" is a very common plotline in Bollywood, and there are no real surprises here.  But while the plot is a bit predictable, it's executed well; the leads are charming, and while the story is complicated, nearly everything makes sense in the end.  The Hong Kong setting is unusual, but I suspect it's mostly an excuse for Danny Denzongpa to do his best Bruce Lee impression.  He's got the look, he's got the style, he's got the attitude, but it's mostly a visual homage.  The movie throws in a tournament near the beginning to establish that Suraj has martial arts skills, and then he spends the rest of the movie not using them.  The rest of the film  is pure funky seventies Bollywood cop movie.

Two divided by Zero.

When Shah Rukh Khan was trying to break into the Bollywood film industry without the benefit of family connections or industry contacts, he took practically every role that was offered to him.  And it worked.  Khan didn't just become a star, he became the star, King Khan, and he reigned over the film industry for many years.  I'm not sure he ever quite broke the habit of accepting as many parts as possible, because he's done a lot of weird movies over the course of his career.  And that's good!  I like weird movies!  On the other hand, it also means he's starred in some stinkers.  And then there's Zero (2018).

Khan plays Bauua Singh, a little person from a wealthy family in the city of Meerut.  Bauua is supposed to be a good-natured scamp, but we don't initially see much of his good nature; he spends most of his time dreaming of Bollywood actress Babita Kumari (Katrina Kaif) and spending money on his assorted hangers on, including his trusty sidekick Guddu (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub.)

It's only a minor plot point, but Bauua also has a special gift: with a flick of his finger, he can turn any star into a shooting star.  This is intended as a charming bit of magical realism, so nobody realizes that he possesses a destructive power that would make the Dark Phoenix weep with envy, a power that operates over interstellar distances and (given the speed of light) possibly through time.

Despite his incredible cosmic power, Bauua is still a bachelor.  At a matrimonial agency he sees a photo of Aafiya Yusufzai Bhinder (Anushka Sharma), a beautiful and brilliant scientist and mathematician who works for that famous American space agency, the NSAR.  (NASA?  Never heard of it.)  It's not until he arranges a meeting that he realizes that Aafiya has cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair.  They fail to hit it off in spectacular fashion, ending with Bauua being bodily thrown out of the school she's speaking at.  Humiliated, Bauua crashes another of her speaking engagements, makes a scene, and is thrown out and humiliated again.

So Bauua changes tactics.  He mounts a full-fledged "played by Shah Rukh Freaking Khan" charm offensive, and manages to win her . . . friendship, initially.  But the relationship develops over the course of a few months, until they finally spend the night together. And then he drops her.  

A month later, Bauua returns home to find Aafiya's parents, there to arrange his and Aafiya's marriage.  Bauua's parents are naturally thrilled, and before the kids can really object, the match is fixed.  On their wedding day, after a tense conversation with Aafiya, Bauua runs away, and winds up in the entourage of his idol, Babita Kumari, who turns out to be deeply troubled and trapped in a life of meaningless excess, as well as a dysfunctional relationship with Bollywood star and smug jerk Aditya Kapoor (Abhay Deol.)  Bauua helps Babita with her issues, and she helps him realize what a colossal jackass he's been, so it is now time for the "win Aafiya back" portion of the movie.

Winning Aafiya back means travelling to America and interrupting yet another one of her speaking engagements.  She tells him to go to hell, and Bauua can see that a musical number is not going to cut it this time, so instead he volunteers for the upcoming manned mission to Mars, because as everybody knows, astronauts are selected through an open audition process.

Zero was a box office disaster, but it's really not the worst movie I've ever seen.  It's not even the worst Shah Rukh Khan movie I've ever seen!  Instead, it's a bit of a curate's egg - good in parts.  The cast is fantastic, especially Sharma, who clearly poured her heart and soul into this role.  While the relationship between Bauua and Aafiya is definitely unhealthy, it is actually easy to tell what they see in each other.  The movie has one really good song.  And representation matters, even if it's this clumsy.

But that leads me to the biggest flaw in the movie.  There is no reason for Shah Rukh Khan to be in this film.  His performance is fine, mind you, but there are many actors in India who are little people, and without the pressure of star casting this could have been a life-changing role for any of them.  Perhaps because of the pressure of being a Shah Rukh Khan movie, Zero keeps striving for epic, when the actually interesting part is the real human connection between two flawed but compelling people who don't look anything like your typical Bollywood couple.

Fortunately, anyone can be told precisely what Srivalli is.

Srivalli (2017) is a science fiction thriller about artificial reality and multiple levels of consciousness.  It is also a sleazy erotic thriller about an obsession which spans multiple lifetimes.  And it is occasionally a Lifetime drama about a woman who has had enough and is ready to fight back.  Genre boundaries are more like guidelines, really.

Valli (Neha Hinge) is returning to India after twelve years in the US, accompanied by her little brother and their father, Ramachandra (Ranjeev Kanakala.)  Her incredibly devoted childhood sweetheart, Gowtham (Rajath Krishna), is waiting for her.  And everything is great!  At least until the car accident that kills Ramachandra and puts Valli's brother in a coma.

That's not the end of her problems, though.  Andrea, a classmate of hers from America, has followed her to India.  Andrea is obsessed with Valli, and resumes her unwanted sexual, advances.  When Gowtham finds out, he tracks down Andrea and brutally beats her to death in a jealous rage.  (The Andrea subplot is nasty and unpleasant and perpetuates some horrible tropes about predatory lesbians.)

Since Valli doesn't know that Andrea is dead, Gowtham gets to keep hanging around and playing the Caring Friend Who Wants To be More.  Valli doesn't have time for romance, though - she's fascinated by the work of Doctor Verma, who is hoping to harness the power of brain waves in order to treat addictions and mental illnesses.  Valli agrees to have her brain waves mapped (a process that requires her to be naked, because it's that sort of movie), and she is thrilled to learn that the process can be used to help her comatose brother.  And then Verma leaves for America.

After the professor leaves, Valli is haunted by strange dreams about a mysterious man named Manju (Arhaan Khan), who appears every night at midnight to seduce her.  (I say seduce, but it is strongly implied that there is supernatural coercion involved.)  When she finds Manju's bracelet in her bed one morning, Valli realizes that Manju is no dream.  He claims to be the spirit of her lover from a previous incarnation, but he might be a side effect of Verma's device, or Andrea's vengeful ghost, or just a symptom of Valli's mental decline.

For much of its running time, Srivalli is grimy and unpleasant.  It does improve somewhat when the movie stops trying to be sexy and Valli stops being so passive, but it never rises to the level of a good movie.  Even without the sleaze, it's hard to maintain a sense of mystery about who the true villain is when the audience has already seen one of the characters brutally beat a woman to death because she threatened the object of his obsession.

Yama: Endgame

After a month spent exploring the Yama Cinematic Universe, I am impressed with just how versatile a character Yama is; he can fit easily into a political sketch comedy, or a sincere exploration of the fragility of family ties, or, as in Yamadonga (2007), a bombastic romantic action-comedy.

Raja (Jr NTR) and Mahi (Priyamani) met briefly as children, and while she was impressed enough to give him Chekhov's Locket, their lives developed in very different directions.  Mahi grew up to live the life of a fairy tale princess - specifically Cinderella.  While she is the heir to the family fortune, her greedy relatives force her to toil as a household servant.  Worse, they are planning to marry her off to her loathsome cousin so that they can seize control of the family fortune.  Mahi suffers in silence, dreaming of the day when her handsome prince will carry her away on a winged horse.

Raja, however, is no prince.  He's a thief and a conman and (because this is a South Indian Mass movie) fantastically skilled at beating people up.  While Raja and his partner Sathi (Ali) are very good at taking other people's money, their fence, the lovely Dhanalakshmi (Mamta Mohandas) is even better at taking theirs, so the pair are hoping for one big score.

They get their chance when Raja is hired to recover a lost dress (it's complicated.)  Naturally, Raja succeeds, inadvertently rescuing Mahi from a gang of kidnappers in a spectacular action sequence involving a giant hamster ball.  Unfortunately, the happy client drops dead just before he can sign the check, leaving Raja even deeper in debt.  An angry and drunk Raja curses Yama, swearing vengeance for the poorly timed grim reaping.

Unfortunately, at that very moment, Yama (Mohan Babu) is showing the other gods just how much the people on Earth fear and respect him.  (The trickster sage Narada (Naresh) suggested the celestial show and tell, meaning once again everything is Narada's fault.)  Yama is so angry and humiliated that he orders Chitragupta (Brahmanandam) to alter Raja's entry in the Bhavishyavaani, changing his date of death from "in seventy five years" to "in ten days."

Back on Earth, angry drunk Raja throws Mahi out of the house.  In the morning, though, he watches the news and discovers that she is a missing heiress, so he finds her (not hard since she's right outside the front door), charms her, and makes arrangements to ransom her back to her family.  However, Raja is betrayed and murdered before he can collect the ransom, meaning he's sent straight to Yamalok.  And then things get complicated.

After finding out where he is, Raja gets to work.  He tricks Chitragupota into handing over Yama's magic noose, his "Life Extractor" as the subtitles call it, and because there's no pesky "if he be worthy" clause, he is granted the power of Yama.  Original Yama also has the powers of Yama, of course, so there is a problem.  Narada pops up long enough to suggest settling the dispute with an election, and the two Yamas agree. Classic Yama has experience and a loyal populace on his side, but New Yama grew up on Earth, so he is armed with the power of dirty politics and a lot of empty promises.

Yamadonga is about three hours long, which means that I have only scratched the surface of the plot, and it jumps genres more than once.  Whenever the complicated plot starts to drag, though, the movie gives you a big elaborate action scene or an even bigger dance number.  And because the movie is so long it can act as a sort of "Yama's Greatest Hits" compilation, prominently featuring the book of destiny, gods descending to Earth, a mortal causing trouble in Yamalok, an election in the afterlife, a mortal soul on parole, and a scheme lifted directly from Bugs Bunny.  The only thing that's missing is ice cream.  Maybe in the sequel.

Insert Tolstoy quote here.

Ramchandra Purushottam Joshi (2013) was based on a stage play, and it shows; the movie is almost Aristotelian in its tight focus on a the events happening in a single house, to a particular family, over the course of eight hours, and also in its penchant for characters explaining interesting things that are happening just off stage.  naturally, the movie opens with a lengthy special effects sequence, making heavy use of computer animation that is so imaginative and so dated that it really deserves a soundtrack by Thomas Dolby.

Once again, we're visiting a shiny, modernized, technologically advanced Yamalok.  This time, Chitragupta is still around and doing interesting stuff off-screen, but the old Yama has retired.  The new guy (and the imdb is not great with Marathi cinema, so I am not sure who plays him, or most of the other characters) is slick, smart and ambitious.  He's got a grand scheme: give some of the better behaved souls in his care an early release, allowing them to sped a day on Earth visiting their loved ones and telling them about how great Yamalok is now before ascending to heaven.

The proof of concept soul selected is Ramchandra Purushottam Joshi (Dilip Prabhavalkar), a scrupulously honest retired civil servant.  Ramchandra is offered the chance to go back to earth for eight hours, on the anniversary of his death, and he is thrilled to have the chance to see his family again.  He's so excited that he wastes they first hour telling his "minder," the dour green psychopomp Ugrakesh all about his doting wife Janki (Suhas Joshi), responsible elder son Nishikant, only daughter Sandhya, and straight-laced younger son Ninad.

But a lot can change in a year.  When Ramchandra finally enters the house, he discovers that Ninad is now an angry drunk, Sandhya is nowhere to be seen, Nishikant is plotting with his in-laws to sell off the ancestral home, and Janki refuses to accept his death and spends all day locked in her room talking to an imaginary husband.  And Ramchandra is powerless to help, because no one can see or hear him . . . until Sandhya makes it home.

There's a moment late in the film when Ramchandra notices that the trees in the garden are dying, and explains to Ugrakesh that no one has been putting in the work to maintain them.   It's an incredibly obvious metaphor, but an effective one.  This is a story about how quickly a family can fall apart, and how hard it is to put it back together, but it succeeds by focusing on this particular family being unhappy in its own way. 

Yamalok can wait.

Jagga Jiunda E (2018) features a shiny, updated afterlife.  Chitragupta, the judge of the dead, has retired and been replaced by Chitr Singh (Gurpreet Ghuggi), the book of destiny has been uploaded to a shiny new computer system, souls are ferried on shiny spacefaring elevators rather than the traditional buffalo, and Yama himself is wearing a cool white suit and is played by Jackie Shroff.  This is a Yamalok where they make Baahubali jokes.

It's also a Yamalok where they make mistakes.  Yama's assistants collected the soul of Jagga (Daljeet Kalsi), a kind, generous, loyal man who loves his mother, when they were supposed to take Daljeet (also Daljeet Kalsi). a spectacularly corrupt and brutal police officer who is cruel to his mother.  Unfortunately, Jagga has already been cremated, so they cannot simply send him back.

Instead, they place Jagga's soul in Daljeet's body.  Jagga is a good man, so he immediately uses his new life to start making things better, first by being kind to Daljeet's mother (Sunita Dhir), then by cleaning up the local police force and clashing with Daljeet's old partner-in-crime Vikram (Harp Farmer), son of the local MLA.  (And I'm not sure who plays the MLA, but he does a fantastic Amrish Puri impression.)  Along the way he finds time to woo the lovely Harleen (Kainaat Arora), who is technically his subordinate but let's not worry about that right now.  Meanwhile, a ghost called Billu Comrade (Sardar Sohi) keeps trying to talk Jagga into completing the unfinished business of the local restless spirits.

"Good man takes over the life of a bad man" is not the most original premise, even with the heavenly clerical error, but it's a fun premise, with a lot of comedic and dramatic potential.  That's why I was so disappointed when the movie suddenly shifted genres to become a brutal revenge melodrama, especially when a minor female character was brutally attacked and murdered just to make sure Jagga is properly motivated.  As revenge melodramas go, it's competently executed, but I want my supernatural comedy back.

The father-in-law from Hell.

Narada is a legendary sage who appears in a number of Hindu texts, including both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.  In the movies, though, he acts as the local divine trickster; if you have a serious problem, you should get Narada to solve it, since it's probably his fault anyway.  Yamudiki Mogudu (2012)?  Definitely Narada's fault.

Due to a celestial mixup, Naresh (Allari Naresh) is born a month early and without a destiny, which means that he is immortal and has power equal to the gods.  Indra and the other gods ask Yama (Sayaji Shinde) to deal with the situation, but Yama doesn't want to, so instead Narada is chosen to deal with the unexpected immortal and also humble the god of death.  (Which is just as well, because it is Narada's fault.)

Years pass.  Naresh grows into a charming loafer and terrible student.  Worse, he's also an aspiring actor!  Naresh is cast as Ram in a play about Sita's Swayamvaram ceremony, and just as he's about to go onstage, Narada makes his move.  He convinces the husband of the actress playing Sita to drag her home, then talks Naresh into calling out for a replacement; thanks to Naresh's subconscious godly powers, the replacement Sita is Yamaja (Richi Panai), the daughter of Yama.  And since apparently they don't have religious drama in Yamalok, Yamaja believes that they actually are now married, and starts following Naresh around and calling him "husband."

Naresh tries to get Yamaja to go away, but eventually brings her home disguised as the family's new maid.  And after a brief period of adjustment, she wins the family over, and suddenly everything is going really well.  Most importantly, Naresh's brother gets a promotion at the bank where he works and manages to get the infamous gangster Royyala Naidu (Tanikella Bharani) sent to prison, an action that I'm sure will have no negative consequences.

Meanwhile, Yama is worried about his missing daughter, so he allows his son Yamaganda (Master Bharath) to go to earth to search for her, as long as Chitragupta (Krishna Bhagavaan) agrees to accompany the boy.  Yamaganda isn't the brightest spark in the pyre, so before he can find his sister, there's a lot of slapstick and confusion and a great deal of ice cream.

Yamana won't leave her husband, so Yama is forced to do things the old fashioned way, by traveling to Earth himself and forcibly abducting her.  Thinking quickly, Naresh grabs the tail of Yama's divine buffalo, and rides it up to the heavens, where, with a little help from Narada, he can match wits with the Lord of Death to win back his love.  Unfortunately, Yama does not play fair, and while Naresh is immortal, his family is not.  And there's the matter of the gangster with a grudge.

Despite the supernatural setting and the meddling trickster sage, Yamudiki Mogudu is basically an old fashioned romantic comedy in the DDLJ mode, with the hero living among his future in-laws and slowly winning them over.  That means that Yama is playing a different stock part than usual; he's the stern father-in-law, the relationship End Boss who must be convinced before the hero and heroine can be happy.  This Yama is still a bit of a stentorian buffoon, but he has to be more competent and cunning in order to be a suitable antagonist.  And he has to be hostile and scary and still believably change his mind at the end.  Movie Yama is a more flexible character than you might expect.  And we're not done yet.