The story in Jagga Jasoos (2017) is fairly simple, but the storytelling is complicated, with a framing story and interlocking flashbacks that show apparently mutually exclusive versions of a given event. The framing story takes place in a tent at a Kolkota book fair. A woman who we later learn is named Shruti (Katrina Kaif) and her troupe of child back-up dancers are promoting a series of comic books about a boy detective named Jagga. And when a child in the audience questions whether Jagga is real, Shruti abandons the sales pitch and instead provides us with backstory in order to show that Jagga is "as real as your dimple."
As an infant, Jagga was abandoned at a hospital. Since nobody bothered to claim him, he lived there for years, working as an unpaid orderly. The staff all loved him, but he was isolated due to a crippling stutter. Then one day young Jagga (now played by Saravajeet Tiwari) stumbles across an injured man (Saswata Chatterjee) lying in a field, and his life changes. Once he's sufficiently recovered, the man introduces himself as Tuttifutti and teaches him to sing rather than speak as a way around his stutter. The pair quickly grow close, and since nobody else wants Jagga, Tuttifutti takes him away and they start a new life.
At first, everything is wonderful, but a mysterious visitor changes everything. Tuttifutti places Jagga in a boarding school, and then disappears, though he still manages to send the boy a video every year on his birthday. Jagga is a bright and observant lad, so he busies himself by acting as a detective while slowly growing old enough to be played by Ranbir Kapoor.
Jagga actually solves a few cases before the plot really gets rolling. They're clever and well crafted (and they should be, because they're lifted from the American detective show Monk) but the most important detail is that they give Jagga the chance to meet Shruti, who is a spunky but unlucky reporter with a recently murdered fiance. (There's some definite romantic tension between the two, which is . . . potentially odd. Shruti is twenty five, but I am not sure how old Jagga is supposed to be; he's still living at the boarding school, but Ranbir Kapoor was in his thirties while the movie was being filmed. I'll just assume he is "of age" years old and try not to think about it.) Jagga saves Shruti from a murder charge, she burns down his room, and they part as friends, with Shruti promising to be there for Jagga whenever he needs her.
Before long, Jagga needs her. Tuttifutti's latest birthday video did not arrive. A man claiming to be from Indian intelligence (Saurabh Shukla) claims that he's dead, but Jagga recognizes the man as they mysterious visitor who ruined his happy home, and he's determined to find out what really happened to his adoptive father. The trail leads to Africa, and since Tuttifutti was also very unlucky, Jagga believes that Shruti's bad luck can lead him to his father's bad luck. Before long, the pair are in Africa, dancing in the streets, dodging the police, stealing a plane, stowing away on a circus train, and being menaced by cheetahs.
Jagga Jasoos is clearly drawing from literary boy detectives and adventurers like Encyclopedia Brown and Tintin, but what it really reminds me of is A Series of Unfortunate Events. That's not just because our young(ish) protagonists are placed in increasingly bizarre situations while trying to unravel a mystery involving their missing elders, a mysterious organization, and a gleeful but seemingly untouchable villain; like the Baudelaire orphans, Jagga and Shruti are shaped by loss and desperate to find some sort of normalcy in a deeply odd world.
I've never seen another movie quite like Jagga Jasoos. The storytelling is complicated, but it doesn't cheat; everything we see on screen really happens, and everything counts, especially the bits that contradict each other. And much of the story is told through music. While the average Bollywood movie has around eight songs, Jagga Jasoos has twenty nine. But while I like it a lot, the movie was an enormous flop. The promised sequel is never coming, and the cliffhanger ending is never going to be resolved. Still, I have faith in Jagga; one way or another, he'll find his way home to his family.
Friday, January 24, 2020
Saturday, January 18, 2020
She isn't really a drama queen, either.
Hasee Toh Phasee (2014) was advertised with the tagline "Love Goes Cuckin Frazy", and a tagline like that should really tell you everything you need to know. Obviously, free-spirited Meeta is going to sweep stuffy Nikhil off his feet, freeing him from his boring existence and teaching him to love life again, just like in a thousand other romantic comedies. And that's almost exactly what doesn't happen.
Let's start with Nikhil (Sidharth Malhotra). Seven years ago, he met an amazing girl sneaking out of a wedding. They bonded almost immediately, and after an intense and very strange conversation, he helped her hail a cab and watched her drive out of his life, then went back into the wedding and caught the eye of the bride's sister, model and aspiring actress Karishma (Adah Sharma). Now they're getting married in a week. Karishma has become a successful actress, while Nikhil is a much less successful event coordinator. He's no stuffed shirt. Karishma's family consider him a bit of a good-natured screw-up, and she's broken up repeatedly with him over the years. But Nikhil's saving grace is his fidelity; once he's made a commitment, he'll stick with it, even if it kills him. (And it just might.)
Meanwhile, Meeta (Parineeti Chopra) crept away from her sister's wedding seven years ago. Now she's back, and desperate to see her father (Manoj Joshi). But her sister Karishma is determined to keep that from happening, so she asks Nikhil to put Meeta up in a hotel room somewhere until she can figure out bow to make her go away. Nikhil is too soft-hearted to leave her alone in a rat- and mosquito-infested hotel, so he brings her to stay with his family, and, well, wackiness ensues, because Meeta is odd. Not odd as in "charming free-spirited eccentric," odd as in "has a history of drug abuse and unspecified mental illness, which she is treating using medicine which she researched online and then forged prescriptions for, and said medication has noticeable side effects." She's also brilliant (she's basically invented flubber, and it's barely even a subplot) and she's in debt to Chinese gangsters. Not your typical Manic Pixie Dream Girl, in other words.
While Meeta is focused on seeing her father, Nikhil is having a rough week. He's busy with wedding preparations, securing money for his business, placating Karishma after their last big fight, and keeping an eye on Meeta, and then, gradually, he stops taking orders from Karishma and starts listening to Meeta. The relationship sneaks up on Nikhil just as it sneaks up on the viewer. There isn't a point where they suddenly fall in love, they just get to know each other better and it becomes more and more clear that Nikhil is marrying the wrong sister, but Nikhil being Nikhil, there's no way he's going to break Karishma's heart.
Hasee Toh Phasee is surprisingly somber for a romantic comedy. It's funny in places, and deeply romantic, too, but our leads approach matters of the heart with a certain gravitas that you don't often see in this sort of movie. Absolutely nobody goes cuckin frazy, and Nikhil doesn't learn to embrace life and follow his dreams; as he points out to Meeta, he's already ruled by his heart and she's the sensible level-headed one. If anything, Nikhil learns that sometimes you need to let go of your dreams, that what you wanted seven years ago isn't necessarily what you need today.
The movie's not perfect; the portrayal of Meeta's mental illness, in particular, is obviously well-meaning but flawed. (And in context, that tagline is kind of tone deaf.) Still, it's a unique romance, with easy chemistry between the two leads and a ferociously good performance by Parineeti Chopra. I liked it very much.
Let's start with Nikhil (Sidharth Malhotra). Seven years ago, he met an amazing girl sneaking out of a wedding. They bonded almost immediately, and after an intense and very strange conversation, he helped her hail a cab and watched her drive out of his life, then went back into the wedding and caught the eye of the bride's sister, model and aspiring actress Karishma (Adah Sharma). Now they're getting married in a week. Karishma has become a successful actress, while Nikhil is a much less successful event coordinator. He's no stuffed shirt. Karishma's family consider him a bit of a good-natured screw-up, and she's broken up repeatedly with him over the years. But Nikhil's saving grace is his fidelity; once he's made a commitment, he'll stick with it, even if it kills him. (And it just might.)
Meanwhile, Meeta (Parineeti Chopra) crept away from her sister's wedding seven years ago. Now she's back, and desperate to see her father (Manoj Joshi). But her sister Karishma is determined to keep that from happening, so she asks Nikhil to put Meeta up in a hotel room somewhere until she can figure out bow to make her go away. Nikhil is too soft-hearted to leave her alone in a rat- and mosquito-infested hotel, so he brings her to stay with his family, and, well, wackiness ensues, because Meeta is odd. Not odd as in "charming free-spirited eccentric," odd as in "has a history of drug abuse and unspecified mental illness, which she is treating using medicine which she researched online and then forged prescriptions for, and said medication has noticeable side effects." She's also brilliant (she's basically invented flubber, and it's barely even a subplot) and she's in debt to Chinese gangsters. Not your typical Manic Pixie Dream Girl, in other words.
While Meeta is focused on seeing her father, Nikhil is having a rough week. He's busy with wedding preparations, securing money for his business, placating Karishma after their last big fight, and keeping an eye on Meeta, and then, gradually, he stops taking orders from Karishma and starts listening to Meeta. The relationship sneaks up on Nikhil just as it sneaks up on the viewer. There isn't a point where they suddenly fall in love, they just get to know each other better and it becomes more and more clear that Nikhil is marrying the wrong sister, but Nikhil being Nikhil, there's no way he's going to break Karishma's heart.
Hasee Toh Phasee is surprisingly somber for a romantic comedy. It's funny in places, and deeply romantic, too, but our leads approach matters of the heart with a certain gravitas that you don't often see in this sort of movie. Absolutely nobody goes cuckin frazy, and Nikhil doesn't learn to embrace life and follow his dreams; as he points out to Meeta, he's already ruled by his heart and she's the sensible level-headed one. If anything, Nikhil learns that sometimes you need to let go of your dreams, that what you wanted seven years ago isn't necessarily what you need today.
The movie's not perfect; the portrayal of Meeta's mental illness, in particular, is obviously well-meaning but flawed. (And in context, that tagline is kind of tone deaf.) Still, it's a unique romance, with easy chemistry between the two leads and a ferociously good performance by Parineeti Chopra. I liked it very much.
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
Can we talk for a moment about Kuch Kuch Hota Hai? Specifically the plot. It's a movie that famously makes no sense when you think about it for thirty seconds, which is okay because the plot is really just a delivery vehicle for feelings. And the biggest plot hole is the one that kicks off the entire movie - a dying Tina leaves her newborn daughter eight letters, one for each birthday, and in the last letter reveals the love triangle from her college days, and urges her eight year old daughter to reunite her father with Anjali. It's completely ridiculous, because one year olds cannot read.
But that particular plot point would actually be really easy to fix. KKHH came out in 1998 - if we assume the movie timeline matches up with real life, that means little Anjali was born in 1990 (and the extended college flashback took place in the late eighties.) And they had video cameras in 1990. Instead of birthday letters, Tina could record eight birthday videos for her daughter. It would make perfect sense. It is a thing that people actually do. And as a bonus, video is easier to show in a movie than the written word, so we could even see bits of the earlier birthday videos.
Of course, that does still leave Tina charging her eight year old daughter to manage the love lives of two adults, without considering the possibility that Anjali (or even Rahul!) might have moved on and married someone else by that point, and doesn't answer the question of why Tina went through with the wedding if she felt so strongly about Rahul and Anjali belonging together. But those are ordinary plot holes, the kind that pop up in many movies.
Granted, there's not much you can do about the plot of a movie that's over twenty years old, but if I ever develop time travel, I'm calling Karan Johar.
But that particular plot point would actually be really easy to fix. KKHH came out in 1998 - if we assume the movie timeline matches up with real life, that means little Anjali was born in 1990 (and the extended college flashback took place in the late eighties.) And they had video cameras in 1990. Instead of birthday letters, Tina could record eight birthday videos for her daughter. It would make perfect sense. It is a thing that people actually do. And as a bonus, video is easier to show in a movie than the written word, so we could even see bits of the earlier birthday videos.
Of course, that does still leave Tina charging her eight year old daughter to manage the love lives of two adults, without considering the possibility that Anjali (or even Rahul!) might have moved on and married someone else by that point, and doesn't answer the question of why Tina went through with the wedding if she felt so strongly about Rahul and Anjali belonging together. But those are ordinary plot holes, the kind that pop up in many movies.
Granted, there's not much you can do about the plot of a movie that's over twenty years old, but if I ever develop time travel, I'm calling Karan Johar.
Saturday, January 11, 2020
What if, and I know this is crazy, she falls in love with a prince?
I have to admit I'm a little mystified by Khoobsurat (2014). It's a romantic comedy with a very old fashioned story and a plot that is entirely predictable, and yet it still manages to be not at all what I was expecting.
Sonam Kapoor plays Mili Chakravarty, a gifted physical therapist and free spirit, a woman who pointedly does not have a boyfriend because (as a brief flashback demonstrates) none of the men she meets can handle her extreme level of quirkiness. As the film opens, she's working for the Kolkata Knight Riders, but as the season ends she takes a job in the royal household of Shekhar Singh Rathore (Amir Raza Hussain.)
Shekhar is wheelchair bound, and stubbornly refuses to cooperate with any sort of physical therapy; he's already driven forty doctors away. His wife Nirmala (Ratna Pathak Shah) has taken over management of the household, and she does so with strict rules and chilly efficiency. Vikram (Fawad Khan), the obligatory handsome but stuffy prince, manages the business and maintains an entirely proper engagement to the lovely Kiara (Aditi Rao Hydari). And younger sister Divya (Simran Jahani) is preparing to attend Oxford but secretly dreams of becoming an actress. The family are living in the shadow of a family tragedy which they all refuse to discuss, which means they are in desperate need of a quirky free spirit to break them out of their individual shells and teach them to live again, and that is exactly what they get.
There's not much point in elaborating on the plot, because it is remorselessly by-the-numbers. It's the execution that's different; the film keeps flirting with Bollywood tropes, but is never quite ready to commit. They set up multiple dance numbers which promptly don't happen. (To be fair, there is one dance number in the movie, and another during the closing credits.) Mili is kidnapped by five local thugs, and Vikram rescues her by . . . bringing the ransom money and shaming one of the thugs into going away.
Instead, we get conversations. Lots of conversations, and some of the dialogue is very sharp indeed. We also get occasional snatches of the characters' thoughts, which are completely unnecessary because the actors are good at acting and can convey thoughts and emotions with a glance or a raised eyebrow. There is no need to tell when the movie is doing such a good job of showing.
So, Khoobsurat is not what I expected. And that's fine; not every movie has to be masala, after all. There's room in the world for a sweet, quirky romance that manages to stick to one genre for the entire movie. It's a well made movie aimed squarely at people who are not me.
Sonam Kapoor plays Mili Chakravarty, a gifted physical therapist and free spirit, a woman who pointedly does not have a boyfriend because (as a brief flashback demonstrates) none of the men she meets can handle her extreme level of quirkiness. As the film opens, she's working for the Kolkata Knight Riders, but as the season ends she takes a job in the royal household of Shekhar Singh Rathore (Amir Raza Hussain.)
Shekhar is wheelchair bound, and stubbornly refuses to cooperate with any sort of physical therapy; he's already driven forty doctors away. His wife Nirmala (Ratna Pathak Shah) has taken over management of the household, and she does so with strict rules and chilly efficiency. Vikram (Fawad Khan), the obligatory handsome but stuffy prince, manages the business and maintains an entirely proper engagement to the lovely Kiara (Aditi Rao Hydari). And younger sister Divya (Simran Jahani) is preparing to attend Oxford but secretly dreams of becoming an actress. The family are living in the shadow of a family tragedy which they all refuse to discuss, which means they are in desperate need of a quirky free spirit to break them out of their individual shells and teach them to live again, and that is exactly what they get.
There's not much point in elaborating on the plot, because it is remorselessly by-the-numbers. It's the execution that's different; the film keeps flirting with Bollywood tropes, but is never quite ready to commit. They set up multiple dance numbers which promptly don't happen. (To be fair, there is one dance number in the movie, and another during the closing credits.) Mili is kidnapped by five local thugs, and Vikram rescues her by . . . bringing the ransom money and shaming one of the thugs into going away.
Instead, we get conversations. Lots of conversations, and some of the dialogue is very sharp indeed. We also get occasional snatches of the characters' thoughts, which are completely unnecessary because the actors are good at acting and can convey thoughts and emotions with a glance or a raised eyebrow. There is no need to tell when the movie is doing such a good job of showing.
So, Khoobsurat is not what I expected. And that's fine; not every movie has to be masala, after all. There's room in the world for a sweet, quirky romance that manages to stick to one genre for the entire movie. It's a well made movie aimed squarely at people who are not me.
Thursday, January 9, 2020
1) Farida Jalal!
2) Saif Ali playing a role appropriate to his actual age!
3) Tabu as the apparent love interest, rather than someone 10-20 years younger than Saif Ali!
4) Farida Jalal!
I don't know if the movie will be any good, but I'll definitely check it out.
Saturday, January 4, 2020
How sharper than a serpent's tooth . . .
Bhagyawan (1994) has an unusually ornate plot, even for the early Nineties. As the film opens, hard-working factory worker and family man Dhamraj (Pran) returns home from work only to discover that his sister Pushpa (Rubina) is pregnant. When Dhamraj learns that the father is his boss Hira (Ranjeet), he's furious. He drags Pushpa to Hira's house and demands that Hira do the honorable thing. Hira laughs in his face, Pushpa throws herself in front of a bus (spattering her brother with unconvincing blood), and Dhamraj and Hira both swear eternal vengeance on one another. Unfortunately Hira is a bit better positioned to carry out his vengeance; soon Dhamraj is penniless and out of work. He's so desperate that he decides to poison himself and his family, but before he can carry out the plan, an adorable orphan steals the poisoned food. Dhamraj chases the kid down and destroys the food, and in the process discovers a winning lottery ticket. He decides to adopt the obviously lucky kid, and that's all in the first ten minutes or so of the movie.
Twenty years later, Dhamraj owns a successful chemical business, while the orphan has grown into Amar (Govinda), an incorruptible police officer, devoted son, and fantastic dancer. Dhamraj's wife Savitri (Asha Parekh) is eager to marry Amar off, but he's not really interested in anyone . . . until he meets Geeta (Juhi Chawla), a quick-witted con artist and part-time Robin Hood who cares for a band of orphans with the help of her partner Jhoney (Johny Lever.) They meet, they fall in love, they get married, then he brings her home to meet the parents.
Unfortunately, Dhamraj's other children are not as nice. Widowed daughter-in-law Renu (Aruna Irani) is mostly petty, cynical and greedy in ways which do not impact the plot, but oldest son Vishwas (Kirti Kumar) is embezzling from the family business, spurred on by his equally terrible wife Alka (Sripradha), who has a dark secret of her own. Youngest son Kishan (Suraj Chaddha) is really just an amiable idiot, but he's in love with Radha (Shobha Singh), and the crazy kids decide to fake a pregnancy in order to convince her father to allow them to marry. Unfortunately, her father is Hira, and when Hira visits Dhamraj's house in order to arrange the marriage . . . things don't go well. And Hira is still much better at the vengeance thing.
And from this point on, the movie is basically King Lear. Amar's forthright nature (and propensity for stupid vows) gets him kicked out of the house, while Hira exploits the other siblings' worst character traits in order to bring ruin to Dhamraj's home. Fortunately, this is still Bollywood, which is known for its wild swings in tone and genre, which means a happy ending is still a possibility. (You'd think having a skilled con artist in the family would be useful, but no, most problems are solved by Amar punching people.)
Bhagyawan is very much a product of the early Nineties. The plot is much more complicated than it needs to be, the tone shifts back and forth with all the vigor of an inflatable tune man in front of a car dealership, and the action scenes are trying desperately to be like a Jackie Chan movie without Jackie Chan. Still, the movie stars a number of actors that I quite like, and also Govinda. Pran is particularly well cast, giving the part of embattled patriarch a solemn dignity and a playful spark. Juhi Chawla is splendid as the cheery con artist, and frankly a bit wasted as the dutiful daughter in law. And Johny Lever is relatively restrained here; there's some of his trademark mugging for the camera during some of the early con artist scenes, but Juhi is mugging right along with him, and later in the film he's just a loyal and surprisingly helpful friend. The movie is reasonably entertaining in its own right, but perhaps more interesting as a look into Bollywood's past.
Twenty years later, Dhamraj owns a successful chemical business, while the orphan has grown into Amar (Govinda), an incorruptible police officer, devoted son, and fantastic dancer. Dhamraj's wife Savitri (Asha Parekh) is eager to marry Amar off, but he's not really interested in anyone . . . until he meets Geeta (Juhi Chawla), a quick-witted con artist and part-time Robin Hood who cares for a band of orphans with the help of her partner Jhoney (Johny Lever.) They meet, they fall in love, they get married, then he brings her home to meet the parents.
Unfortunately, Dhamraj's other children are not as nice. Widowed daughter-in-law Renu (Aruna Irani) is mostly petty, cynical and greedy in ways which do not impact the plot, but oldest son Vishwas (Kirti Kumar) is embezzling from the family business, spurred on by his equally terrible wife Alka (Sripradha), who has a dark secret of her own. Youngest son Kishan (Suraj Chaddha) is really just an amiable idiot, but he's in love with Radha (Shobha Singh), and the crazy kids decide to fake a pregnancy in order to convince her father to allow them to marry. Unfortunately, her father is Hira, and when Hira visits Dhamraj's house in order to arrange the marriage . . . things don't go well. And Hira is still much better at the vengeance thing.
And from this point on, the movie is basically King Lear. Amar's forthright nature (and propensity for stupid vows) gets him kicked out of the house, while Hira exploits the other siblings' worst character traits in order to bring ruin to Dhamraj's home. Fortunately, this is still Bollywood, which is known for its wild swings in tone and genre, which means a happy ending is still a possibility. (You'd think having a skilled con artist in the family would be useful, but no, most problems are solved by Amar punching people.)
Bhagyawan is very much a product of the early Nineties. The plot is much more complicated than it needs to be, the tone shifts back and forth with all the vigor of an inflatable tune man in front of a car dealership, and the action scenes are trying desperately to be like a Jackie Chan movie without Jackie Chan. Still, the movie stars a number of actors that I quite like, and also Govinda. Pran is particularly well cast, giving the part of embattled patriarch a solemn dignity and a playful spark. Juhi Chawla is splendid as the cheery con artist, and frankly a bit wasted as the dutiful daughter in law. And Johny Lever is relatively restrained here; there's some of his trademark mugging for the camera during some of the early con artist scenes, but Juhi is mugging right along with him, and later in the film he's just a loyal and surprisingly helpful friend. The movie is reasonably entertaining in its own right, but perhaps more interesting as a look into Bollywood's past.
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