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.