A shaggy fish story.

You might think that Maara (2021) is a movie about finding love, or the strength of a found family, or learning from the past in order to face the future, but don't be fooled.  It's much simpler than that.  This is a movie about stories.

A young girl named Paaru (Aaradhya Shree) is taking a long bus ride with her family, and she is bored.  Her mother and grandmother (Maala Parvathi and Seema, respectively) offer to tell her a story, but she doesn't want to listen to a story she's already heard.  A nun in the next seat over (Padmavati Rao) steps in and offers a story about an immortal soldier searching the world over for the fish that contains his soul.  Little Paaru is captivated, but before the story ends, her grandmother suffers a stroke, and the bus breaks down.

 

In the present, Paaru is not particularly interested in the groom her mother has picked out for her, so she leaves town.  For work.  She's a restoration architect, and she has aproject in a small coastal village.  But when she gets to the village, Paaru finds beautiful murals, all over town, depicting . . . well, it looks an awful lot like an immortal soldier searching for the fish that contains his soul.  

 

Paaru rents a house that belongs to the artist, a man named Maara (Madhavan.)  It is filled with Maara's art, including sketches of many of the villagers, which gives Paaru a place to start searching.  Nobody knows where Maara is now, but everybody has a story about him.  Paaru gets caught up in story after story, stories about a kind antique dealer (M. S. Bhaskar), an unhappily married thief (Alexander Babu), a depressed doctor (Sshivada), a wise prostitute (Abhirami), and a drunken pirate (Guru Somasundaram).  They are not always nice stories, touching on subjects such as suicide and child abuse, but Maara himself emerges as a decent man who helps people when he can.

 

Paaru and Maara nearly meet while he is performing one of his good deeds, rescuing a child from dire peril.  But they don't meet, and Maara goes about his business.  The film shifts over to Maara's perspective from time to time, which makes him less of a mystery to the viewer than he is to Paaru.  But the most important thing we learn about Maara is that he is also driven by a story he heard as a young man, a story told through an undelivered letter that a retired postman (Moulee) has carried with him for decades.

 

Ostensibly Maara is a love story, and there is love here, deep, passionate abiding love.  It just doesn't really involve the two leads; Paaru isn't chasing the man, she's chasing the story, while Maara is chasing a story of his own.  That does make them a uniquely well suited couple, but that's beside the point.  The story is the point. 

 

And the story ambles along at its own languid pace, backed by some stunning cinematography.  (Well done, Dinesh Krishnan, Karthik Muthukumar, and anybody else involved in the process!)  It takes its time, but is worth the journey. 

Ten hours of plot in a two hour movie.

Bada Dil Wala (1983) is the story of Amrit (Rishi Kapoor), a kind and trusting hotel singer, who is sent to prison for a crime he did not commit, framed by his dance partner Luska (Kalpana Iyer) and evil hotel security chief Bhagat Singh (Amjad Khan).  Amrit vows to leave prison and prove his innocence.  The first step in his plan is to . . . work hard and earn an early parole.  Once that's sorted, and with the help of Luska's long lost sister Shabnam (Aruna Irani) he tricks the villains into confessing on tape.  Unfortunately, Bhagat has a gun, and in the ensuing struggle, Luska is shot.  And all of that happens within the first thirty minutes, with enough time for two dance numbers along the way.  Things happen, is what I am saying.  This movie has a lot of plot.

 

Amrit is afraid of being charged for Luska's murder, so he goes on the run.  Luckily, the first person he runs into is his friend Vijay (Vijay Arora), along with Vijay's wife Juhi (Sarika) and their toddler Munna (Babloo.)  Vijay delivers some important exposition about Juhi's father Sinha (Pran), who assumed that Vijay was after his money and refused to meet Vijay or even look at a picture of him, forcing the young couple to elope.  Juhi sensibly sent her father a picture of his grandson, and they're all taking a train ride to reunite the family.

And then the train derails.  Amrit manages to save little Munni, but Juhi and Vijay are not so lucky.  Amrit takes the boy to Sinha, but the old man assumes that Amrit is Vijay, and before Amrit can explain, the family doctor takes him aside and explains that Sinha has a heart conditio0n and any further shock could kill him, so Amrit is forced to play along, tearfully reuniting with his friend's estranged father in law.

 

The bad news is that Sinha has another daughter, Rashmi (Tina Munim), and she has seen a picture of her sister's husband.  She tries to bait Amrit into revealing himself, but he is well prepared thanks to all the backstory from the train trip.  She finally confronts him , and he confesses everything, explains his motives, and shows her the letter he had written to Sinha to reveal the truth.  Rashmi convinces him not to confess, both for her father's sake and because she's started to like him.  

And so Amrit sticks around and tries to make himself useful.  He keeps Simha happy and involved in family life, cleans up the corruption at the family juice factory, and grows closer to Rashmi.  He can't bring himself to start a relationship with her, though, because he's an impostor and a wanted fugitive and everybody thinks he's her brother-in-law.  It's enough plot for two movies at least.

 

And then Juhi shows up!  With amnesia!  Accompanied by a "doctor" who is actually Bhagat Singh in disguise!  And the movie is only halfway over!  

 

More than anything else, Bade Dil Wala reminds me of a penny dreadful, or an old black and white serial.  Our pure-hearted protagonist careens from event to event at a breakneck pace.  There's no time to explore anything in any great detail, or even catch a breath, but there is always something happening.  It's pure melodrama, with action and romance and literal cliffhangers.

 

Melodrama only works if the cast is willing to commit, and the cast commits.  Pran does most of the emotional heavy lifting; at times it seems that the only reason he's not in on the various secrets is so that he can react to the big reveals.  Amjad Khan, most famous for playing the villainous Gabbar Singh in Sholay, is if anything even nastier here.  Gabbar Singh, bad as he was, never tossed a baby off a cliff!  Rishi Kapoor's Amrit is a charming innocent, while Tina Munim's Rashmi is the smart one with nerves of steel.  There's a nasty villain to boo, and heroes to cheer for.  What more could you ask for?

(Oh, and the baby is fine.)

Lemony Snicket's "A Fistful of Dollars."

Avane Srimannarayana (2019) starts with a murder.  Bandit leader Rama Rama (Madhusudhan Rao) has captured a band of traveling religious pageant actors because he believes that they stole a truck load of gold, and he wants it. The actors won't, or can't, tell him where the gold is, so he shoots them all, apart from the hapless bandmaster (Gopalkrishna Deshpande), whom he keeps around as a sort of mascot or court jester.

 

Years pass.  Rama Rama is on his death bed, and his men have gathered to hear who will be the next leader of the bandit clan.  Rather than passing the throne (there's a literal throne, but it's made of wood and just looks like an uncomfortable chair) on to his scary, violent son Jayarama (Balaji Manohar) or his devious and ruthless son Tukaram (Pramod Shetty), Rama Rama declares that the throne will pass to whoever manages to find the lost gold.  This goes about as well as you would expect, and soon a maimed Tukaram has been sent into exile, while Jayaram has seized power, claiming to act as regent for his dead father until the gold has been recovered.

More years pass.  Jayaram rules the bandit clan with an iron fist, crucifying the occasional bandit that questions his authority.  Tukaram is a politician, using similar methods but with a thin veneer of legitimacy.  They both want the treasure, which means they are both pressuring Inspector Srimannarayana (Rakshit Shetty) to find it for them.  

 

Srimmanarayana is probably not a very good cop; he spends a little too much time in bars, and isn't likely to take a case unless there's something in it for him.  On the other hand, when he wants to be, he's a brilliant detective, and he's very good at punching people as well.  Srimmanarayana is ably assisted by Constable Achyuthanna (Achyuth Kumar) and frequently annoyed by plucky but kind of bossy small town reporter Lakshmi (Shanvi Sristavasta).

 

All of which sounds pretty standard.  There are dueling bad guys, a dashing scoundrel, a prim love interest, and a shiny macguffin, and everybody has their own agenda, including and especially our hero.  But that's because I haven't mentioned Cowboy Krisna's, an exact replica of a Western saloon owned by an eccentric cattle magnate, where you can hire a team of hyper-competent cowboy-themed mercenaries using a convenient letterbox.

 

And then there's the secret society of actors, who lead mundane lives in town during the day, but at night they secretly dress up in costume and perform theatrical rituals in the woods, preparing for the day when their prophesied savior will arrive and help them perform their last play so that they can finally move on to the next town.

 

What I am saying is, this is a weird movie.  It's not just a bombastic, over-the-top action movie, it's also a whimsical, surreal comedy.  Or it's not just a whimsical, surreal comedy, it's a bombastic, over-the-top action movie.  Either way, it mangles genres boundaries with glee, and the end result is as charming as it is strange.

I am slapsticked out.

I like to watch a wide range of Bollywood and related cinema, but I have to admit that the nineties and early oughts are really my era.  I love a good nineties romantic action comedy, and I regret to inform you that Hello Brother (1999) is not a good nineties romantic action comedy.

Salman Khan plays Hero, a courier working in Mumbai, and he is . . . Look, I get that this movie is a goofy comedy, and characters are going to be drawn very broadly, but Hero is a capering  twit whose behavior doesn't even rise to the level of "buffoon."  He's like Pee Wee Herman with muscles.  He also has a habit of picking fights with little or no provocation, and he tends to end these fights by giving his hapless opponents purple nurples.  He is an interesting choice of protagonist.

 

Hero is in love with his next door neighbor/gal pal Rani (Rani Mukerji), but while they do flirt a little bit during the obligatory neighborhood "Boys Versus Girls" song, she makes it very clear that she thinks of him as a friend.  hero is still holding out hope, though, so he asks his boss Khanna (Shakti Kapoor) for some extra work, and Khanna is happy to assign him some extra, special deliveries.

Enter grouchy supercop Vishal (Arbaaz Khan, Salman's real life brother).  Vishal has pretty much cleaned up the drug trade in his home city, so his superiors have arranged to have him transferred to Mumbai, where he is under the command of the explosively flatulent Senior Inspector Khan (Meeraj Vora) and ably assisted by Constable Hatela (Johny Lever).  Vishal is convinced that Khanna is using his courier business to ship drugs, so he marches out to the golf course and threatens him.  Hero does not believe that Khanna is capable of anything shady (because Hero is an idiot) and jumps in to defend his boss.

 

Before too long, Hero is the Roadrunner to Vishal's Coyote, stymieing his investigation at every turn, because apparently the police academy doesn't prepare you for dealing with nitwits.  And then one of Hero's packages spills, revealing drugs!  Hero races to tell Khanna about what he's discovered.  Vishal follows, alone, because he's a maverick cop who doesn't care about rules or backup.  It doesn't go well; Khanna kills Hero, then shoots Vishal through the heart.

 

But the movie isn't over yet.  Vishal is given Hero's heart, because apparently this hospital is run by maverick doctors who don't care about the rules.  And unfortunately Hero isn't out of the movie either; he's hanging around as a ghost that only Vishal can see.  The only way to make Hero go away is to avenge his death, so the pair are forced into an awkward buddy comedy alliance in order to take down Khanna.  And things get even more complicated when Vishal meets Rani and falls instantly in love.

One of the few things I liked about the movie is that Rani was completely sincere about being Hero's friend.  Once she finds out about his death, she immediately claims the body and arranges a funeral, and she genuinely mourns his loss.  It's the one bit of emotion in the film that isn't immediately undercut with stupid slapstick and fart jokes.

 

And the rest of the movie is, well, undercut with stupid slapstick and fart jokes.  Again, I get it, it's a goofy and incredibly broad comedy, but when Johny Lever is playing a more nuanced and dignified character than the movie's star, things may be a little too goofy, even for me.

Charlie's Shiny New Year

If 2020 has taught me anything, it's that life is a lot like Bollywood: the genre can change completely, right when you least expect it.  Sometimes that's good, and sometimes it's a humanitarian disaster of global proportions, but change happens.  And that's what New Year's Eve is really all about; whatever calendar you use, it's good to take one night a year to decide what genre you really want to live in.  And that brings me to Happy New Year (2014).

Charlie (Shah Rukh Khan) is not happy.  He's a street fighter, and as the film opens he's competing in a very female-gazey match, complete with a lot of mud and water and lingering close-ups of his abs.  Charlie is supposed to throw the fight.  He's ready and willing to throw the fight . . . until his opponent tries to needle him by calling him the son of a thief.   Instead, he delivers a brutal beatdown and leaves, and the terrifying gangster he was working for apparently gives up and completely disappears from the movie.

 

Later, Charlie is relaxing in his very spacious apartment (street-fighting pays much better than I would have expected, apparently) when he learns that a shipment of priceless diamonds will be kept in the vault of the Atlantis Hotel in Dubai for one night, Christmas Eve, and will be protected by the security company owned by Charan Grover (Jackie Shroff.)  And that's when Charlie reveals that this is actually a heist movie.

Every heist movie requires a team, and Charlie recruits Jag (Sonu Sood), a military veteran and movie special effects expert who is deaf in one ear; Tammy (Boman Irani), an epileptic safe cracker; Rohan (Vivaan Shah), hapless teenaged nerd and super hacker); and Nandu (Abhishek Bachchan), a drunken idiot who happens to look exactly like Charan Grover's son Vicky.  

Charlie has a plan, and it can work, if everybody plays their part.  Step one, naturally, is to enter the World Dance Competition, which is sort of like Eurovision, only for dance. They don't have to win the competition; they don't really even have to qualify, since they have a hacker handy, but they do need to pass the first round of auditions.  Cue a training montage filled with silly dancing and pop culture references.

 

But they're still terrible.  The team needs a coach, since this is now a sports movie.  Nandu suggests his childhood friend, Mohini (Deepika Padukone), a bar dancer with the soul of an artist.  They get off to a rocky start, but Mohini soon whips them into a sort of shape; they don't actually become good, but what they do is mostly recognizable as dancing.  Meanwhile, Mohini is enthralled by Charlie's drive and English skills and abs, and the pair start to creep towards maybe starting a relationship.  (She can do better, but I'll get to that later.)

 

Mohini does not know about the heist, and she certainly isn't in the loop when the rest of the team cheat their way into becoming Team India.  All she knows is that they are on their way to Dubai, to represent their country.  Unfortunately, nobody likes them, because they're terrible dancers.  And the leader of the North Korean team (Jason Tham) picks a completely gratuitous fight with Charlie.  And worst of all, the diamonds are delayed for a week, so the team of terrible dancers absolutely has to get through the first round of the competition.  The success of the heist movie depends upon the success of the sports movie.

 

This is a Farah Khan movie, which means that wild swings in genre and tone are to be expected; in one scene Jag uses cartoon physics to defeat a group of bouncers with silly names, and in another we learn the tragic secret of what happened to Charlie's father and exactly why everybody is so set on taking down Charan.  As usual, Khan packs the movie with stuff that she thinks is cool, which makes for a dizzying pace.  It is a long movie, but it does not feel like a long movie.

 

The film does have some flaws.  The humor is generally pretty broad, which means some of the jokes are cheap shots or play to stereotypes, and both Tammy's epilepsy and Jag's hearing loss are used for cheap laughs more than once.

 

I'm more bothered by the romantic track, though.  I get what the movie is trying to do; Mohini's attraction to Charlie plays up a  number of tropes of Bollywood romance while reversing the gender; in one scene, for instance, she's so busy staring at Charlie that she doesn't hear a word that he's saying.  That's cute and all, but it's not really healthy.  More seriously, Charlie is kind of a jerk who is constantly saying well-meaning but tone deaf things about Mohini's social class and job.  He doesn't really show her respect, and Mohini is all about demanding respect.  It's not something that she should give up on; no amount of English or abs is worth that.

 

On the other hand, this is a movie about change, about how life can change in an instant whether you're ready or not, and about how if there's a change you want to see happen, you can't just wait for fate.  Charlie is beginning to change himself by the end of the film, and Mohini is pursuing her own dreams rather than waiting around for him.  It's a new year, and anything can happen.