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.
No comments:
Post a Comment