Changing a hawk to a little white dove.

You might think that Action Replayy (2010), in which a young man travels back to 1975 in order to save his parents' relationship, is the Bollywood remake of Back to the Future, but director Viprul Ameutlal Shah insists that it's actually adapted from H. G. Wells's conveniently public domain The Time Machine, and has nothing whatsoever to do with any Hollywood film franchises involving time-traveling DeLoreans and Michael J. Fox kissing his mom.  If that's true, then I am deeply disappointed by the lack of Morlocks.

 

Bunty (Aditya Roy Kapoor) loves Tanya (Sudeepa Singh.)  Tanya loves Bunty.  She's ready to get married, but Bunty won't even think of it, because his own parents, Kishen and Mala (Akshay Kumar and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, both in terrible old age makeup), have a dysfunctional nightmare of a marriage.  Everything comes to a head at Kishen and Mala's thirty fifth wedding anniversary party, when Mala's old friend (and Kishen's old bully) Kundanlal (Rannvijay Singh) crashes the party and casually humiliates Kishen, while all the assembled guests (and Mala) laugh.  Once the guests leave, the unhappy couple start talking about divorce.  Then they start shouting about divorce.

 

Tanya was raised by her grandfather, Anthony Gonsalves (Randhir Kapoor), who happens to be an eccentric scientist and therefore has an experimental time machine in his basement.  (And to the director's credit, the time machine looks very much Wells's time machine is normally depicted, and nothing at all like a DeLorean.) Bunty "borrows" the time machine and heads back to 1975, determined to make his parents fall in love with each other.

 

There are obstacles.  Obstacle number one: 1975 Kishen is . . . a nerd.  Obstacle number two: 1975 Mala is a mean tomboy, and every bit as much of a bully as Kundanlal.  Obstacle number three: oh yea, Kundanlal.  He's around and a huge jerk.  And obstacle number - well, the other main problem is that Mala's mother (Kirron Kher) and Kishen's father (Om Puri) hate each other, so they will be no help.

Still, Bunty tries his best to nudge his parents toward one another, and it ends in humiliating failure.  The good news is that both his parents are prompted to (separately) tell Bunty their tragic backstories, giving him genuine insight into what they've suffered and how they became the people they are, which will help him to manipulate them in the future.  The bad news is that along the way Bunty accidentally made Kundanlal fall in love with Mala, so Kishan now has a rival, and suddenly it's looking likely that Kishen and Mala won't get married at all.  Meanwhile, Mala's sassy galpal Mona (Neha Dhupia) has fallen in love with Bunty.  (The power of love is a curious thing.)

 

Take two.  Bunty gives Kishen a long-overdue makeover (Montage?  Montage.) and teaches him to act cool.  Then, once Mala is paying attention, Bunty orders Kishen to act aloof and ignore her, so that she will fall in love out of jealousy.  It's skeezy and manipulative, though to be fair it's still less creepy than some of the stuff Marty McFly comes up with.

 

I love blatant Bollywood ripoffs of Hollywood movies, because I'm always fascinated by what changes during the adaptation process.  Action Replayy is no exception.  The emotional core of the Back to the Future movies is Marty's friendship with Doc Brown, but Bunty and Gonsalves barely know one another.  Yeah, 1975 Gonsalves fixes the time machine, enabling Bunty to get back to the future, but he does so almost entirely offscreen.  Instead, the focus is on Bunty getting to know his parents and learning to appreciate them as people, and teaching them to appreciate each other as people in the process.  (Granted, he does that by toying with their emotions, but nobody's perfect.)

 

Despite the director's protests, the inspiration for Action Replayy is blindingly obvious, but the end result is still very different.

Breathing space.

I like a bombastic action movie as much as the next guy, but sometimes, I'm in the mood for something else.  Sometimes I want a movie in which absolutely nobody gets punched.  And when that happens, I can always turn to Amol Palekar.  And that brings me to Naram Garam (1981).

Ramprasad (Amol Palekar) returns to his native village for a visit with his old teacher Vishnuprasad (A. K. Hangal).  Vishnuprasad has an ulterior motive; money is tight, his son Birju (Anand) has run off to become an actor, and his daughter Kusum (Swaroop Pasat) is so beautiful and talented that any suitable groom's family will be in a position to demand a sizable dowry.  Vishnuprasad asks Ramprasad if he would kindly consider marrying Kusum, and while Ram and Kusum have already rekindled a childhood spark, Ram can't think about marrying unless he can support a family, and he simply does not have the money, so he politely declines.

 

Ram works for Bhavani Shankar Bajpai (Uptal Dutt), a notorious miser who is obsessed with astrology.  Bhavani has finally resolved a decades-long legal dispute over a country house (thanks in part to Ram and no thanks at all to his astrologer) and he asks Ram to fix up the place and convert it from a bleak house to somewhere he can sit and remember his late wife.  

One day Ram returns to the house to find that Vishnuprasad and Kusum have moved in!  Vishnuprasad explains that they have finally been evicted and since Birju is a wandering actor, they have literally nowhere else to go.  Ran explains that it's not really his house, and the actual owner will be moving in within a month, but until then they should stay while he tries to figure something out, and hope that nobody else from his work finds out.

 

Somebody else finds out.  The estate manager, Gajanan (Suresh Chatwal), rushes down to the house to evict the squatters, but when he gets there, he's so smitten with Kusum that he offers to let them stay if Kusum marries him.  Vishnuprasad is initially thrilled, because he doesn't know how much of a creep Gajanan is, but Ram and Kusum are not thrilled.

 

Ram decides to go to Bhavani's younger brother Babua (Shatrughan Sinha) for help.  Babua is a tough-talking man of action, so he scares Gajanan off, then goes out to the house to evict the squatters . . . and immediately falls for Kusum.  Again, Ram and Kusum are not thrilled, so Ram has no choice but to appeal to Bhavani.  Bhavani's a respectable middle-aged widower and father of an adult daughter, so he's not likely to fall for Kusum, right?  Ordinarily, that would be the case, but Bhavani was just told by his astrologer that he will gain great wealth if he marries a woman whose name begins with 'K', so as soon as he sees Kusum, he's ready to propose.

 

The plot of Naram Garam is basically the romantic comedy version of "The Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly;" every apparent solution leads to an even bigger problem.  With a plot that simple, execution really matters, and the movie delivers.  Ram and Kusum have an easy, relaxed chemistry, and their relationship builds slowly and gently.  It's not a grand passion, but Ram is clearly the man for Kusum, because out of all her suitors, he's the only one that sees her as herself; the others all drift into fantasy sequences as soon as they lay eyes on her, using her as a peg for their silly notions of what a woman should be, to slightly misquote Forster.  

 

This is not an epic tale about star crossed lovers and a blazing passion that cannot be denied, it's a quiet story about two ordinary people trying to carve out a place in a world that is not always kind and often absurd.  Though I have to admit that Babua does punch a few people.  It's a mistake and he feels bad afterwards.

Come and see the violence inherent in the system!

Singham Returns (2014) is the sequel to 2011's Singham.  It's also the second movie in director Rohit Shetty's "Cop Universe" a police-focused cinematic universe which is only slightly less realistic than the Avengers movies.  It doesn't reference the previous movie at all, though, and doesn't feel like a sequel, so it works just fine as a standalone film.

 

DCP Bajirao Singham (Ajau Devgn) is an incorruptible, unstoppable supercop, like Shaktimaan with a badge.  He even has a similar code, believing that he's here to stamp out crime rather than criminals.  He is a bit more prone to feats of operatic violence than Shaktimaan is, though, and even Shaktimaan doesn't lecture people quite so much.  Singham and his right hand man Daya (Dayanand Shetty) are first seen dealing with a gang of young hoodlums who have stolen a policeman's hat.  This gives Singham the chance to nobly refuse a bribe, and to let the kids off with a warning, an act of mercy which is absolutely going to pay off before the end of the movie.

 

It's election season, and saintly politician Gurukant "Guruji" Acharya (Anupam Kher), Singham's old teacher with a name that translates roughly as "Teachy McTeacherface", has assembled a slate of bright young idealistic candidates.  This does not please his coalition partner Prakash Rao (Zakir Hussain.)  But Singham doesn't have time for politics; he's busy investigating the death of Constable Mahesh Jadhav (Ganesh Yadav), who was found dead in a submerged ambulance filled with cash.  The press immediately jump to all the wrong conclusions, and Singham's quest to clear the constable's name leads him to the spectacularly corrupt religious guru, Satyaraj Chander (Amole Gupte).  

 

Meanwhile, Singham's parents have arranged a potential engagement to spunky hairdresser Avni (Kareena Kapoor at her Kareena Kapooriest.)  While they do like each other, they both agree that they're not ready for marriage yet, but that's not enough to save them from sitcom shenanigans!

 

Singham Returns is a cop movie, but it follows the beats of a superhero movie, complete with an extended "Singham No More?" subplot.  It's also every bit as much of a fantasy as anything Marvel has ever produced; the carefully choreographed slow-motion violence is an action staple, but this is a movie about political corruption in which every single police officer is good and virtuous, so there's no reason to worry even if the entire police force decides to step outside the law in order to bring vigilante justice to politically untouchable criminals. It works in the movie, because it's a movie and the script is written so that this is fully justified and the correct choice, but in the real world, it's a terrifying concept.  I'd almost rather take my chances with Thanos.

They laugh alike, they walk alike, at times they even talk alike.

Amitabh Bachchan was the King of Bollywood in the Seventies and Eighties, the "angry young man" who captured the spirit of the era.  Today, Bachchan is the industry's reigning patriarch, the finest of stern father figures, and he's branching out into a number of offbeat roles.  But there's a long stretch of time between these two periods in which Bachchan was appearing in movies like Bade Miyan Chote Miyan (1998).  

 

Bachchan plays police inspector Arjun Singh, who is not particularly angry or young.  Singh has a mother (Sushma Seth), a spunky younger sister named Seema (Raveena Tandon), and a partner, Pyare Mohan (Govinda).  Pyare and Seema secretly love each other, but they know Arjun would never approve, so they plan to get Arjun married to someone, hoping that it will put him in a better mood.

 

Meanwhile, hotel maid Madhu (Divya Dutta) sees smuggler Zorawar (Paresh Rawal) and his henchmen murdering a police officer.  She escapes, and files a report with Pyare and Arjun, but when she returns Zorawar is waiting and kills her.  Madhu's roommate Neha (Ramya Krishnan) witnesses this murder, escapes, and calls the police, but insists she will only speak to Pyare.  Since Pyare is out, the Commissioner (Anupam Kher) orders Arjun to pretend to be Pyare.  He does, and takes her to hide out at Pyare's home, which means that Pyare has to go and stay at Arjun's house.  With Seema.  Wackiness ensues.

 

Arjun and Neha fall in love, because it's that sort of movie, but she still thinks that he is Pyare, which means that a mistaken identity plot is inevitable.  It doesn't last long, though, and soon both couples are happily in love and Zorawar politely steps out of the spotlight so that the movie can introduce Bade Miyan and Chote Miyan (Bachchan and Govinda), two thieves who happen to look exactly like Arjun and Pyare, leading to an entirely different mistaken identity plot, this time partly cribbed from Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. 

 

Despite the tenuous Shakespearean connection, though, this is an aggressively dumb movie.  The pacing is off, with much of the early runtime devoted to setting up the first mistaken identity plotline, a plotline which is almost immediately discarded.  Zorawar just wanders from place to place menacing and murdering, rather than following any sort of coherent scheme, and one of his henchmen is killed at least twice but still shows up for the final fight scene.  And the movie never quite decides which Bachchan-Govinda pairing are the protagonists until the very end.

On the other hand, aggressively dumb movies can be fun, sometimes.  Bade Miyan Chote Miyan has some funny jokes and goofy action scenes and brightly colored dance numbers with terrible costumes and a completely gratuitous cameo by Madhuri Dixit.  Clearly a lot of people liked it, since it was the second biggest box office success of 1998, only overshadowed by megahit Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.  It was one of the high points of the low point of Amitabh Bachchan's career.

Your plastic pal who's fun to be with!

Goa, 2031.  On a dark and rainy night, a self driving taxi swerves to run over a man, an action which clearly violates the First Law of Robotics.  The investigation will lead a cynical cop and an idealistic robot rights activist into the dark underbelly of this neon future, where they must deal with a shady robotics corporation and its missing CEO, an anti-technology cult leader who doesn't wear clothing, an immersive virtual reality video game for disaffected robots, and at the center of it all, an AI which was created to save the world but decided to go into stand up comedy instead.  OK Computer (2021)  is a cyber-noir detective story mixed with absurdist comedy, like Blade Runner as told by Douglas Adams.

 

The detective in question is Saajan Kundu (Vijay Varma), and while he might seem like the only sane man in a collection of misfits, he's just as quirky and damaged as everybody else.  Saajan has lived in his car since the Covid-19 pandemic, and he has an instinctive distrust of machines and a superstitious fixation on a large sea turtle.  Saajan is ably assisted by the earnest and awkward Monalisa Paul (Kani Kusruti), a police detective whose mother belongs to an anti-technology cult, and he's forced to team up with robot rights activist Laxmi Suri (Radhika Apte.)  Saajan and Laxmi seem to have a past, but they parted on bad terms after he killed a submarine.

The suspects are an equally motley crew.  Mysterious billionaire CNX is missing, his interests represented by a small army of lawyers, a pair of computerized shoes, and a holographic bear.  Cult leader Pushpak (Jackie Shroff) is by turns whimsical, philosophical,  and sinister, but is always naked. 

 

And then there's Ajeeb, the prime suspect.  Ajeeb is an artificial intelligence designed to solve all the world's problems.  It was given a physical form and became a beloved celebrity, but after a crisis of confidence it quit to pursue comedy, and the backlash was so severe that Ajeeb was forced into hiding.  The show is quite open about being influenced by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Ajeeb is sort of the Anti-Marvin; there it is, brain the size of a (metaphorical) planet, and everybody knows and expects incredible results. Ajeeb deals with the pressure by projecting a sunny disposition which may or may not conceal a murderous dark side.

 

I'm not sure if OK Computer counts as a dark comedy, but it's definitely a sad comedy.  These are people who have seen absurd and terrible things, and it has marked them. And while Pushpak is a big naked idiot, but he does explain that this isn't the future people wanted.  "They were promised salvation.  Flying cars.  Smart cities.  Cheap medicine, longevity.  Freedom.  Privacy.  Unity.  But what did we get instead?  Private date theft.  Fear, discrimination.  Destruction of the environment.  Stale memes.  24 hour surveillance."  And if the dark future sounds like our dark present, well . . . 

 

OK Computer doesn't pretend to offer solutions to the world's problems.   It's just a reminder that something needs to change.

 

Weird, weird west.

Super Cowboy (2010), also known as Irumbukkotai Murattu Singam, is a Western set in India.  That's not that unusual; I've seen a lot of Indian movies that toy with Western tropes, but Super Cowboy is totally committed to the bit.  Every character looks and acts like somebody from the old West.  Sometimes that's good, and sometimes, not so much.

Singaram (Lawrence Raghavendra) is a semi-reformed thief and a terrible security guard.  After a priceless diamond is stolen on his watch, the town puts him on trial and then sentences him to death.  Singaram insists that he did not steal the diamond, but nobody cares.  They're holding him responsible anyway.

At the last moment, Singaram is rescued by a band of masked men who turn out to be middle aged dudes from the nearby village of Jayshankarapuram.  The men explain that their village is being menaced by the bandit warlord Kizhakku Katai (Nassar), master of the Iron Fort.  Jayshankarapuram had a protector, an amazing gunslinger named Singam, but he has vanished.  Singaram happens to look exactly like the missing Singam, so if he will play the part long enough to rally the villagers to fight back, they'll give him their diamond, which happens to look exactly like the stolen gem.  Singaram agrees, and so we have a plot.

 

Singaram is not much of a gunslinger, but he is a pretty good actor, and before long he's inspired the townspeople to stand up for themselves, and also managed to catch the eye of Baali (Padmapriya), the town's pretty young doctor.  Katai's henchman Ulakkai (Sai Kumar), also known as Cheetah, tries to kill the returned hero, but thanks to a combination of skillful bluffing, help from the middle aged dudes, and dumb luck, Cheetah is driven off.  Unfortunately, Katai has a plan for that.

 

Despite the Western trappings, the movie is set in sort of contemporary South India.  (The opening narration claims that it's the Eighteenth Century, but that is immediately followed by a trial scene which directly references Amitabh Bachchan.  It's not the Eighteenth Century.)  However, the tribal people living near Jayshankarapuram dress and speak like stereotypical Hollywood native Americans, though they draw upon stereotypical representations of indigenous peoples from many continents.  They're treated with more respect than the Rakshasa from Maharaj Ki Jai Ho, but that is damning with very faint praise indeed.  

Anyway, Katai's big scheme is to attack the tribals and place the blame on Singam.  It works, Singaram and friends are captured and about to be sacrificed (ugh) when Singaram saves the day and makes peace through his amazing dance skills.  The tribals agree to join the fight against Katai if Singaram will agree to marry the chief's beautiful daughter Thumbi (Sandhya).  Singaram negotiates a long engagement.

 

And then the movie suddenly shifts genre as representatives of all three factions team up to discover an ancient treasure by following a mysterious map and then solving a series of puzzles, which gives Katai's right hand woman Pakki (Lakshmi Rai) a chance to become Potential Love Interest #3.  

 

The switch in genres doesn't last long, though, because this is a movie that is passionate about embracing Western tropes, so there has to be a climactic gunfight before our hero can ride off into the sunset with his love interest of choice.  I just wish they had been more careful about which Western tropes to embrace.