I'd like to be under the sea.

As I write this, Sooryavanshi, the latest installment of Rohit Shetty's "Police Universe", is breaking all sorts of box office records in India.  It's not available anywhere near me yet, so instead I'm going to take a look at an earlier installment of the "Police Universe."  Little Singham: Samundar Ka Sikandar (2021) recounts the time when Singham, the unstoppable supercop played by Ajay Devgn, traveled to an undersea kingdom, rescued a mermaid princess, and fought a giant squid.  It's weird that he never mentions this stuff in the movies.

Of course, this isn't exactly Singham as played by Devgn; it's Little Singham, because apparently when he was a child Singham was already a police officer who fought demons and mutant animal hybrids.  (Frankly, the gangsters and terrorists he deals with as an adult are a bit of a step down.)  Why is Little Singham already a cop?  He just is, okay?  Apparently he maintains a secret identity, though it doesn't come up in this movie at all.  We do get to meet young Singham's annoying sidekicks, though: Chikki, who is a monkey, and Lattu, who is not a monkey.

Singham and a good portion of his supporting cast are on a cruise ship near Hawaii when the ship strikes a rock and begins to sink.  Little Singham springs into action and saves all of the passengers and crew, but the ship sinks to the bottom of the ocean and bounces off of a mysterious domed undersea city.

Meanwhile, under the sea, the monstrous Jalgohra, nephew of King Sagadeer, and Haivaan, aquatic villain with a magic staff that can create undersea storms, decide to join forces and conquer both the undersea world and the world above.  The shipwreck gives them a chance to try and capture Princess Laharika, who is sometimes a mermaid and sometimes a whale.  The whales of the ocean send out a distress call which Singham can understand for some reason, so he and Chikki and Lattu put on their advanced wetsuits and dive to the rescue.

Our heroes save the princess and she takes them into the undersea city, where outsiders are strictly forbidden.  She casts a quick spell transforming them into hybrid sea creatures, but it only lasts about five minutes or so and then they are discovered, captured, and brought before the king.  And that's when Jalgohra and Haaiwan strike and reveal their evil plan: they're going to release the monstrous octopus Vikraal, which will devastate the underseas kingdom and allow the villains to conquer under and above the waves.  After a quick fight in which Singham nearly defeats them despite his hands being tied, the villains kidnap the king, and Singham and friends set out on an epic quest to find the magic pearl and trident they must use to save the day.  

Well, I say epic; the movie is less than an hour long, so there's only so much adventuring they can fit in.  The plot moves at an incredible pace, and there's no time for inconsequential things like "character development" or "explaining why these people are in Hawaii in the first place." 

To be fair, I am very far from the target audience for this movie, and the children it is intended for have probably seen some of the many, many episodes of the Little Singham TV show rather than relying on what they know from the Ajay Devgn movies.  And not always knowing what is going on doesn't prevent me from appreciating the sensational character find of 2021, "Guard Who Looks and Sounds Like Kermit."

Breaking the cycle.

The reincarnation melodrama is one of the subgenres of Indian cinema that keeps coming back, over and over again.  They tend to bring back the same tropes and plot beats over and over again as well, so it's always interesting when a movie like Raabta (2017) tries to do something different, looking to the present rather than continually focusing on the past.

Shiv Kakkar (Sushant Singh Rajput) is a young banker who has just taken a job in Budapest.  He may have a sensible and boring job, but Shiv is handsome and charming, and he knows it, so he makes quite the impression on the local ladies.  One night, Shiv and his date stumble into a chocolate shop run by driven, somber and intense Saira (Kriti Sanon) and he quickly forgets all about his date.  Shiv and Saira feel an immediate and mutual attraction, and after a minimal amount of will they-won't they, they do.

Saira lost her parents in a car accident when she was very young, and she suffers from a fear of water and recurring nightmares of blood and chains and someone drowning.  When Shiv starts appearing in these nightmares, she's moderately freaked out.  But the relationship is going so well!  Maybe too well, since the relationship seems to be moving awfully quickly.

As  a test of their relationship, Shiv and Saira attend a party and each try to pick up other people, to see if they feel the same powerful attraction to anyone else.  (this is a terrible idea, but nobody in this movie thinks anything through.)  Shiv is quickly surrounded by a half dozen ladies, while Saira strikes up a flirtation with liquor mogul Zak (Jim Sarbh.)  Zak is rich, handsome, mysterious, and charming, everything Saira used to think she wanted, but she still goes home with Shiv.

Soon after, Shiv has to leave town for a  week and the pair decide that a week's separation is another chance to test their relationship.  While Shiv is gone, Zak pops up again and strikes up a conversation with Saira.  They take a walk in the rain, they have a nice dinner, they talk about life and Saira's dreams and how she feels really ready to make a commitment to Shiv . . . and then Zak drugs her and takes her to his secluded island lair, where he explains that they were lovers in a previous life and he's been searching for her in this one, shows her his wall of creepy Saira portraits, and tells her that dinner is at eight and he's already picked out her dress.

When she's alone, Saira tries to escape.  She's caught by Zak and his men, but falls into the ocean and slips in to a flashback to eight hundred years ago, when she was the warrior princess Saiba and Zak was her deeply smitten childhood friend and bodyguard Kaabir.  Saiba's people lived on a secluded island plateau, but were threatened by the ferocious Muraakis, led by the ancient, wise, and possibly wizardly Muwaqqit (an unrecognizable Rajkumar Rao under heavy makeup) and the deadly warrior Jilaan, Shiv's previous life.  In a surprise attack, Jilaan severely wounds Kaabir and devastates Saiba's armies, so she travels to the enemy camp in disguise hoping to eliminate Jilaan personally.  Instead, they wind up falling in love, and he agrees to spare her land in exchange for her hand.

A recovered Kaabir attempts to rescue Saiba, but she refuses to leave.  Kaabir won't take no for an answer, so he murders Jilaan and throws the body in the ocean.  Saiba drowns herself, and Kaabir slits his own throat, while Muwaqqit predicts that this will all happen again.

In the present, Saira drags herself onto the beach.  She approaches Zak and tells him that she remembers everything and does not want it all to happen again, so she'll agree to marry him if he promises to spare Shiv.  Zak agrees, but he's lying because he's deranged and obsessed, making it all the more likely that it will all happen again.  Meanwhile, Shiv returns from his trip and discovers that Saira is gone and the newspapers are reporting Zak's engagement, so it's time to crash a party.  (Action banker!)

There are a lot of reincarnation movies in Indian cinema, and many of them are not very good.  part of the problem is that they spend a lot of effort on making the past lives exciting, while the characters' present incarnations are dull cardboard cutouts.  Raabta tries to get around this problem by committing to both its genres, diving wholeheartedly into romantic comedy tropes during the present scenes and embracing fantasy-historical epic tropes for the scenes set in the past.  It succeeds as well as it does largely through the strength of Rajput's two distinct performances; Jilaan is an interesting, quirky warlord with two swords and a heart of gold, but Shiv is an interesting and engaging protagonist in his own right.

Perhaps most importantly, Shiv doesn't think he's less interesting than Jilaan; he's determined to save the woman he loves, but it's specifically because he loves her now, not because his past life used to love her.

Not one word.

Vaayai Moodi Pesavum (2014) is by turns a sweet romantic comedy and an absurdist farce.  It's a movie about the importance of honest communication, of always speaking from the heart, and it uses a sudden outbreak of a disease that renders its victims literally speechless as its central metaphor.  It works. it works well, even, but watching it in the year 2021 makes for some surreal moments.

Aravind (Dulquer Salmaan) is a good-hearted door to door glue salesman in the hill city of Panimalai. He is an incredible talker, and he uses this talent not just to sell glue, but to make people's lives better.  As he tells a client, when he sees that something is broken, he can't help but try to fix it.  Still, there are some problems even his gift of gab can't fix; his best friend Satish (Arjunan) can't speak to women without jumbling his words and blurting out profanity, and the orphanage Aravind grew up in is threatened with closure by their surly landlord (Vinu Chakravarty).

Anjana (Nazriya Nazim) is a doctor, and she does not like to communicate.  She lives with her father (Abhishek Shankar) and her stepmother Vidhya (Madhoo), with whom she does not get along, and she's dating Vinodh (Abhinav), a controlling jerk who nags her into not wearing her glasses because he thinks she looks better without.

Meanwhile, "Nuclear Star" Bhoomesh (John Vijay) is filming a movie in the area, or at least he's trying to - the shooting is constantly being disrupted by protests from the Drunkard's Union, who want the movie banned because they feel it will portray alcoholism in a bad light.  (I did mention the absurdism, right?)  The Fan's Union also arrives to counter-protest, and nobody is willing to listen.

And then everything changes when Panimalai is stricken with "Dumb Flu," a mysterious illness which starts with a nasty cough and may rob the victim of the ability to speak.  This is bad for Aravind, because he's a door to door salesman and nobody wants to open their doors to a stranger during a pandemic.  But it's also good for Aravind because when he goes to the hospital to get tested (with a nasal swab) he meets Anjana, and they strike up a sweet, flirtatious friendship.  Aravind shares his philosophy, that every problem can be solved if people just speak form their hearts, and Anjana shares hers, which is no they can't.  They make a bet - if Aravind is able to resolve the dispute around Bhoomesh's movie, Anjana will tell Vinodh how she feels about his controlling ways, and try to have a heart to heart with Vidhya.  If he fails, he has to fetch Anjana a signed picture of Bhoomesh.  (She's a fan.)

The Dumb Flu gets worse, and Panimalai is put under s strict quarantine.  And when it's discovered that the disease spreads through people talking, the entire town is ordered to keep silent.  At this point the leader of the local opposition party declares that the Dumb Flu is a hoax, a conspiracy cooked up by the government in order to control people's lives, and he gives a fiery speech about how he will never comply with government silence mandates before keeling over and becoming the first person to die of Dumb Flu, which probably seemed really unrealistic back in 2014.

And at this point the film basically becomes a silent movie, with Aravind struggling to make peace between the dueling unions while robbed of his greatest asset, his voice.  Meanwhile, Vinodh silently proposes in front of Anjana's family, leaving her feeling pressured to accept and try to be happy about it, and Satish manages to strike up a relationship with a pretty nurse (Nakshathra Nagesh).  Wackiness ensues, but it does so silently, as everybody tries to resolve their various subplots while waiting for a vaccine.

Vaayai Moodi Pesavum is by turns silly and sweet; there's a bit of satire mixed in as well, but it's largely gentle satire, with the hardest hitting bits only becoming hard hitting in retrospect.  The silent parts of the film are particularly well done, with the cast conveying a great deal of emotion and meaning through gestures and facial expressions.  And any musical number featuring masked gangsters clashing with dapper mimes is worth bonus points in my book.

Chori Chori Chupke Chupke in reverse.

Mimi (2021) was always going to end in a bitter custody battle and tearful epiphanies and a moment of self sacrifice.  It's a movie about surrogacy, so the only real question is whose tears, whose epiphany, and who makes the sacrifice in the end.

John (Aidan Whytock) and Summer (Evelyn Edwards) are an American couple who have traveled to India in search of a surrogate mother for their eventual child.  They've tried working through a surrogacy agency, but Summer and John decided that those girls were too weak; they want a strong mother in order to bear their perfect, healthy child.  (Does it sound creepy when they put it that way?  Yes.  Yes it does.)

Their driver, Bhanu (Pankaj Tripathi) is sympathetic; he and his wife Rekha (Atmaja Pandey) have been trying for a baby for years, without success.  He's happy to help the Americans, especially when they offer him a large sum of money to help them find a surrogate.

And then, at a hotel in Rahahstan, they see Mimi (Kriti Sanon) dancing, and realize that she's the one; Mimi is tall, graceful, and well fit - she's exactly what they've been looking for.  Bhanu makes a clumsy attempt at explaining the situation to Mimi, and gets slapped for his trouble.  However, Mimi wants to go to Mumbai and become a Bollywood star, and to make the move she's going to need a great deal of money, so she reconsiders, and finally agrees.

The deal is that Mimi and Bhanu will be paid in healthy installments during the pregnancy, with the bulk of the payment coming after delivery.  The procedure is a success, so John and Summer pay for the first five months and then leave.  Rather than explain the situation to her parents (Supriya Pathak and Manoj Pahwa), Mimi tells them that she's been hired for a film shoot on a cruise ship, and she'll be back in nine months.  Then, disguised in a burka, she goes to stay with her friend Shama (Sai Tamhankar), posing as Shama's cousin while Bhanu plays the part of her husband.

Everything is pleasant domestic comedy, filled with humorous misunderstandings and the lighter side of pregnancy, until suddenly it isn't.  During one of their visits to India, the doctor takes John and Summer aside and tells them that tests indicate that their perfect baby may have Down Syndrome.  They can't handle the idea, so they tell Bhanu that they don't want the baby anymore and flee the country.

In the chaos that ensues, Mimi leaves the house without her burka, blowing her cover.  She returns to her family home, Bhanu and Shama in tow, and when her parents tearfully demand to know who the father is, she panics and mutely points at Bhanu, leading to a whole new set of wacky misunderstandings.  The baby is finally born healthy and very, very white, and Mimi falls in love with the boy.  The family settles into an uneasy equilibrium until Bhanu's wife comes looking for him, and the whole truth comes out.

And then everybody decides to act like grownups and they make the situation work.  Mimi names the baby Raj, and by the time he's four (and played by Jacob Smith) he's surrounded by a loving extended family.  Mimi has gone back to work as a dancer, and occasionally Raj joins her in her shows.  One clip makes it to Youtube, and Summer and John happen to see Mimi dancing and realize just who the perfect and very, very white child dancing with her must be, so it's off to India and the inevitable bitter custody battle and tearful epiphanies.

Mimi tries very hard to be a representative of conservative Indian family values, but at the same time, it's pitting a nuclear biological family against a found family of misfits consisting of a single mother, her parents, her Muslim friend, and a taxi driver and his wife, and the movie is very firmly on Team Misfit.  The intended moral, the explicitly stated moral, is that parents are vitally important but they don't have to be related to their children by blood (so consider adoption!) but the movie follows up on that premise by introducing a strong and loving family that is completely nontraditional while still superficially resembling a traditional extended family.  It's family that's important, and it doesn't matter what it looks like.