Hiatus

 I am going on vacation.  New reviews in January!

What I say three times is true.

Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla rose to stardom thanks to their performance as star-crossed lovers in Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak,  and they spent much of their early careers playing opposite each other as star-crossed lovers.  Love Love Love (1989) is one of those movies.

Perennial bad guy Gulshan Grover plays Vicky, son of local Don Sudhir Bhai (Raza Murad).  Vicky behaves like the wicked prince in a fairy story; he's tremendously entitled, cruel for cruelty's sake, and he does not think things through.  In theory, Vicky is a college student, and he introduced himself as "The Don of the college," but he spends most of his time going into dance clubs and humiliating everyone who annoys him.  (Grover was thirty four when this move came out, and he looks it.)  naturally, Vicky has a small coterie of sidekicks and hangers on, the most important being his girlfriend Reema (Juhi Chawla) and her brother Mahesh (Anand Balraj).  

Reema is visibly annoyed by Vicky's casual cruelty, but she never does anything about it.  And then one night, as Vicky and the gang are mugging an old man for money to buy a VCR (they can easily afford it, but Vicky gets bored if an activity doesn't involve hurting people) they are interrupted by good Samaritan Amit (Aamir Khan), who studies at the same college.  Vicky is obviously furious, but Reema is delighted, even if she still doesn't do anything about it.

And then . . .  well, it's Eighties Bollywood, so the romance is going to be weird for a while.  Vicky and his goons steal Amit's new bike, ride it around the campus (this time Reema is an active participant) and then destroy it in front of him.  (Reema did not participate in that part.)  Amit bumps into Reema at a disco and forces her to dance with him, which is seriously not cool.  Vicky arrives and makes some threats, and it's all kind of pointless because the actual plot hasn't kicked off yet.

The college principal (Chandrashekhar) selects Amit and Reema to represent he college at a quiz competition in Delhi.  He also insists that they travel by train together, unsupervised, in order to build team spirit.  That gives the young soon-to-be star crossed lovers a chance to get to know one another on equal terms, without either one coming across as a creep.  There's definitely a spark there.

Reema and Amit return victorious to Mumbai, and their classmates pressure Amit to hold a party the tiny house where he lives with his taxi driver father (Dalip Tahil).   Reema promises to come, but she literally cannot get away.  During the next attempted date she has to attend a boring cocktail party with her father (Om Shivpuri) and Vicky's father.  Amit tries to arrange more dates, and she never manages to show up, leaving his friends to darkly mutter that "rich girls can't be trusted."  

Finally Reema manages to sneak away long enough to meet Amit at the Disco Dandiya, and they declare their love for one another.  Amit and Reema make a plan to secretly meet every morning while jogging, And then Reema ruins everything by telling Vicky and her father that she's been meeting Amit, which leads to more threats, more beatings, and Vicky's terrifying father meeting Amit's father to make threats.  Amit is a dutiful son, so he agrees to leave Reema and go away when his father asks him to.

Reema is sad for a while, then she takes the initiative and tracks Amit down, leading to more happy dancing and frolicking.  Sudhir Bhai is forced to elevate his threats - either Reema agrees to marry Vicky, or he will have Amit killed; the fact that he makes this threat as they watch one of his goons try to run Amit over makes it especially convincing, so Reema agrees.

And then Vicky ruins everything, because he does not think things through.  He makes a point of taking Reema with him to deliver a wedding invitation and to invite Amit to attend Reema's birthday party, where the engagement will be formally announced.  The evil plan is to insult Amit so much that he doesn't even think of approaching Reema ever again, and Vicky and his friends are a bit mean, but the Reema publicly sings about her love for Amit to the tune of "It's A Sin" by the Pet Shop Boys, dances with Amit in front of everyone, and ends by kissing him on the lips, which is humiliation stacked on humiliation for Vicky.  The good guys escape, the bad guys are out for blood, and it all leads to a climactic showdown in an unlicensed Disney theme park.

There's a reason why I started by talking about Vicky rather than the actual protagonists.  He's a much bigger presence in the film than the usual unsuitable suitor.  That's an interesting choice, and it would be more effective if Vicky weren't so cartoonishly evil.  He starts chewing the scenery the moment he appears on screen, nearly every line is delivered with a snarl, and because he starts by threatening violence the moment he's thwarted in any way, he really doesn't have much room to escalate.  Gulshan Grover is great at playing scenery chewing villains, but this movie gives him more scenery to chew than usual, and it's a bit of a struggle for him to get through it all.

Aamir and Juhi have a bit more to work with, especially Juhi.  Reema has to walk a careful tightrope at the beginning, because she needs to be at least somewhat complicit in Vicky's bad deeds without becoming totally unlikable.  Reema also has more agency than a lot of the Bollywood heroines of this era, and even gets to join in on the last fight scene.  Amit is a more solid and traditional character, but he gets plenty of chance for heroic speeches and noble self sacrifice.

All that said, this is Eighties Bollywood, and it does showcase some of the flaws of that era.  The incidental music is largely lifted from western movies, with the Star Wars theme playing at key points and a chase scene accompanied by the music from Chariots of Fire.  The movie is set at a college campus where nobody ever goes to class.  The plot goes around and around in circles, especially as the film approaches the climax.  And unfortunately Vicky does end the movie threatening to rape Reema, which is a jarring shift in tone form the rest of the movie, making those scenes grimy and horrible, rather than the fun melodramatic romp it had been up to that point.

On the other hand, the hero's sister makes it through the entire movie without anything terrible happening to her, and Bob Christo, one of my favorite Bollywood henchmen, makes a brief cameo as an assassin named Bob.

Come back, Karan Johar. All is forgiven.

 Karan Johar didn't invent the big Bollywood musical romantic drama, but he wrote, directed and/or produced some of the finest examples of the genre, and also Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna.  Times change, and tastes change, and Johar has left the genre behind in recent years, but Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahani (2023) represents his return to romance.  I plan to judge it by the same standards I judged Johar's early films: Plot exists as a vehicle to deliver emotions, we have to like the couple and want them to be together or there are no stakes, family should be a collection of actual characters rather than just an obstacle, songs should be frequent and colorful while advancing the emotional core of the story, and Farida Jalal should play somebody's mother.

Rocky (Rabveer Singh) is a bit of a lunkhead, fitness obsessed and a bit full of himself, but with a good heart.  He's devoted to his family, especially his grandfather Kanwal (Dharmendra).  And really, someone has to be - Kanwal has been confined to a wheelchair and practically catatonic for decades, and his wife Dhanalakshmi (Jaya Bachchan) has raised their son Tijori (Aamir Bashir) to focus on the family's highly successful ladoo business rather than his ailing father, and Rocky's mother and sister (Kshitee Jog and Anjali Anand) are buried in household duties, so Rocky is left to serve as the heart of the family.

At a business function, Kanwal hears a ghazal, and it awakens something in him.  He approaches a random woman and calls her "Jamini."  Kanwal's doctor suggests that finding this "Jamini" might help him recover some of his faculties, and Rocky is on the case.  Finding an old photograph leads him to a woman named Jamini Chatterjee (Shabana Azmi), and to her granddaughter Rani (Alia Bhatt), a hard-hitting TV reporter.  

Rocky contacts Rani, and after a lot of flirting they arrange a meeting between the families.  Kanwal doesn't just speak to Jamini, he stands, he kisses her, he even sings.  Dhanalakshmi decides that that's enough of that, thank you very much, and officially puts a stop to any further meetings.  However, Rocky and Rani decide to keep arranging meetings, falling in love with each other in the process.

Rani tries to convince herself that it's just a fling; yes, Rocky is handsome and charming and funny, but he is undeniably a lunkhead.  There's no way a relationship could actually work, is there?  Rocky has no such illusions.  He's in love and wants to get married.  He tries to propose, and it doesn't go well, especially because Rani is worried about their very different families.  

Rani comes up with a plan that's so crazy it just might fail and hurt a number of people in the process: criss cross!  They spend three months living with one another's families, and if they can make that work then marriage will be no problem.  It's like the romantic comedy version of Strangers on a Train.  However, it also plays into a common Bollywood trope, in which the hero lives with the heroine's family, usually under false pretenses, and winds up making everybody's lives better.  This is the rare double DDLJ.  And there's a lot to do, as Rani learns to navigate Rocky's tradition-bound and cold family dynamic, while Rocky struggles to fit in with Rani's trendy and feminist mother (Churni Ganguly) and Kathak dancing father (Tota Roy Chowdhury).  

And for once I've given myself a clear rubric with which to judge the movie, so point by point:

Plot exists as a vehicle to deliver emotions - absolutely.  The plot makes more sense than Johar's debut film, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, but there are some strange developments here which lead to big emotional set pieces.  On the other hand, it's not just about the emotional payoff; the film is a great example of the big Bollywood romance, but it also examines some of the outdated romantic tropes that Karan Johar had a hand in popularizing, questioning Bollywood's treatment of women and examining whether romantic self-sacrifice really is the highest expression of love.

We have to like the couple and want them to be together or there are no stakes - another yes.  Rocky gets off to a bit of a rocky start (ha!), but he's a lunkhead who is willing to learn, and part of rani's character development is realizing that she's been judging Rocky on a surface level rather than seeing the real and complex person underneath.  And Rocky gets the "I'm young and carefree and nothing will ever change me" song that is usually assigned to the heroine.

Family should be a collection of actual characters rather than just an obstacle - family is definitely an obstacle here, but the families all feel real and complicated, and the real end boss is generational trauma.  Usually all of the troublesome elders are forgiven at the end of the movie, even if they've hired assassins to bump off the hero or heroine, but not here, and the characters who are forgiven had to work for it.

Songs should be frequent and colorful while advancing the emotional core of the story - oh, yes.  The songs fit tightly into the narrative, and they are both sumptuous and decidedly old school.  I did not realize how much I miss that era of Bollywood.

Farida Jalal should play somebody's mother - no.  What's up with that?

Shah Rukh and Son. (The son is also Shah Rukh.)

 Shah Rukh Khan's comeback tour continues with Jawan (2023), which is reminiscent of some of Kahn's older movies while still being very much its own thing.  Critics have mentioned thematic similarities to Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani, Chak De! India, Swades, and Chennai Express, but it really feels like writer-director Atlee looked at the over the top political metaphor of Oh Darling! Yeh Hai India! and decided that metaphor is for cowards.

The plot of Jawan is fairly straightforward, but it's one of those movies in which the backstory is slowly filled in through a series of nested flashbacks.  The film opens in 1986, with a mysterious bandaged  amnesiac (Shah Rukh Khan) saving a remote village from an attacking force of Chinese soldiers.  Then the movie jumps to the present, with a subway train taken hostage by a small band of highly trained women, each with their own special skillset: Lakshmi (Priyamani), Doctor Eeram (Sanya Malhotra),  Helena (Sanjeeta Bhattacharya), Ishkra (Girija Oak), Kalki (Lehar Khan), and Jahnvi (Aaliyah Qureisha).  The women answer to a mysterious bandaged mastermind (Shah Rukh Khan), who demands a hostage negotiator that's interesting to talk to.

The authorities select Narmada (Nayanthara), head of the counter-terrorist unit Force One.  The bandaged man plays the villain for a while, then reveals his demands - four hundred million rupees, enough to pay off the loans of seven hundred thousand farmers.  As it happens, Alia (Ashlesha Thakur), daughter of legitimate businessman/arms dealer Kalee (Vijay Sethupathi), is on the train, and he agrees to pay the ransom.  This is not a coincidence.

When the train arrives at the station, Narmada has her men waiting to arrest the hijackers, but by this point the bandaged man has won over the hostages by explaining the predatory nature of loans to farmers and the resulting high rate of suicide among them, and because he only pretended to kill a hostage to show how serious he was.  With the help of the hostages and a fair amount of hugely unlikely technological trickery, the hijackers escape, but before they go the leader asks Alia to tell her father his name: Vikram Rathore.

He is not actually Vikram Rathore. He's Azad, warden of a women's prison that focuses on rehabilitation and restorative justice rather than punishment.  His six accomplices are all inmates at the prison who have all suffered various forms of social injustice, and Azad's plan is to expose government corruption, help the common man, and, as later flashbacks reveal, clear the name of his father, Vikram Rathore, who was branded a traitor and apparently murdered after exposing defective weapons that Kalee's company sold to the military.

Meanwhile, Azad's foster mother Kaveri (Riddhi Dogra) is looking for a bride for him.  The latest candidate was too busy to meet with him, and rather than send her parents she sent her ten year old daughter Suji (Seeza Saroj Mehta), who is in the market for a father.  Azad and Suji get along well, and when her mother turns out to be Narmada, they get along as well.  The match is made.

Azad wants to tell her the truth, but before he can bring himself to do it, on their wedding night, she discovers that he's the criminal she's been chasing.  Before she can arrest him, though, the honeymoon cabin is attacked by armed men led by Kalee's brother Manish (Eijaz Khan), who thinks they're working together.  He shoots Narmada and is about to kill Azad when Vikram Rathore appears.  He's not dead after all, but he still has amnesia.  On the other hand, he is a decent fellow and a trained soldier, so he's happy to rescue his son even though he feels no emotional connection.  It does not go well for Manish.

Kalee was in Russia attending an International Conference of Evil Businessmen, which is the kind of thing that happened a lot in Nineties Bollywood action movies.  He's hoping to raise enough money to buy himself into political office, and then open up India as a haven for evil businessmen to build massive polluting factories without having to worry about environmental regulations or basic safety.  (This is not a subtle movie.)  A mobster with a Darth Vader breath mask offers to put up the money, threatening dire consequences if he is not paid back on time.  But before Kalee can put his plans into action, he needs to take revenge on his old enemy Vikram for Manish's death.

So Kalee wants revenge and power, in that order.  Vikram, Azad, and the ladies want to steal Kalee's money, to end his power and make India a better place for the common people.  Narmada, who is also not dead, wants to arrest her wayward husband, though there's a good chance that she can be won over by the right bit of exposition.  The plot may be complicated, but the sides are clear, and there's room for key cameos from Sanjay Dutt and Deepika Padukone.

When an actor is playing a  dual role, it's important that the characters are distinctive enough to be easily distinguishable.  Azad is a fairly typical SRK protagonist, prone to big displays of emotion, impassioned and inspiring speeches, and dancing with his arms extended.  Vikram, as an older amnesiac, is quirky and largely detached from what's going on around him.  He's just happy to help, especially if helping involves spontaneous displays of violence.  

 The characters are also distinguished in the action scenes; Azad is an over the top Bollywood action hero, skilled and blessed with a great deal of luck, especially evil henchmen who keep forgetting that they have guns and attacking one at a time.  Vikram is more like an over the top South Indian action hero, operating on an entirely different level.  He's capable of the kind of stunts you see in Bahubali or RRR.

As huge and improbable as the actions scenes are, though, it's the plot that really stretches suspension of disbelief, particularly the notion that Azad and his friends can achieve lasting political change through their Robin Hood antics; at one point they overhaul India's entire medical system in the space of five hours.  It's a movie with its heart in the right place, especially Azad's final speech, in which he pleads with the public to use the power of their vote carefully, asking those seeking office what they will do to help the country and the common people instead of being distracted by fear or labels.  And that could lead to social change, but acts of heroic crime probably won't.

Love and elephants.

Dil Tera Hogaya (2020)  is a little different from my usual fare; it's not just a movie from Pakistan, it's a TV movie from Pakistan.  It manages to feel very familiar, but with a few notable differences.

Ahmad (Jawed Sheikh) and his brother Arshad (Farhan Ally Agha) live together in their family estate in Pakistan.  The brothers get along well, but their wives, Fehmi (Saba Faisal) and Zoobi (Shaheen Khan), respectively, do not.  The women were childhood friends, but they've had a serious falling out, and they've partitioned the house, with Chanda the maid (Mizna Waqas) moving back and forth between the feuding in-laws, taking advantage where she can.

Fehmi works as a dressmaker and designer, though it seems that a good part of her business is making copies of other designers.  She's assisted by her son Annu (Feroze Khan), and she's raised him to be just as invested in the family feud as she is.  Zoobi has a YouTube channel where she cooks recipes she's stolen form other chefs, and her daughter Roma (Zara Noor Abbas) is even more eager to pick fights.  Annu and Roma do most of the actual feuding, in fact; as the movie starts, Roma lets the air out of Annu's tires so she can reach a job interview before him, he shows up to confront her, and they argue so loudly and vehemently that they're both kicked out of the building.

Ahmad and Arshad are on separate business trips to Dubai, but it's really an excuse top spend some time together without their family being actively horrible to one another.  They're trying to find a way to heal the family rift, but everything changes when Fehmi faints and is diagnosed with a brain tumor.  The men rush home, and for a while, the feud is forgotten and Zoobi and Fehmi are as close as they ever were.  Fehmi is particularly interested in getting Annu married before she dies, and Zoobi agrees to help.

Meanwhile, Roma and Annu are speaking civilly to one another for perhaps the first time in their lives, and they maybe don't hate each other after all?  Maybe they love each other?  The transition from sworn enemies to secret love interests happens really quickly, though to be fair it's a relatively short TV movie and they need to get to the song already.  Also, they grew up in the same house so they don't need to spend a lot of time getting to know each other.

And then disaster strikes.  The sisters-in-law overhear their husbands bragging about their successful scheme to bring the family closer together and get Roma and Annu married by faking Fehmi's cancer diagnosis.  Rather than get mad at their husbands, which would be sensible because convincing someone they're terminally ill is a genuinely awful thing to do, they're mad at one another.  The feud is back on, and now they're competing to see who can get their child married first.  Will Roma and Annu find a way to be together?

No.  That's not how things work in this kind of family drama/romance.  They'll make some noble speeches and give up their love for the sake of their family, but other characters will have an offscreen change of heart and everything will work out in the end. These movies don't normally end with the young couple directly addressing the camera to tell the audience that Eid is a great time to reconcile with your family and settle all your differences, but Dil Tera Hogaya was originally presented as  a holiday special, so fair enough.

So, elephant in the room.  Arshad and Ahmad are brothers, which means that Roma and Annu are first cousins.  That's a cultural thing; cousin marriage is both legal and relatively common in Pakistan, and I am not going be critiquing a culture that is not my own here.  I will say that growing up in the same household does push the dynamic closer to squabbling siblings than I would like.

Elephants aside, this is very Nineties Bollywood family drama, with big emotions, lots of talk about family values, protagonists who are kind of terrible until they fall in love, and everyone getting forgiven in the end.  It's just shorter, with one song, a handful of sets, and a small cast who mostly live in the same house.

Et tu, Jackie?

 I'm not sure what Mark Antony (2023) is trying to be.  Time travel comedy?  Gangster melodrama?  Incredibly loose Shakespeare adaptation?  Satirical commentary on all of the above?  Whatever it is, though, it commits to the bit.

 

In 1975, scientist Chiranjeevi (Selvaraghavan) has finally completed his grand invention, a telephone with the power to call the past.  he tests the phone by calling his past self, preventing an accident which cost his wife (Anitha Sampath) a leg and a teaching career.  After a bit of further experimenting, he figures out the rules; there are a lot of them, but the important ones are that the phone can only call a particular number once per day (as perceived by the receiver, not the caller), the phone can absolutely change the past, and only the caller will remember the original timeline.  he goes out to a nightclub to celebrate, and is shot during the assassination of powerful gangster Antony (Vishal.)  A dying Chiranjeevi tries to use the phone to save himself, fails, and dies with a quick speech about how no man can cheat fate, despite the fact that he has already cheated fate more than once.  

In 1995, Antony's old partner Jackie (S. J. Suryah) has taken over the business, and rules as the town's sole godfather.  Jackie is a benevolent crimelord, and is especially devoted to taking care of Antony's son Mark (also Vishal).  Mark is grateful, but he has absolutely no interest in a life of crime, because he blames his father for the murder of his mother Vedhavalli (Abhinaya).  Instead, he works as a mechanic and dreams of marrying the beautiful Ramya (Ritu Varma) and moving to a place where no one knows about his shameful family history.

Jackie's own son, Madhan (also S. J. Suryah) is very interested in a life of crime, and is planning to murder his father and take over the organization.  He's not very good at it, though,  and Jackie either doesn't notice or doesn't care, so everyone maintains a comfortable but dysfunctional equilibrium.

And then everything changes.  Ramya's mother discovers that Mark's father was the notorious Antony, so any hope of an engagement is shattered.  And then he discovers a phone locked in a suitcase stuffed in a car that used to belong to Ramya's deceased uncle Chiranjeevi.  He discovers a notebook giving instructions for how to use the phone, starts making calls, and things get weird.  

Mark wants to learn what his father was really like, so he uses the phone to prevent the death of  Antony's lawyer (Nizhalgal Ravi) and arranges a meeting in order to ask him.  He does, and discovers that his father was actually a loving husband and wonderful person, and all the drug peddling, gun running and prostitution was actually Jackie's doing, while Antony used his crime ring to protect the community.  Jackie pops up to confirm that yes, he's been the villain all along, and he's going to kill them both.  Mark manages to call his father, and history changes.

In the new timeline, Jackie is dead, Antony is gone, Mark is the crimelord and Madhan is the mechanic.  Nobody is happy.  This version of Ramya hates Mark, Mark doesn't have the skills to runa  criminal empire, and Madhan wants money, power, and revenge on Mark.  Mark tries to fix things using the phone, then Madhan steals it and calls his father, leading to a series of failed assassination attempts and a brief appearance by eighties sex symbol Silk Smitha (Vishnu Priya Gandhi).

That synopsis makes Mark Anthony sound almost mundane, just a South Indian gangster action comedy mixed with Back to the Future.  And it is, most of the time, but everything is stylized and tremendously stylized and really big.  The action scenes aren't quite Bahubali level, but they are impressively improbable, particularly the big set piece on a double decker bus.  And then 1995 Antony appears and takes everything up a level.

The plot, on the other hand, is pretty much nonsense, with time travel rules that make Back to the Future seem like hard science fiction.  And I'm still not sure if the movie is trying to be a loose adaptation of Julius Caesar, with Antony literally stabbed in the back by a circle of his closest friends and Mark trying to avenge him and right the ship of (criminal) state.

Bhooty Call: Dhilluku Dhuddu 2

 Dhilluku Dhuddu 2 (2019) is billed as a "spiritual sequel" to the original Dhilluku Dhuddu; while both movies feature haunted houses and star-crossed lovers, the only real connection between them is branding.  Which is just as well, because I haven't seen the first one.

Maya (Shritha Sivadas) is being haunted, but it's a very specific haunting.  She never sees the ghost, but every time a man says that he loves her, the ghost will wait until he's alone and then beat him up.  It doesn't seem to kill anyone, which is very restrained for an Indian movie ghost, but it does rather put a damper on her love life.  That might be okay, since the only men we see taking an interest are either creepy, like the guy who follows her through a dark alley demanding that she love him back right now, or inappropriate, like Karthik (T. M. Karthik), her direct supervisor at the hospital where she works.

Meanwhile, our hero Viji (Santhanam) is . . . well, he's a jerk.  Viji works as a rickshaw driver and lives with his uncle (Rajendran).  Uncle and nephew are public nuisances, drinking every night, shouting and moving furniture through the streets, and picking fights whenever any of the neighbors try to get them to be quiet.  Viji does actually have a tragic backstory to explain his bad behavior, but it does not matter to the plot in any way.

Viji hurts his hand while disrupting a local politician's ceremony and beating up the requisite goons, and in the morning he demands that his neighbors get him medicine.  One of those neighbors is Karthik, fresh from his own ghost-delivered beating, and that gives him an idea.  He sends Maya to perform physiotherapy, and the whole neighborhood does their best to encourage Viji to fall in love.

The neighbors don't have to do much, honestly.  Maya is beautiful, kind, and pious, and when she lights a candle for his deceased mother, Viji falls immediately.  He even temporarily gives up drinking for her, and sober Viji is much less unpleasant, so she seems to be falling for him as well.  Viji gathers his courage, and just before Maya leaves to visit her family in Kerala, he confesses his love.  She tells him the same thing she told her other suitors, to ask again the next time he sees her, and that night, the ghost appears and beats him up.

Unlike Maya's other suitors, Viji doesn't scare that easily. Karthik explains that Maya's father Garudaraja Bhattadhri (Bipin) is a powerful magician, and Viji and his uncle travel to Kerala to ask for Maya's hand.  They have a bit to drink along the way, so Viji acts like a jerk when he meets Maya's father, disrupting his magical ceremony and generally being awful.  He survives the inevitable attack by sword wielding goons, but that still doesn't solve the ghost problem, so he goes to rival guru Chakra Mahadevi (Urvashi) for help.

And up to this point, the plot is basic Bollywood (or Kollywood, in this case) romance, with the young couple needing to earn their happy ending by navigating parental objections; it's Chennai Express with ghosts.  But there's a twist - both gurus are frauds, and the ghost has been around for over a century, summoned by a previous King of Black Magic to protect his daughter from the lecherous George Williams, a British nogoodnik who made a habit of seducing and abandoning Indian women.  

The ghost can be exorcised, but only if Viji and the rest of the cast can find the scroll used to summon it, now hidden in a bungalow filled with angry spirits.  It sounds like a recipe for some genuine scares, but instead the final setpiece is a Haunted Mansion style romp through the bungalow, with a drastic increase in slapstick in an already slapstick heavy movie.

The humor in Dhilluku Dhuddu 2 is very broad.  That can be a good thing, because it means the good jokes translate well, and there are some genuinely good jokes here.  It can also be a bad thing, because when the jokes fall flat, the language barrier won't help, and that also happens more than once.

When the movie is at its best, it has a sort of fairy tale feel.  Maya telling her suitors to ask again later is a classic fairy tale test of their courage, determination, and worth.  Viji is the one who passes the test, so he gets the girl.  It doesn't change the fact that he's a big jerk, though.  Maya can do better.

Bhooty Call: Chandramukhi

 If you've seen the first Bhool Bhulaiyaa, then the plot of Chandramukhi (2005) is going to sound very familiar.  There's a reason for that; both movies are a part of a chain of remakes in different languages, stretching back to the 1993 Malayalam film Manichitrathazhu.  Still, casting matters.  This is a Rajnikanth movie, so the viewer can expect extra fight scenes, plenty of dancing, a song about how Indian village life is just better, and of course Rajni's usual understated humility.

The movie opens, like so many ghost stories do, with a dispute over building contracts.  An important contract has been awarded to Ganesh Construction, run by Senthil (Prabhu), and his angry rivals respond by trying to kidnap a vanload of Ganesh employees, but they are immediately rescued by Sathil's adopted brother Saravanan (Rajnikanth), a respected psychiatrist who has just returned from America.  The angry construction thugs vanish from the movie right after that, along with the whole contract dispute plotline; they seem to be in the film in order to be beaten up, assuring the viewer that yes, this is indeed a Rajnikanth movie.

Senthil has another problem, though.  He's recently married Ganga (Jyothika), but his mother had promised to marry him to his cousin Priya (Malavika), thus putting an end to an interfamily feud.  Priya's family don't know that Senthil is married now, so Saravanan offers to explain things to Priya's aunt Akhilandeswari (Sheela) and the rest of the family, and check out the haunted castle Setnhil bought while he's in the neighborhood.

Obviously, the family assumes that Saravanan is the promised groom, and though he tries to explain they really don 't let him get a word in edgewise, so instead he goes to check out the palace.  It is supposedly haunted by the spirit of Chandramukhi, a dancer in the court of the wicked king Vettaiyan.  When he found out that Chandramukhi was in love with Gunasekaran, he killed them both.  Chanramukhi's angry ghost returned for some serious haunting, but he had the ghost sealed in a Room Which Must Never Be Opened, guarded by a giant snake, then left town.

Sethil and Ganga arrive and clear up all the confusion.  They announce their intention to move into the haunted castle, and Akhilandeswari decides that everyone will move into the haunted castle.  And they do, and everything is fine.  Saravanan meets Durga (Nayanthara), the gardener's granddaughter, and he flirts with her by acting like a jerk at every opportunity until she realizes he has a good heart after all.  Meanwhile, Ganga becomes more and more fascinated by the story of Chandramukhi, and decides to open the Room Which Must never Be Opened.

After Saravanan is called away to attend to a patient, she gets her chance.  She convinces Durga to help her get a key made, and they open the room.  Ganga is delighted, but things start going wrong almost immediately, when the blacksmith who made the new key suddenly dies.  Things start getting spooky, with a mysterious voice singing at night, Ganga's sari mysteriously catching on fire, and a near fatal fishtank accident. The family quickly decides that Durga must be responsible.

And then Saravanan returns, just in time to foil an attack on Priya, though no one gets a look at her assailant.  It is time for Saravanan to bust a ghost, but to do that, he needs to figure out who the ghost is.  (It's Ganga, obviously, but he needs to figure that out.)

As in Bhool Bhulaiyaa, there's some question about whether the ghost is real or just a manifestation of Ganga's psychological problems, and as in Bhool Bhulaiaa, it doesn't really matter.  Saravanan's psychological approach seems to help, and so does the exorcism performed by the intimidating sage Ramachandra.  The psychiatrist and sage work well together, rather than arguing over whose worldview is correct.

The narrative is a bit more jumbled this time, though.  In addition to the evil contractors who appear in the opening and are never seen again, Akhilandeswari has an ill-defined evil scheme which never goes anywhere, though it does lead to a fight between Saravanan and her personal servant Oomaiyan (a shirtless Sonu Sood.)  Even the computer generated snake gets a lot of buildup but never interacts with any human characters and then just leaves.  

But ultimately it all comes down to the cast.  Rajnikanth displays his usual swaggering charm, but Jyothika steals the entire movie, effortlessly switching between charming as Ganga and chewing all the scenery as Chandramukhi, within the same scene and sometimes within the same line.  Most of Rajnikanth's movies in this era were named after the character he played.  Chandramukhi is an exception, and Jyothika earns it.

Bhooty Call: Tooth Pari

 The premise of Tooth Pari: When Love Bites (2023) sounds like the opening to a terrible joke: a vampire with a broken tooth falls in love with a dentist with a fear of blood.  However, while the series is billed as a horror-comedy, and it is indeed quite funny at times, it takes its world and especially its central relationship completely seriously.  That makes all the difference.

Kolkata is divided into two different worlds.  Humans live in Upar, or "Above," and go about their ordinary lives in an entirely ordinary way.  They don't know about Neeche, or "Below," an underground complex that is home to a clan of thirty vampires, led by Ora (Anish Ralikar), but watched over by AD (Adil Hussain), a human who cares for the vampires' needs and enforces the rules as part of an ancient agreement between the clan and his family.

The rules are simple.  Vampires don't go to Upar.  If they do, they don't drink blood, they don't kill anyone, and they definitely don't convert any new vampires.  In return, the vampires can enjoy all the comforts of Neeche, and they are provided with blood from the local blood bank and protection form the Cutmundus, a secret society of elderly but dangerous vampire hunters led by the powerful witch Luna Luka (Revathi).

The youngest member of the clan, Rumi (Tanya Maniktala), feel suffocated by all the rules.  She makes frequent, secret trips to Upar with the help of two of her elders, classical dancer Meera (Tillotama Shome) and former revolutionary and current namedropper David (Saswata Chatterjee).  Rumi is careful; she targets lonely single men and men trying to cheat on their wives, bites gently, takes a little blood and brings back a few vials of the fresh stuff for her friends down below.  She also hypnotizes them so all they remember is a failed romantic encounter.  What's the harm?

And then Rumi bites the wrong neck, drinking a little too deeply and leaving her tooth behind.  Fortunately, there's a dentist nearby who works late hours.  Bikram Roy (Shantanu Maheshwari) is not a great dentist, thanks to the aforementioned fear of blood, but it is the family business, so he does his best, though he'd rather be cooking for his secret YouTube channel, "The Anonymous Chef."  Rumi meets Roy, they get along well, and since he needs her original tooth to make repairs, they keep meeting.  part of the attraction is blood, admittedly; during their first meeting he accidentally cut his finger and a drop fell into her open mouth, accidentally revealing that Roy is a virgin and his blood tastes amazing.  But it's not just the special blood.  Rumi has had a hard life, and Doc Roy is a genuinely kind person, so she can't help but be drawn to him.  Surely this innocent flirtation won't trigger a chain of events that threatens to reveal the existence of Neeche and set Kolkata on fire, right?

And then there's Sub-Inspector Kartik Pal (Sikander Kher), and his father Biren (Anjan Dutt).  Biren was also a policeman but now suffers from Alzheimers and won't stop talking about the vampires he fought on one terrible night decades ago.  Biren's reputation has stalled Kartik's career, so he drinks a lot and is assigned all the worst cases, including a man who claims to have been bitten by a "beautiful ghost" at a party.  While investigating that case, Kartik meets a beautiful girl named Rumi, and steps on some sort of animal's tooth, cutting his foot badly.

The love story plays out in fairly typical Bollywood fashion; Roy and Rumi grow closer, learning to trust and rely on one another, but she's keeping a big secret and he finds out about it from the wrong person, and he doesn't take it well.  Thanks in part to his overbearing parents, Roy is so insecure that he can't really accept that Rumi loves him for him, so when he finds out that she's secretly a bloodsucking creature of the night, he assumes that she's only after his blood, and goes too far in his efforts to confirm his suspicions.

Meanwhile, AD has realized that someone is visiting Upar and wants to crack down, Luna has reunited the Cutmundus and kills a vampire in Roy's office, and Kartik is limping around the fringes, getting closer and closer to proving his suspicion that Roy is an evil vampire who has ensnared innocent Rumi with his spooky vampire powers.

 It's a lot of plot spread over eight episodes, and the series takes its time, wrapping things up in the last episode only to introduce a handful of new and surprising plot threads out of nowhere, clearly setting up a second season.  Still, the leads are charming, Luna is an engaging villain, and the series always made me care enough to watch the next episode.