Something weird, and it don't look good.

Watching the trailer, you might think that Phone Bhoot (20220 is a jumble of movie references and slacker comedy, and you would be right - that's exactly what Phone Bhoot is.  But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Sherdil Shergil (Siddhant Chaturvedi), known as "Major" to his friends, is an aspiring Lothario from Punjab and his roommate Galileo Parthasarthy (Ishaan Khatter), also known as "Gullu", is a goofy nerd from Tamil Nadu, but they are both idiots.  They're obsessed with horror movies, and have decorated their home with horror paraphernalia, all centered around a life-sized statue of Raaka, the monster from the Ramsay film Purana Mandir, which they scavenged from behind a movie studio.  

The pair are always upcoming up with new ideas for businesses, and those businesses always fail, because the pair insist on cramming ghosts into everything.  Their new big idea is a party planning business, but nobody comes to their debut (horror-themed) party.  And to make matters worse, Raaka's glowing eyes short out, and while Major and Gullu attempt to fix them, they wind up electrocuting themselves.  But only a little!

When they come to, the party is filled with people, none of whom show any interest in paying.  When they catch right of the mysterious but beautiful Ragini (Katrina Kaif) they forget about everyone else, but after the requisite musical number, Ragini is gone, the other partygoers are gone, and the police show up to arrest them for trespassing.

Major and Gullu are released, and Ragini follows them home and explains her deal - she's a ghost, everybody at the party was a ghost, and the boys can now see ghosts after their near death experiences. She also has a business proposition - the boys market themselves as ghostbusters and "exorcise" her from the people and places that she haunts.  They refuse, and then promptly turn around and steal her idea, marketing themselves as "Phone Bhoot,."

And once again, it's a complete failure - they may be able to see ghosts now, but the hotline gets nothing but a string of prank phone calls.  After days of mockery, they finally get a real phone call, and race off to save a real possessed little girl.  And for a while they do pretty well, especially when Gullu realizes that the ghost is speaking Tamil and uses a picture of superstar Rajnikanth as a holy symbol.  But the problem isn't really solved until Ragini appears and talks to the ghost, learning her motivations.  The boys get paid, and the ghost achieves salvation.

And Phone Bhoot takes off, not as a scam, but as a genuine service.  Major and Gullu help the living, and Ragini helps the dead.  It's a big success, and they have great word of mouth among both humans and ghosts.

What they don't know is that they have competition in the salvation business; sorcerer Atmaran Dhyani (Jackie Shroff) offers salvation to ghosts who commit murder and other evil deeds for him.  Of course, Atmaran is running a scam - the ghosts he promises salvation to are taken to the back room and trapped in bottles.  he does not appreciate the idea of two idiots going around granting salvation to troubled souls for free, and he has plans to deal with them.  Fortunately, his hench-ghosts are also idiots.

Phone Bhoot is a dumb movie, and there's no getting around that fact.  However, it's a hard-working dumb movie, with a plot that might not make sense, but at least fits together as a cohesive narrative.  Running jokes from the first half of the movie actually pay off as plot points in the climax.  And I don't know why award-winning actor Jackie Shroff is even in this movie, but he's clearly having a great time.

There's no real deeper meaning or message here, apart from "Pay attention while you're driving!", but I respect the craft.

The Long Goodbye

RRR is a great movie, but not every Indian movie can be RRR.  And thank goodness for that!  If every movie is a bombastic, testosterone fueled festival of action, then they all start to blend together.  Soemtimes you need a change of pace, like a quirky feel-good family comedy set at a funeral.  And that's where Goodbye (2022) comes in.

Newly minted lawyer Tara Bhalla (Rashmika Mandanna) wins her first case and goes out to a nightclub to celebrate.  She leaves her phone at the club, only finds out that her mother Gayatri (Neena Gupta) has died suddenly when the bartender who returns her phone tells her.  She immediately makes plans to return to her childhood home in Chandigarh to be with her stern and very traditional father Harish (Amitabh Bachchan.)  She decides to leave her live-in boyfriend Mudassar (Shivin Narang) behind, since Harish doesn't approve.

Meanwhile Harish and the family housekeeper Delna (Payal Thapa) are trying to contact the rest of the family.  Oldest brother Karan (Pavail Gulati) and his wife Daisy (Elli Avrram) promptly catch a flight form their home in Los Angeles.  Adopted son Angad (Sahil Mehta) has a bit more trouble, and winds up stuck in Dubai for an extra day.  And nobody can get through to middle son Nakul (Abhishek Khan), who is off climbing a mountain somewhere.

Most of the family finally arrives, though there's still no sign of Nakul, and the preparations for the funeral rites begin, under the direction of busybody neighbor P.P. Singh (Ashish Vidyarthi).  And they bicker; Tara doesn't feel that the very traditional funeral rites are what her not especially traditional mother would have wanted.   Harish doesn't think his sons are taking the rites seriously enough.  P.P. Singh is just kind of patronizing.  And the Greek chorus of neighbors and friends of Gayatri marvel at the goings on; it's definitely sad, but not solemn, as good-hearted people bumble their way through personal loss, trying their best to make everything perfect because it's the only thing they can do.

And then things start to get better.  With the help of an unconventional pandit (Sunil Grover) the family start talking to each other rather than at each other.  Secrets are revealed, but they're generally nice secrets.  Tara and Harish start seeing things from one another's perspective, and Nakul finally shows up.

And that's it.  That's the plot.  People suffer a devastating loss, and they process it onscreen.  It's a very gentle film, very quirky, and above all very human, mixing moments of gentle comedy with Amitabh's big speech.  It's definitely worth a look if you want a change of pace.

No, you can't buy a vowel.

 In the Yama Cinematic Universe, the god Chitragupta is usually cast as Yama's comic sidekick, but he's an important religious figure in his own right, responsible for recording the good and bad deeds each person performs in life, and then judging them accordingly.  In Thank God (2022), Chitragupta takes center stage, but this time, he's cool.

Ayaan Kapoor (Siddharth Malhotra) was once a successful real estate agent who became briefly rich by dabbling in black money, then lost it all during the demonetisation of 2016.  Now, he's struggling to sell his own house. Fortunately, his wife Ruhi (Rakul Preet Singh) is a successful police officer, but Ayaan is so consumed by his losses and stressed over the sale of the house that he's neglecting Ruhi, their daughter Pihu (Kirara Khanna) and his mother (Seema Pahwa).  His relationship with his sister (Urmilla Kanetkar Kathore) is also a bit tense; she's been pouring all her energy and money into rebuilding the family home, because she blames herself for the fire which destroyed it when she and Aayan were children.

After another failed attempt to sell the house (it turns out that locking the potential buyers' son in the bathroom is a bad idea) Ayaan is driving away while bickering with Ruhi on the phone (another bad idea) when he has to swerve to avoid a motorcycle and instead hits another car.  And just like that, he's in Heaven, greeted by Yamdoot (Mahesh Balraj) and a mysterious figure calling himself CG (Ajay Devgn).

CG explains the situation: Ayaan is in critical condition, caught between life and death.  he has to compete in CG's game show and demonstrate that he has overcome his weaknesses; if he succeeds at a challenge, he earns white balls, and if he fails he gets black ones.  Earn more white and he can return to his life, but if he fails, he'll be immediately consigned to Hell.

And the game goers about as well as you'd expect.  Ayaan continues to demonstrate that he has absolutely not overcome his weaknesses, and CG is playing a deeper game than he lets on; all of the tests start to fit together, revealing the harm caused by Ayaan's selfish actions.  It all leads to one final test, one chance for Ayaan to redeem himself, and because he doesn't notice the test when offered, he fails.

Which isn't the end of the movie, obviously; this is a feel good family comedy with a message, and while a happy ending isn't guaranteed, it's pretty likely.  It's a redemption story, A Christmas Carol without the Christmas, Going Postal without the golems.  It's the story of one man learning how connected everything is, and that his actions have consequences for other people.

Thank God is probably not a very good movie, honestly.  It's predictable, the humor is hit and miss, the tone is wildly inconsistent, and the medical science in the climax is complete nonsense even by Bollywood standards.  Still, Devgn is consistently entertaining, and Malhotra manages to be likeable despite playing a complete jerk.  It's earnestly bad in the same way as many Bollywood comedies of the Nineties, so if you liked them, there's a decent chance you'll like this.