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?