It's a Christmas miracle!

 It's no secret that I love a big, splashy Bollywood romance, with big dance numbers and sidetrips to Switzerland and Amrish Puri glowering angrily but coming around in the end, but I also love quiet, quirky romances with eccentric and wounded souls blindsided by love and learning how to handle it.  And that's where Merry Christmas (2024) comes in.

Albert (Vijay Sethupathi) returns home to eighties Bombay after seven years.  A kindly neighbor (Tinnu Anand) lets him into the family home, because after the death of his mother, Albert is the only one left.  It's Christmas Eve, so rather than stay at home moping he goes out on the town.  At a restaurant he's approached by a stranger (Sahil Vaid) and asked to tell the man';s date that he's been called away on business and will be sneaking out the back now.  The date, Maria (Katrina Kaif) isn't too surprised; she's therewith her young and mute daughter Annie (Pari Maheshwari Sharma) and it was clear that the man was freaking out.

Albert and Maria meet again at the movie theater; he watches Annie's teddy bear while maria takes her daughter to the bathroom, and after successfully fulfilling that responsibility he is allowed to walk the ladies home.  Annie is sent to bed, Maria and Albert start talking,and there's some genuine chemistry there, as well as a shared sense of loss.  Albert is still pining for his lost love Rosie (Radhika Apte), while Maria is stuck in a failed marriage with Jerome (Luke Kenny), who is both overly jealous and compulsively unfaithful.

At this point Annie is fast asleep, so Maria decides to take Albert out to a few of her favorite spots in town, assuring him that they'll only be gone for an hour and Annie will be fine.  One hour turns to three, and then they make their way back to maria's flat, only to discover Jerome's dead body, shot in the chest and with a gun in his hand. Maria checks on her daughter (thankfully) and then insists on calling the police, but Albert refuses to stay; he hasn't been in Dubai for the last seven years, he's been in prison for murdering Rosie, and he the police will ask questions if Maria has a convicted murderer with her as they are investigating her estranged husband's murder.  Maria tells him to leave.

Albert lingers in the area, though, waiting at a tea stall to keep an eye on things.  So he's there to see Maria and Annie head out into the night; they're stopped by a passing policeman and explain that they're on their way to Midnight Mass.  Albert follows them to the church, where he sees Maria faint, and sleazy caterer Ronnie (Sanjay Kapoor) come to her rescue.  Albert looks after Annie, and joins the cab ride back to Maria's flat, even as she silently and subtly urges him to go away, and he's  there when they enter the flat and discover that everything is apparently fine.  Maria puts Annie to bed, then discovers she's left her watch at the church, so Ronnie offers to escort her there to find it, and Maria pointedly suggests that they drop Albert off on the way.

This isn't just a quiet, quirky romance, it's also quiet, quirky film noir, though the big twist owes more to Agatha Christie than Raymond Chandler.  The mystery is well-crafted, but the move is less concerned with whodunnit than it is with who these people are.  And despite the shift in genre midway through the film, the tone stays remarkably consistent; it's a somber little romance, but it's also a surprisingly romantic mystery.

Maria needs to stop leaving her daughter home alone, though.  That's a recipe for disaster, especially at Christmas.

Ted Lasso in and as Die Hard.

 One Cut Two Cut (2022) is the story of Gopi (Danish Sait). Gopi is not your typical Indian film hero; he's earnest, awkward, out of shape, and has an advanced degree in Arts and Crafts; even his late mother found him more than a little ridiculous. But then,One Cut Two Cut isn't your typical Indian move.

Gopi has finally found a job teaching arts and crafts to elementary school students. The school is run down, most parents have just stopped sending their children, and the few kids who do show up are herded into a single classroom and mostly allowed to run wild.  Gopi takes  his place at the head of the class and politely asks for the students' attention. They ignore him, so he makes a paper crane.  That gets one girl's attention and then another, and soon he has the whole classroom watching with fascination. It turns out that Gopi isn't just good at arts and crafts, he's also a genuinely good teacher.  He's kind and patient and kind of ridiculous, and the students respond well to that.

Meanwhile, Pruthviraj (Prakash Belawadi) has retired after a long and successful career, and he's not happy about it. Years ago he beat a young Amitabh Bachchan for the radio station job,and he's convinced that if it had gone the other way than Amitabh would still be working at the radio station, while he would be the legendary legendary actor and star of Don, Coolie, Deewar, and Mard.  (I have seen Mard. I think Amitabh would be willing to let that one go.)  

Pruthviraj decides to hold a protest in order to get attention and maybe bring about social change, but only three people show up: aspiring stand up comedian Ayan (Vineth "Beep"Kumar), retired army chef Gurudev (Manoj Sputnique Sengupta), and militantly vegan blogger Neha (Roopa Rayappa).  The four give up on the protest and go to lunch, and everyone starts talking about how they need something bigger. Not a protest, a revolution!  When Gurudev mentions that he has a gun, Pruthviraj comes up with a spectacularly terrible plan to gain attention.

Back to Gopi, who has been having a great day so far - not only are the kids listening to him, but Nagaveni (Samyutka Hornad), one of the other teachers, is the literal girl who got away; their potential arranged marriage fell apart as soon as her father learned he had a degree in arts and crafts, and now she's here and Gopi has an actual job.

And then the day gets worse, as four strangers in red jumpsuits with Salvador Dali masks burst  into the room and take everyone hostage.  Nobody knows they're there, and there's no one to make their demands to, but fortunately the Hindi teacher (Aruna Balraj) has aphone number for the Chief Minster's secretary (Sampath Maitreya).  Unfortunately, the secretary only speaks Kannada, while none of the would be terrorists do.  Gopi is fluent in Kannada, though, and thinks he's fluent in English, so he acts as translator, and wackiness ensues.

Things don't go well.  Pruthvirak and his gang can't get along for long enough to present a coherent manifesto, let alone a list of demands.  The secretary has no intention of giving them anything, anyway.  He's already ordered the state government's top Secret Agent (Vamsidhar Bhogaraju) to gather some men, go to the school, and kill everybody before word can get out and threaten the Chief Minister's reelection.

These people need a hero.  What they've got is Gopi, and he sets out to save the children and the woman he barely knows but has a thing for with his particular set of skills: kindness, patience, and papercraft. He might get some help from plucky reporter Komala (Soundarya Nagaraj) if she can convince her boss that there really is a hostage situation so he stops sending her to cover hula hooping stories..

In some ways the movie reminds me of Mr. Bean  or even Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp - they're comedies which take a bumbling and silly character and put them in stressful situations with characters who are not silly. Granted, those comedies don't normally involve schoolchildren being held hostage - at one point Gopi breaks the fourth wall to point out that the movie has gotten really dark, and the actors all pull out their scripts and confirm that yes, things have gotten very dark.

Things don't stay dark, though.  In the end this is a comedy, and Gopi saves the day by being kind, rather than by transforming into an action hero.  That doesn't mean that Gopi winds up successful or even respected at the end of the movie, and certainly doesn't herald an era of widespread appreciation for professional arts and crafts, but he saved people and proved something to himself in the process.  One must imagine Gopi happy.

Chhota Bheem and the Inevitable Remake

 It seems like every other day a new Bollywood cinematic universe begins, but the Spy Universe, the Cop Universe, and the Maddock Supernatural Universe can't begin compete with the sheer volume of material released  for the Chhota Bheem franchise. Bheem and his pals have been all around the world, fighting pirate Vikings, meeting aliens, gaining super powers, and spawning at least five spin-offs.  (It's hard to keep up.)  And now, in Chhota Bheem and the Curse of Damyaan (2024), Bheem and his friends cross over into a whole new world: live action.

In the deep desert outside the tiny kingdom of Dholakpur, something is stirring. A celestial convergence, combined with a weird green meteorite thing, has weakened the seal imprisoning the great serpent mage Damyaan (Sumikt Keshri), and he has dispatched his shapechanging servants Skandhi (Makarand Deshpande) and Takshika (Navneet Kaur Dhillon) to find a pure hearted warrior of great power to break the last seal, so that Damvaan can rise and use his ultimate power to turn all of the humans in the world into snakes.  This is normally the sort of problem that you get Conan to handle,or at least Ator, the Fighting Eagle, but Dholakpur doesn't need them, because it has Bheem (Yagya Bhasin.)

Bheem is a kid, but he's not an ordinary kid.  He's really strong (especially after he's eaten laddoos), consistently brave, reliably heroic, and just generally nice.  He's also loyal  and humble, happy to solve everyone's problems and protect the reign of the good king Indraverma (Sanjay Bishnoi.)  He doesn't work alone,though - he's usually accompanied by Chutki (Aashriya Mishra),  his sassy platonic gal pal; Raju (Advik Jaiswal), his bald sidekick; Kalia (Kabir Sajid), a somewhat reformed bully who would be the strongest kid around if not for Bheem; Kalia's twin sidekicks Bholu and Dholu (Divyam Dawar and Daivik Dawar); and Jaggu (Aryan Khan) the blue CGI monkey. They are also friends with Indraverma's daughter Indumati (Swarna Pandey) but she doesn't have much to do in this one.

While Bheem's friends are busy preparing for his upcoming birthday, Skandhi and Takshika are hard at work being evil.  They ambush a friendly merchant bringing supplies into town, take his place, arrange a painfully transparent scene in which Skandhi apparently saves Indraverma from a deadly snake, and just to be on the safe side they sneak out at night and burn the village's crops using their snake magic.  This is bad news for the kingdom,which means that Indraverma is desperate enough to listen when they suggest an expedition to find Sonapur, the lost City of Gold, buried deep within the desert sands.  Skandhi predicts that the king is the fabled mighty and pure hearted warrior who can unlock the lost city, and off they go into the desert.

Naturally, the kids come along on this dangerous expedition. Bheem is deeply suspicious of these strangers, but all of the adults are happy to ignore every warning sign, including the wild-eyed sage (Chandrashekhar Dutta) ranting about the danger of releasing Damyaan.  They find the seal, and Indraverma tries his luck, but he's into the prophesied warrior.  Neither is Kalia, so Skandhi suggests that Bheem try.  Bheem doesn't want to, but he obeys his king, and the seal is opened. This does not reveal Sonapur, it releases Damyaan, because that was the evil plan all along. 

Bheem and his pals put up a good fight, but Damyaan is just too powerful, and they are quickly defeated.  Rather than taking the opportunity to turn them into snakes, Damyaan imprisons them all and goes about his evil,business. Fortunately, the sage they met in the desert has also been imprisoned, and he is able to provide them with valuable exposition about the last days of Sonapur and how the ancient Guru Shambhu (Anupam Kher) sacrificed his life to seal the immortal serpent mage away. They quickly hatch a plan: Bheem and his friends will travel back in time to defeat Damyaan before he can become immortal, which will prevent him from escaping and nobody will be turned into a snake.  And Indraverma can stay in the present and think about what he's done.

Sonapur in the past is a world of amazing magic,with flying vehicles and street vendors conjuring gold vases out of mid-air, but it has also been nearly conquered by Damyaan and his minions, so Bheem and the gang must move quietly in order to make contact with the resistance and find Shambhu.  And that plan falls apart immediately as soon as Bheem sees someone in trouble.

This is a kids movie, and it's clearly playing to its target audience. However, the scope of the story is a lot different than what you usually see in Paw Patrol; Bheem and his pals are kids TV archetypes, but they're embroiled in a high fantasy plot with a Sword and Sorcery villain and a time travel twist,and all of the elements blend surprisingly well.  It's a decent rollicking fantasy epic, but for kids.

Though the time travel rules are total nonsense.  Once the kids arrive in the past, everything proceeds on the same schedule as the present,including the countdown to Bheem's birthday, and they have a deadline based on the future which determines how long they have in the past.  The past is a different country rather than a different time, though defeating Damyaan still works.