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.