Home for the Holidays

 Greater Kalesh (2025) is a Netflix-original short film, but it manages to perfectly capture the feel of a holiday-centered TV movie, and I have to think that that is deliberate.  This time the specific holiday is Diwali, but the idea of the adult child returning home for the holidays and resolving family drama is pretty much universal.

The adult child in question is Twinkle Handa (Ahsaas Channa), who has a good job in Bangalore working with computers but is finally returning home to Delhi to surprise her family and attend their annual Diwali party.  Twinkle loves Diwali, and she loves her family, and she looks forward to sharing it with her father Ranjan (Happy Ranajit), mother Sunita (Supriya Shukla) and annoying younger brother Ankush (Poojan Chhabra).  But her wistful voice-over comes to an abrupt stop when she gets to the front door of the family home and overhears a bitter argument.  She rings the doorbell and Sunita lets her in, but everyone insists that everything is fine.

 Everything is not fine.  It takes persistence, but Twinkle learns Ranjan father never actually owned the house; his brother did, but now the house is going to be sold and this will be their last Diwali in what they thought was their home.  Sunita is planning to join her daughter in Bangalore (which is a surprise to Twinkle), and everyone is also mad at Ankush because he's apparently dating an older woman.  (Ankush is not dating an older woman.)  Twinkle is keeping her own secret as well - she's in a serious relationship with Rishi (Aditya Pandey), but can't bring herself to introduce him to the family.

Fortunately, Twinkle also has Pankhuri (Akshaya Naik), the obligatory plucky best friend, to give her advice.  Pankhuri points out that the problems in the home aren't actually about Twinkle, and with that added perspective, Twinkle decides to use the Diwali party to solve everybody's problems for them.  (She may have missed the point of "it's not actually about you.")  And her plan starts with inbviting Ankush's college friend Karan (Keshav Mehta) to the party.

And that's the movie.  It's a cozy and insubstantial bit of family fluff, so while the characters have problems, nobody is a villain, and everything will be solved in the most heartwarming way possible.  It's heartwarming family drama, like a 90s Bollywood movie where they're solving their own problems instead of relying on Shah Rukh Khan.  

A Bad Bromance

 Kabir (Hrithik Roshan), the edgy loner of Yash Raj Films' "Spy Universe", was last seen at the end of Tiger 3 accepting a dangerous undercover mission in order to defeat a mysterious and terrifying enemy; his mentor Colonel Luthra (Ashutosh Rana) warns him that the mission will test him, blurring the lines between good and evil and requiring him to perform terrible deeds in order to safeguard India.  And as War 2 (2025) opens, it seems that Luthra was right.  Kabir is working as a one man mercenary battalion, slicing his way through a katana-infested Japanese temple in order to eliminate his target, befriending a wolf and blowing up a helicopter along the way.  

Kabir meets his contact in Germany, and she tells him that from now on he'll be working for a secret organization called Kali.  After the customary drugging and kidnapping, Kabir wakes up in a secret lair and discovers that Kali is an international cartel with members from all of the countries surrounding India, and that they like to protect their identities by teleconferencing with high tech red shifted holograms.  It's exactly the kind of cartel you see in older movies like Mr. India; I like to think that they are literally the cartel from Mr. India, searching for a figurehead who can match the charisma and style of Mogambo.

 Kali have arranged a test for Kabir, to prove that he's not secretly still working for RAW: they've kidnapped Luthra, and want Kabir to kill him.  Kabir is reluctant, because of course he's secretly still working for RAW, but Luthra insists that he completes his mission, and finally and reluctantly Kabir pulls the trigger.  The members of Kali are pleased, and Kabir is rewarded with a meeting with India's representative in the cartel, Gautam Gulati (K. C. Shankar.)  Gulati is a villain for the modern era, an amoral billionaire who just wants more money and more power, but who can't muster thegravitas of Amrish Puri in a bad blond wig.

However, just to be very sure that Kabir isn't secretly still working for RAW, Kali send the video of Luthra's death to Indian intelligence, and Vikrant Kaul (Anil Kapoor), the new head of RAW, puts together a team to take Kabir down, because apparently Luthra was the only person who knew about Kabir's secret mission.  (I too have seen Don.)  The team includes Luthra's daughter Kavya (Kiara Advani) and decorated veteran Vikram Chelapathi (NTR Jr.) who is introduced in his own physics defying fight scene, establishing that he's skilled, a bit of a lone wolf, and played by that guy from RRR.

 The team discuss Kabir and his possible motives, and they confidently note that Kabir doesn't have any family or loved ones outside of RAW.  In the next scene Kabir is in Spain, visiting Ruhi (Arista Mehta), the young girl he adopted at the end of the last movie.  There's a chase and a fight and a train crash, and Kabir decides that Vikram can be trusted.  The men meet secretly, Kabir tells Vikram about the mission Kali has given him, and asks the other man to stop him.  Vikram eagerly agrees, and the men perform a big dance number while singing about how they're best friends now and would give their lives for one another.

But of course there's a problem.  The movie is called War, and so these two can't be friends forever.  The previous film kept Kabir's loyalties ambiguous for much of the runtime, so there was a real question of whether Kabir or his rival/protege Khalid (Tiger Shroff) was the real villain.  This time we know Kabir is on the up and up - we saw Luthra assign the mission, and we have followed Kabir closely throughout the movie, so we know he's really good.  That leaves Vikram, though the movie does manage to make the obvious twist more complicated than "he's working for Kali."

 Hrithik and NTR have great chemistry, and the movie really does set up the bromance as something that's both deeply unhealthy and very important to both men.  The rest of the movie is kind of overshadowed, though.  The plot is basically nonsense, the action scenes range from "over-the-top" to "so over-the-top that my sense of disbelief is shattered", and Kiara Advani doesn't really have much to do.  In theory she's supposed to be Kabir's love interest, but they don't have many scenes together and it's Vikram that gets the big dance number and declarations of eternal devotion.  

War 2 does add something to the evolving Spy Universe; Kali provides the franchise with a useful and uncomplicated bad-guy operation, a Bollywood SPECTRE or Hydra (and the heroes even mention that if you cut off one head, two more will take its place.)  And it is always nice to see Anil Kapoor, even though Vikrant Kaul is probably not Arun Verma in disguise.

 

 

Bhooty Call - Makdee

Writer-director Vishal Bhardaj is best known for his trilogy of Shakespearean tragedies: Maqbool (based on Macbeth), Omkara (based on Othello), and Haider (you guessed it - Hamlet.)  However, while Maqbool was an early success, Bhardaj's directorial debut was the children's fantasy film Makdee (2002).  And while Makdee is a story about a village haunted by a witch, alternately light-hearted and spooky, you can totally tell it's the same guy.

The ghost is established early, as a group of angry villagers led by the boisterous butcher Kallu (Makarand Deshpande) chase a young thief (Pappu) into the witch's house.  Nobody wants to follow, especially not village policemen Banta and Ghanta (not credited on the IMDB), until eleven year old troublemaker Chunni (Shweta Basu Prasad) appears and shames them into following her.  They're already too late, though, and everyone flees when they discover that the witch has transformed the thief into a goat.

Despite being an eleven year old girl, Chunni is very much a stereotypical Nineties Bollywood hero, complete with the confident swagger and love of pranks.  In other words, she's kind of a jerk and not quite as charming as she thinks she is.  Her twin sister Munni (also Shweta Basu Prasad) is demure and studious and kind.  And sidekick Mughal-e-Azam (Aalap Mazgaonkar) is loyal, not especially smart, and consistently hungry, since Kallu doesn't feed him if the chores aren't done properly.  Chunni can't stand Kallu, and he's a frequent target of her pranks, while he tends to chase her with a butcher knife whenever he catches her.

Things escalate when Chunni releases all of Kallu's chickens into the village.  He's furious, and chases the girl he thinks is Chunni into the witch's house.  It's not Chunni, though, it's Munni, and when Chunni realizes that her sister is in danger because of her she loses her swagger and breaks down, begging the responsible adults in the village for help.  They all assume it's another prank, though, and finally she has to enter the house herself.  And that's when she meets the Witch (Shabana Azmi).

 The Witch knows who Chunni is, and reveals that she's transformed Munni into a chicken.  She promises to turn Munni back into a human, but only after Chunni brings her one hundred hens to sate her hunger.  Not all at once, though - she's not a monster!  (Actually she is a monster.)  She demands one hen a night, and if Chunni tells anyone the consequences will be dire.  So Chunni has to collect the hens, impersonate her own sister well enough that nobody notices, and do her own homework!

Makdee goes surprisingly hard for a children's film.  As a horror movie it relies on dread rather than gore, but there is plenty of dread to spare, and the scenes in the house are wonderfully Gothic. The Witch is cruel, taunting Chunni at every opportunity and even swinging outside her classroom at school just to keep the poor girl on edge, and it's soon clear that she can, will, and indeed has hurt a child.  

 And that brings me to the acting.  Shabana Azmi is an art film legend, so it's no surprise that she brings the Witch to sadistic life.  Makarand Deshpande is another art film stalwart, and he's great whether he's singing a duet with a chicken, chasing children with a knife, or coming to the rescue when nobody else will.  But Shweta Basu Prasad was eleven years old when this movie came out, and she is amazing here.  She's not just great for a child actor, she's great for an actor of any age, balancing two distinct characters (one of whom impersonates the other) and portraying a genuinely harrowing emotional arc.  Bhardwaj's direction is confident and skillful, but Shweta makes the movie.

Bhooty Call: Kaatteri

 There are horror comedies and then there are horror comedies.  Some movies mix classic Bollywood monster movie characters with a powerful social message, some movies use spooky imagery to tell a charming story about a child gaining confidence and wisdom with the help of a friendly ghost, and some movies mix Indian folklore, cosmic horror, and gritty crime drama with a heaping helping of farce.  Which makes me think that I am probably overselling Kaatteri (2022).

 Gajja, Sankar and Kaliyurunda (Karunakaran, Kutty Gopi, and Ravi Mariya) are petty gangsters working for the ancient crime boss Naina.  They aren't very good at crime, but while searching for their missing associate Maanga Mani (Yogi Babu) they manage to kidnap perky (and presumably wealthy) psychiatrist Kamini (Nathmika).  Naina is not impressed, and informs the trio that if they and their friend Kiran (Vaibhav Reddy) don't return the money that Maanga Mani ran off with in a day, he'll have them all killed.

The trio go to meet Kiran, who is trying to enjoy his wedding night with Shweta (Sonam Bajwa) and explain the situation.  Shweta adjusts surprisingly quickly, and comes up with a plan: the gang can steal Kamini back and hold her for ransom, using whatever money they can get from that to pay back Naina.  Despite their ineptitude they manage to kidnap Kamini again, but the plan goes off track when Kamini reveals that Maanga Mani actually traveled to the remote village of Kolaatipuram in search of a fabulous treasure.  Figuring that digging up treasure will be easier than arranging a ransom, the gang heads to the village, dragging Kamini with them.

And then things get weird.  the people in the village are . . . odd, and Kiran is accosted by a mysterious old man (Lollu Sabha Manohar) who gives him enigmatic warnings and a pacifier, but they manage to trace Maanga Mani to a bungalow just outside of town.  They question the residents, don't get any useful response, and bumble their way into taking the family hostage as well.  But after night falls and spooky things start happening, they realize that the house is haunted.

 While trying to escape from the house, the gang get separated, and each little group realize that the whole village is haunted by a variety of ghosts.  In fact, everyone in the village is a ghost of one kind or another, but the most dangerous spirit they meet is Mathamma, who appears as a lovely woman who approaches her victims and asks if she is beautiful, then carries them away if they answer yes or no.  Or perhaps the most dangerous spirits they meet are the withered green specters who silently surround the group and follow Weeping Angel rules, reducing their victims to dust if they can get close enough.

Mathamma has more personality, though,  and when she manages to spirit the group into her house, she tells them a story that mixes fact and fiction, a story about stifled dreams, murder, and a hungry well that promises untold wealth in exchange for human flesh.  

This is a movie with a great premise, reminiscent of the beautiful and bleak cosmic horror movie Tumbbad, but with broad farce rather than a cold and merciless universe.  The gang are incompetent buffoons as well as criminals, and nobody is particularly sympathetic, with the possible exceptions of Kamini and Mathamma herself.  Many of the jokes fall flat, but there are some moments of genuine humor, as well as a few moments of genuine unease as the gang try to escape the village and keep on winding up in the carnival at the center of town.  It's okay, but it could have been great.

 

Bhooty Call: Chandramukhi 2

 Horror comedy reigns supreme in Indian cinema at the moment, so it was probably inevitable that 2005's Chandramukhi was going to get a sequel.  And that is exactly what happened; Chandramukhi 2 (2023) shares a number of plot elements with the earlier film, including an ancestral curse, a broken family, a clever outsider charged with solving everyone's problems, and of course the Room Which Must Never Be Opened.  In this case, though, it's the same Room Which Must never be Opened, because Chandramukhi 2 is a direct sequel to the earlier movie.

Wealthy matriarch Ranganayaki (Radhika Sarathkumar) and her family have faced a series of disasters in recent years, including the family factory burning down and a car accident which put younger daughter Divya (Lakshmi Menon) in a wheelchair.  The family's Guru (Rao Ramesh) suggests that the family have neglected their ancestral deity, and the solution is for the family to gather in Vettaiyapuram and perform prayer sin the ancestral temple.  This will require the entire family, including the two orphaned children of the daughter who ran away to marry a man "from a different religion," as the subtitles delicately put it.  The daughter and her husband died in a plane crash years ago, and the family have made no effort to contact the children (Manasvi Kottachi and Sanjiv V) but now they are needed.

The children are introduced on a school bus which has been taken hostage by a band of violent and well-armed thugs.  Fortunately, the kids have a protector, their guardian Pandian (Raghava Lawrence), who arrives and defeats the bad guys in spectacular fashion, because while Superstar Rajnikanth doesn't return for the sequel, this is still very much a Rajnikanth movie.

Ranganayaki rents a castle near the temple from  Murugesan (Vadivelu), who was comic relief in the first movie and continues to be comic relief here, and the family movies in, bringing the children and Pandian along with them.  And then the movie focuses on family drama for a while, as Ranganayaki learns to stop being a jerk and accept the kids, while Pandian makes a connection with Lakshmi (mahima Nambiar), beautiful daughter of the groundskeeper.  

Lakshmi has always wanted to explore the palace, and late at night Pandian helps her sneak in.  They explore the forbidden south wing, and Lakshmi discovers The Door That Must Never Be Opened, though she does not open it at this time.  Still, the genre shifts at this point.  The family temple is overgrown and needs to be cleaned before the rituals can be performed, though the temple's priest (Y. G. Mahendran) warns them that that will release a dangerous spirit.  They hire workers from outside the area, but after a pair of tragic deaths the workers leave, and so Pandian clears the temple himself, starting a fire in the process.  He's met by a mysterious sage (so mysterious that I don't know who played him) and learns that the angry ghost of Chandramukhi (Kangana Renaut) has possessed one of the women in the household.

The possession in the previous movie was ambiguous, but probably psychological rather than supernatural.  This time it is definitely the ghost of slain dancer Chandramukhi, who is definitely here to take her revenge on Vettaiyan (Raghava Lawrence), who murdered the man she loved and then ordered her burned alive, though the backstory from the first movie is needlessly expanded and we learn that  Vettaiyan is actually a general named Sengottaiyan, who murdered the actual king (Shatru) and Dread Pirate Robertsed himself onto the throne in an effort to possess Chandramukhi.  

 Despite that twist and the added supernatural elements, though, this is basically the same plot as in the first movie, and plays out in much the same way; the giant snake from the first movie appears and does nothing again, and they even use the same trick to convince Chandramukhi to leave.  Everything is bigger, though - the special effects are flashier, the scenes set in Chandramukhi's time feature fight choreography lifted from Bahubali, Chandramukhi gets a dramatic sword fight after her big dance scene, and there are actually two ghosts, both of which are real.

Well, almost everything is bigger.  There is nothing in this movie to match Jyothika's magnetic performance in the original, and while Raghava Lawrence is doing a very good Rajnikanth impression, he's still not Rajnikanth.  The scale is bigger, but the ambiguity that made the first movie work is completely gone, leaving us with a very by-the-numbers haunted house movie and broad comedy scenes that just keep going and going.  This is skippable - you're better off watching the Bhool Bhulaiyaa sequels, which at least mix up the plot a bit.

Bhooty Call: Maa

 Maa (2025) takes place in the same universe as 2024's Shaitaan, a movie which I have not seen.  I don't think I need another cinematic universe in my life, but Maa is mostly standalone and features both Kajol and Kali, making it hard for me to resist.

 The movie starts forty years ago in the village of Chandrapur, in West Bengal.  the people of the village are performing a Kali Puja as the wife of the local landowner, gives birth to a son.  And then a daughter, and in accordance with the village's tradition and a prophecy from Kali (as interpreted by the men of the village) the newborn girl is taken into the woods and sacrificed.

 The newborn boy is not harmed in any way, and grows up to be Shubankar (Indraneil Sengupta), a family man living in Kolkata with his wife Ambika (Kajol) and twelve year old daughter Shweta (Kherin Sharma).  Shubankar has broken with decades of horror movie tradition by telling his wife all about the curse on his family and the dark traditions of home, though they have not yet explained things to Shweta, who is curious about the ancestral village that her parents refuse to talk about.

Before any further exposition can be delivered, Shubankar receives a call from Joydev (Ronit Roy), informing him that his father has died.  Subankar returns to Chandrapur for the first time in years, and makes arrangements to finally sell the family mansion, but on the way back home he's killed by a demonic tree. 

A few weeks later Joydev calls Ambika, asking her to come to the village and finalize the sale of the mansion.  Ambika agrees, but Shweta insists on coming along, and the locals are oddly hostile to the girl, though she does manage to befriend Deepika (Roopkatha Chakraborty), daughter of the mansion's caretakers.  The real estate broker says that finding a buyer will be more difficult than expected, because of the curse, so Ambika and Shweta stay a little longer than anticipated.

Meanwhile, things go horribly wrong.  Shweta convinces Deepika to take her to see the cursed tree in the nearby forest, and that night Deepika vanishes.  Ambika asks the locals, with the help of stolid policeman Sarfaraz (Jitin Gulati), and learns that in the past few months all of the young girls who started menstruating have vanished, and then returned a few days later; Joydev blames a mysterious old woman who lives in the woods (Vibha Rani), but there's no evidence that the woman did anything wrong. 

 And then Deepika's grandfather, who had been catatonic before Shweta arrived, hands Ambika a scroll, revealing the actual circumstances of the curse, involving a demon created by a single drop of blood from the demon Raktibaija, when Kali and the other incarnations of the Goddess destroyed him.  The new demon, Amsaja, seeks to use a mortal maiden of the landowner's family to reproduce, and they have been sacrificing their daughters for generations.  The girls of the village have become Amsaja's minions, and they abduct Shweta.  

Ambika wants her daughter back, but she's going to need help - divine help.  She performs the Kali Puja with the women of the village, and then enters the forest with  the blessing of Kali.

 Maa has a plot that hearkens back to classic Bollywood horror - in a lot of ways this plays out like a Ramsay Brothers film with CGI special effects and (thankfully, given the subject matter) a lot less exploitation.  It also works as parental horror; Ambika is the viewpoint character, and she's struggling with bringing up a preteen daughter in a world that is sometimes predatory, but her ordinary struggles are amplified by the supernatural elements.

But it's not just a horror movie, this is a sort of Gothic Devotional, mixing sincere religious elements with some tremendous spooky style.  (I've seen my share of Hindu devotional movies over the years, and they usually don't have so many bats.)  

In short, there's a lot going on here, and I'm not quite sure the plot actually holds together; everything runs on coincidence and a series of terrible decisions.  On the other hand, Kajol is compelling, attacking the sometimes shaky script with her trademark sincerity.  I'm not sold on the so-called "Devil's Universe," but Maa is a good reminder of just how talented she is.

Bhooty Call: Munjiya

I have a theory about ghost stories: it's never just about the ghost.  The best stories, and the best movies, use the ghost as a lens to examine something else.  And the movies of the Maddock Horror Comedy Universe certainly support my theory; Stree is about learning to see women as people, Bhediya (werewolf not ghost, but stick with me) is about preserving the environment and tearing down regional prejudice, Stree 2 is about how societal oppression hurts everybody, and Munjya (2024) - well, I'll get to that.

 The movie opens in 1954, with a boy named Gotya (Ayush Ulagadde) who is obsessed with his neighbor Munni, who is seven years older than he is.  When Munni's marriage is arranged, Gotya lashes out, going so far as to attempt to poison her fiance. The boy is punished, but he only spirals further out of control, finally dragging his sister Gita (Khushi Hajare) into the woods as a human sacrifice so that he can perform a dark magical ritual to win Munni.  Gita escapes, and Gotya accidentally sacrifices himself.  His remains are buried under a tree in order to bind his spirit, because he has become a Munjya.

 Years pass.  In the present day, Gita (now played by Suhas Joshi) lives in Pune with her widowed daughter-in-law Pammi (Mona Singh) and grandson Bittu (Abhay Verma).  Bittu is awkward and shy, but he has dreams.  He wants to study Cosmetology and is also secretly in love with his slightly older childhood friend Bela (Sjarvani), who has just returned from America with her annoying boyfriend Kuba (Richard Lovatt) in order to open a Zumba studio.  

Bittu has literal dreams as well, and they're not as nice; he's haunted by flashes of a phantom with a voice that sounds an awful lot like Gollum and keeps talking about marrying someone named Munni.  

 Bittu's cousin Rukku (Bhagyashree Limaye) is getting married, so the family travels to their ancestral village for the engagement ceremony.  Pammi clashes with her sexist and brutish brother-in-law Balu (Ajay Purkar), who blurts out the secret of Bittu's father's death: he was attempting to burn down a tree in the nearby cursed forest that the family owns.  Bittu visits the tree and is attacked by the Munjya.  he's saved by Gita (who is awesome) but Munjya manages to kill his sister and mark Bittu with a handprint.

 Bittu returns to Pune, but Munjya comes with him.  Only a blood relative can see the wicked spirit, and Munjya threatens to kill Pammi unless Bittu finds Munni for him.  With no clues, Bittu is forced to wander the streets late at night, while Munjya plays wicked pranks on everyone.  Bittu turns to his friend Spielberg Singh (Taranjot Singh) for help, and eventually figures out that Munni is Bela's grandmother Akka (Padmini Sardesai), which causes Munjya to transfer his obsession to Bela instead.

Bittu needs more help, and it is a well established fact in Indian horror movies that Christian clergymen  have magical powers, so Spielberg takes him to see revival preacher Elvis Karim Prabhakar (Sathyaraj), who seems to be and in fact is a bit of a huckster.  He does have actual knowledge of evil spirits, though, and he's dealt with munjyas before.  Elvis has a plan.  It's not a great plan, and because this is a horror comedy it's bound to go cattywampus in amusing ways, but it is a plan, so Bittu and Spielberg return to the village to arrange a wedding.  First, they'll have to find a goat.

 The other Maddock Horror Comedy Universe movies are playing with established Bollywood horror archetypes, and there's some of that here; Munjya is a more sinister version of the mischievous child ghosts you see in some Bollywood movies, crossed with the ancient and hungry grandmother from Tumbbad, and like the grandmother he draws a lot of influence from Gollum as portrayed by Andy Serkis.  I think that's actually appropriate, since all three characters have been twisted and transformed by a sense of longing, whether that's for a ring or gold or a person.

It's that longing that drives Munjya.  (Both character and film.)  In some ways this is the anti-Darr, portraying obsession as anything but romantic.  Despite the similar situations, Bittu is not tempted to become like Munjya, and instead serves as positive model of unrequited love; it's clear that Bela sees him as a friend, so he resolves to be the friend that she needs, without expecting anything in return but friendship.  The movie is not just about the ghost, it's about respecting the relationships you have rather than twisting them into something else.

 (And yeah, the werewolf makes a cameo in the end credits scene.)

Bhooty Call 2025

 It's October, and the world is a scary place.  I think a monthlong celebration of the ghosts of Bollywood would help me feel better, though, so once again it's time for a Bhooty Call.

I need some dramatic relief.

 Son of Sardaar 2 (2025) is not a direct sequel to 2012's Son of Sardaar; it shares a title, some cast members and character names, a genre (romantic action-comedy), and a general theme of an upright Punjabi man navigating sometimes brutal family politics in the name of love.  Not all of the cast returns, however.  There's no Sanjay Dutt, and sadly there's no Juhi Chawla either.

 

 

 Jassi (Ajay Devgn) is a humble and devout farmer living a simple life with his mother (Dolly Ahluwalia).  Jassi is married, but his wife Dimple (Neeru Bajwa) has been living in Scotland for the last eleven years, and Jassi has been waiting all that time for a visa so he can finally join her.  And then the day finally arrives, Jassi flies to Edinburgh, and is reunited with Dimple, who introduces him to her boyfriend and announces that she wants a divorce.  Jassi is devastated, and spends the next month moping on the couch of a friend from his ancestral village.

Jassi can't couch-surf forever, though, and after a humorous misunderstanding in which Pakistani wedding dancer Rabia (Mrunal Thakur) stabs him with a fork, she invites him to stay with her troupe.  Rabia has her own problems; her husband Danish (Chunky Panday) has abandoned her, her stepdaughter Saba (Roshni Walia) is in love with spoiled rich boy Goggi (Sahil Mehta) but refuses to let him meet her family, and her friends and roommates Mehwish (Kubbra Sait) and Gul (Deepak Dobriyal) are . . . pretty great, actually.  But Rabia is under a lot of stress.

 Things get worse when Goggi proposes; his father Raja (Ravi Kishan) is a powerful man with a huge sheep farm, a dubious past, and a bunch of heavily armed henchmen.  Raja is also a proud Indian from Punjab, and due to his own overly complicated backstory, he will not accept a daughter-in-law who is Pakistani, or even worse, a dancer.  This calls for a wacky scheme, with Jassi roped in to act as Saba's father and Rabia's husband.  And because this is a movie the lies spiral out of control from there, with Jassi posing as a retired Indian Army Colonel presiding over  a family which is definitely not from Pakistan, while Raja and his dimwitted brothers try to catch them in a lie.  Jassi wants to run, but he is a Sardaar, and he cannot turn his back on people in need, or ignore his developing feelings for Rabia.

This is a very silly movie.  I say that a lot, and usually I mean that the movie is trying to be an insubstantial bit of comedic fluff, and should be judged on those terms.  Son of Sardaar 2 is a very silly movie, and that's a bad thing.  The movie has a heart, and the performances are good, but everything is buried under a thick layer of farce, and all of the jokes land with heavy thuds, one after the other.  The basic plot is fine, but the details are baroque and need to be fixed; it's hard to take the underlying romance seriously when everything is sidetracked by the tragic accidental death of Raja's English stepmother, the former pole dancer.  

 

Still, the city is gorgeous, though they never do explain how Rabia can afford her spacious apartment located just off the Royal Mile. 

 

Ship of Fools

 As the  title implies, Housefull 5 (2025) is the latest installment in the Housefull franchise.  It's not a literal sequel; the movies in the series will share some actors, character names, and a tendency toward broad comedy, but storylines and even genres will change from installment to installment.  Housefull 4 was a reincarnation comedy that doubled as a spoof of Indian mythological epics, while 5 is a murder mystery on a boat.  It was also released with two different endings, borrowing the central gimmick from Clue.  The mystery doesn't get in the way of the broad comedy, though.

Billionaire Rajneet Dobriyal (Rajneet Bedi) is hosting a birthday party on his private cruise ship as it sails from Newcastle to Scotland.  (The film doesn't specify where in Scotland.)  Before the cruise can get underway, though, Rajneet is discovered dead.  This isn't a big surprise, since the party is for Rajneet's 100th birthday, but son Dev (Fardeen Khan) and assorted members of the company and ship's crew decide to keep the death a secret until control of the company can be formally passed on to Dev, to protect the stock price.  However, Rajneet's lawyer Lucy (Soundarya Sharma) reveals that Rajneet left a will, which leaves everything to his other son Jolly.  None of them have met Jolly, but he will be joining them on the cruise, and he will be bringing his foreign-born wife.

 Sure enough, Jolly (Riteish Deshmukh) shows up on time, along with his wife Zara (Sonam Bajwa); she's from Afghanistan.  Then Jolly (Abhishek Bachchan) appears with his wife Shashikala (Jacqueline Fernandes) from Sri Lanka.  And then Jolly (Akshay Kumar) arrives, with his wife Kaanchi (Nargis Fakhri), from Nepal.  Dev asks the ship's doctor to perform blood tests, then the three Jollys are allowed to enjoy the ship while they wait for the results.

That night the ship's cook Pasta (Chunkey Pandey) slips something into everybody's drink, and the three Jollys wake up with the wrong people and no memory of what happened the night before.  But somebody has killed the ship's doctor, and the three Jollys are the natural suspects.

 The ship's head of security, Batuk Patel (Johnny Lever) locks the Jollys up, and they compare notes.  naturally, none of them are real, and none of them are married, so the six team up to solve the mystery before the ship reaches Scotland.  Meanwhile, Maya (Chitrangda Singh), the company's CFO, has called for help from her ex husband Baba (Jackie Shroff) and his partner Bhiddu (Sanjay Dutt), two maverick cops who play by their own rules.  It's a race to solve the mystery as the bodies pile up, with an extended Weekend at Bernies riff as the Jollys attempt to dispose of Ranjeet's body for reasons.  

 This is obviously a very silly movie; the Housefull franchise is nothing but very silly movies.  Some of the jokes hit better than others; Dutt and Shroff are a perfect parody of Indian movie cops in general and their own respective careers in particular, and Akshay-Jolly's blood feud with the ship's parrot is played perfectly straight.  (His rumble with two monkeys is less effective.)  Johnny Lever continues to be the King of this sort of broad comedy, mugging for the camera with style and skill.

However there's also a lot of focus on ogling the female cast members.  The treatment of lawyer Lucy is particularly egregious, as well as the scene where the Mrs. Jollys assure the audience and one another that the only possible way to sneak into the ship's medical center is by shimmying on their backs through the air ducts.  The Housefull series has always dabbled in sexual humor, but at times this comes across as a bit from The Benny Hill Show or Carry On Stabbing.  It's very much a Curate's Egg of a movie - good in parts, but I cannot vouch for the whole.

 

This diamond is forever.

 Bank receptionist Harleen Sahni (Katrina Kaif) leads a quiet life in snowy Simla with her grandmother (Kamlesh Gill).  Harleen is shy and afraid of life, and manages to come across as the mousy girl that nobody notices, apart from the bank's new VP (Pratik Dixit), who makes an inappropriate pass at her.  Finally, frustrated, Harleen makes a profile on a dating website, and since the movie is called Bang Bang! (2014), her life is bound to change one way or another.

 The website matches her with one person, Vicky Kapoor, but he's late. Very late.  However, when he does show up he's played by Hrithik Roshan, and he's kind of amazing.  He's patient, he listens to her, and he even teaches her to dance so that she can join in the inevitable (and terrific) big musical number.  A waitress spills a drink on Harleen so she slips away to the bathroom to clean up.  While she's there, she convinces herself that this is her big chance to live life to the fullest, and she wants Vicky to be a part of it, but when she comes out he's already gone.

 However the movie doesn't start with Harleen, it starts with Indian Army Colonel Viren Nanda (Jimmy Shergill), who arrives to take custody of international terrorist and criminal mastermind Omar Zafar (Danny Dengzongpa).  It doesn't go well.  Zafar's men arrive to free him, and in the process and despite his heroic efforts, Viren is horribly murdered while his mother listens on an open phone line.

Zafar wants to stir up some confusion (and put an end to a potential extradition treaty between the UK and India) so he offers a reward of five million dollars to any Indian who can steal the Koh-i-noor.  Someone promptly steals it, and soon enough master thief Rajveer (Hrithik Roshan) is in snowy Simla to get paid and hand over the diamond.  Zafar's enforcers try to double cross him, leading to a big fight and subsequent rooftop chase, and he ducks into a small cafe and spots Harleen sitting there alone, so he takes the place of her date.  Everything's going well until he spots his pursuers approaching, so he ends the dance number and engineers a spilled drink to get Harleen out of the way for the big fight scene.  When she comes out of the bathroom, Rajveer is gone, the police have arrived, the cafe is in shambles, and the manager hands her a large bill.  She gives the manager her bank VP's card and leaves.

On the way home she runs into Rajveer again.  Literally.  With her car.  He's not hurt too badly, though, and after she helps him sew up  a bullet wound from earlier, he warns her not to trust anyone who comes looking for him, tells her where to find a gun to use to escape if she winds up in a car being taken to a "safe" place, then leaves.

Harleen tries to go back to her old life, but everything happens as Rajveer predicted.  The police arrive, interrogate her, and decide to take her to a "safe" place, she finds the gun, and completely fails to intimidate anyone, then Rajveer arrives to rescue her and there's another huge action scene.  Rajveer and Harleen escape to Pizza Hut, and after the product placement is done they go on the run, bickering their way through a globetrotting adventure with stops in Mauritius and Prague while Harleen tries to decide if she can really trust Rajveer.  She probably shouldn't, because he's not really Rajveer either, and this isn't a heist movie, it's a spy movie.*

Bang Bang! isn't a part of the YRF Spy Universe, and it was never going to be; the film was made by a  different production company, and both of the lead actors play different and pivotal roles in the Spy Universe franchise.  It's a bombastic action movie with impossibly pretty people performing impossible stunts, but at heart, like the Spy Universe movies, this is a story about the need for human connection.  Harleen wants to connect to the world outside her small life, and Rajveer has been deliberately cut off from the people he loves.  They're both so desperate for connection that it's no surprise that they find it with one another.

The action scenes are ridiculous fun, the leads are (as mentioned) impossibly pretty, the jokes land more often than not, the romance is pretty good (though Rajveer tranquilizes Harleen more often than I am really comfortable with - there's always context but in the real world it's kind of a red flag) and of course the dance numbers are fantastic.  Because really, why even cast Hrithik and Katrina in your spy movie if you're not going to let them dance.

 

(*Specifically, this is a spy movie that serves as an authorized remake of the Hollywood movie Knight and Day, which I have never seen.) 

 

 

 

The rare Reverse Cyrano.

 We're living in a post-Dil Chahta Hai world.  Romance is complicated these days, and the real barrier to a couple finding true love is their own neuroses and insecurities, rather than wicked stepmothers, identical twins and Amrish Puri.  And that's fine - Dil Chahta Hai was a really good movie, and Bollywood was in dire need of a little psychological complexity for a long time.  Sometimes I miss the simple earnestness of the old days, but To Jhoothi Main Makkar (2023) is here to remind me to be careful what I wish for.

 Mickey Arora (Ranbir Kapoor) certainly seems like an old-school Bollywood romantic hero.  he's handsome, charming, rich, and lives with his eccentric but loving family, headed by his overbearing mother Renu (Dimple Kapadia), and father Ramesh (film producer Boney Kapoor in his acting debut) is there as well.  But Mickey doesn't just help run the family businesses, he and his best friend Manu (Anubhav Singh Bassi) have a secret side business managing breakups.  Not just any breakups, because there are rules - most importantly, they won't accept married clients, but if they accept the job, thye will help their clients to break up with their romantic partners without having to look like a jerk or feel guilty.  Mickey thinks of this as a public service, and maybe even an art form.

Manu has other issues.  he's engaged to Kinchi (Monica Chaudhary), and while she's great, she's so invested in the relationship that she invites herself along to Manu's bachelor trip to Spain.  Manu aks Mickey to do his thing, and he reluctantly agrees . . . until he meets Kinchi's best friend and fellow traveler Tinni (Shraddha Kapoor.)  Tinni is gorgeous, independent, and charming, and Mickey is immediately smitten.

Mickey drops Manu's case and  launches a full scale charm offensive, leading to a brief fling, but Tinni is surprised to learn that Mickey isn't only after one thing, he's interested in a real relationship.  When the party returns to Delhi, Manu and Kinchi are married, while Mickey brings Tinni around to meet the family.  The family are ecstatic, and Renu is soon talking about expanding the family home in order to accommodate the young couple.  Tinni is aggressively welcomed into the family, and everyone is really, really happy.

And then Mickey gets a call from a woman in need of his breakup services.  He starts slow, because he's distracted by his own upcoming engagement, but before long he notices that the new client's relationship events are closely coinciding with his own, and he soon realizes that yes, it's Tinni trying to find a graceful way to break up with him.  Mickey is faced with a moral dilemma; he knows that he's talking to Tinni, but she has no idea that the man she hired to help her leave Mickey is in fact Mickey.   At first he uses his suggested "relationship tests" to make himself look good, but Tinni isn't satisfied, and Mickey carries through with his job, hoping to at least find out why Tinni wants to leave.

When I watch romantic comedies, I often find myself saying "this is a problem that could be solved with five minutes of conversation," but I have never seen a couple so determined to avoid that conversation.  There are definite problems with their relationship; Tinni is a Dil Chahta Hai girl, modern, excruciatingly self aware, and hiding her pain with a smile, while Mickey is a Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge boy, earnest, determined, apparently carefree, and a lot more traditional than he appears.  Unfortunately, like Raj in DDLJ, he's also kind of low-key sexist and more than a little manipulative.  They come from differnet sub-genres, and they're looking for completely different things out of life.  Ranbir and Shraddha are both charming and attractive actors, and they display a natural chemistry, but for me to believe in this relationship it will take more than passionate speeches, a noble act of romantic self-sacrifice and a last minute dash to the airport, it will take lots and lots of therapy, and I'm not sure they're going to get that.

And yet, that was the case in a lot of nineties Bollywood movies as well.  (Like DDLJ, for instance.)  If you're willing to accept that movie relationships aren't always going to be healthy then this movie has a lot to offer.  The leads are charming, Dimple Kapadia is clearly having a great time and the rest of the family is happy to follow along, the dance numbers are great, and the film is occasionally very funny.  Just don't try any of this at home.

 

Another brief hiatus.

 I'm taking some time off for reasons - I'll be back when I'm good and ready!

"Bantuka4" is a pun aimed directly at me.

 Shehzada (2023) has one of the classic Indian movie plot lines: a street-smart youngster moves in with a wealthy family under false pretenses and proceeds to make everyone's lives better. resolving longstanding conflicts through honesty, pluck, and cheeky charm.  The only real difference is that in this movie, the youngster is actually helping his own family.  (And even that has been done many times already; this movie is a remake of the Telugu film Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo,)

 On a rainy night, the wealthy Randeep (Ronit Roy) and his employee Valmiki (Paresh Rawal) find themselves in the same hospital, eagerly awaiting the births of their respective sons.  Then tragedy strikes - Valmiki learns from a nurse (Sharvari Lohokare) that Randeep's son has stopped breathing, and he convinces the nurse to quietly swap the infants, claiming that the sacrifice is the least he can do for his beloved employee.  When the not dead after all infant starts crying and the nurse wants to switch the babies back, the truth comes out: Valmiki and Randeep started in the company at the same time, but Randeep married the CEO's daughter and became rich while Valmiki continued to struggle, but now he'll see his own son raised in luxury no matter what.  The nurse protests, they struggle, and she falls, slipping into a coma for the next twenty five years.

Twenty five years later, Valmiki still works for the company, and he dotes on the family's spoiled and hapless heir, Raj (Ankur Rathee), while pressuring and berating Bantu (Karthik Aaryan), the man everyone thinks is his son.  Still, Bantu has earned a law degree and fights like a South Indian movie hero when he has to beat up a group of toughs and recover the shawl they stole from his sister Nisha (Debattama Saha), while Raj owns a toy car which he uses to get from room to room in his own house.

 Bantu needs a job, and he applies to be the assistant to Samara (Kriti Sanon), but she turns him down, since most of the people who apply to her law firm have degrees from Ivy League colleges while Bantu went to school in India.  However, he later discovers Samara being menaced by a potential client in a restaurant, and saves the day with his quick wit, quicker reflexes and knowledge of the Indian legal code.  he gets the job, and soon they are flirting up a storm.

Raj faces a test of his own.  Randeep sends him to negotiate with family nemesis Sarang, a toy manufacturer who used the family's transport business to smuggle drugs.  When Randeep learned what happened, he was banned from using the Jindal family planes, but for some reason he is not in jail and is demanding to be allowed to do business with them again.  All Raj has to do is say no.  He fails the test, but Randeep makes the family position clear, and Sarang plans revenge.

The things start to happen quickly.  Samara's father (Rakesh Bedi) arranges a marriage between Samara and Raj, and she confesses to Bantu that she'd much rather marry him.  The young couple hope to explain things to Randeep, but when they arrive at his office he's just been stabbed by an umbrella-wielding Sarang, and Bantu gets to show his action hero chops again while rushing Randeep to the hospital.  And once Randeep is safe, Bantu meets the nurse from twenty five years ago, who emerges from her coma just long enough to tell him about the baby swap, then dies before she can tell anyone else, leaving him with the truth but no evidence.

 Randeep's father-in-law Aditya (Sachin Khedekar) invites the young hero to the house, and they quickly bond.  Soon Bantu has a new job working for the family, and he sets out to make everybody's lives better.  Dealing with Sarang is actually the easy part; he also has to convince Raj to take responsibility for himself, as well as reconcile Randeep and his estranged wife Yashoda (Manisha Koirala), and Yashoda has no intention of making it easy.

If a masala film like this one is going to be successful, a lot of things have to go right.  The action scenes have to be kinetic and fun, the romantic leads need good chemistry, the music and dancing has to be on point, and the senior actors need to deliver a dose of honest emotion.  And this worked for me; Koirala is probably the standout in the cast, but Aaryan balances an easy swaggering charm with a genuine moral core.  I liked his Bantu a lot more than Allu Arjun's Bantu in Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo - in the earlier film Bantu was a sexist jerk at times, while in Shehzada Bantu has a big hero speech about how no means no.  

 

However, Shehzada was a flop while Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo was a big hit, which just goes to show you that my taste is suspect.

 

 

If it wasn't for your misfortune, I'd be a heavenly person today.

 I See You (2006) is a Bollywood ghost story with a difference.  It's a romance, with a ghost who is not actually a ghost, and a plot that bears a strong resemblance to the Hollywood film Just Like Heaven.  (I am assured that both films are based on Marc levy's novel If Only It Were True, and I am willing to believe it.)  But that's not the real difference.

 Raj Jaiswal (Arjun Rampal) lives in London and hosts a popular Hindi language talk show called "British Raj."  Raj is a carefree bachelor, which in this sort of movie means that he's a walking HR nightmare who hits on every woman within reach, including his new co-host Dilnaaz (Sophie Choudry).  She agrees to a date, though it's not clear whether that's because he is charming or she is ambitious.  And it doesn't really matter, because when Raj gets home after making the date he discovers Shivani (Vipasha Agarwal) in his apartment, and she just won't leave.

Shivani claims to be a spirit.  Not a ghost, exactly - she explains that she's not actually dead, she's in a coma, and she is thrilled to meet someone who can see, hear, and even touch her.  Raj assumes that his best friend Akshay (Chunky Pandey), but after some comic business and a quick trip to the hospital to see her body, Raj accepts his spectral roommate.

It takes a little while before they warm up to one another.   At first Raj tries to use Shivani's ghostly nature to help him pick up girls and cheat at poker, and she takes the opportunity to mess with him.  But soon enough they're friends, leading to more comic business as Raj apparently talks to himself in public and the people around him assume that he's lost his mind.  Before long, though, they're close.  Raj talks about Shivani all the time, much to Akshhay's chagrin.  

And just as the relationship is starting to get romantic, Shivani reveals her secret:  the car crash that put her into a coma wasn't an accident.  before the crash she stumbled across an organ trafficing ring run out of the hospital, with Doctor Shah (Ashwin Mushran) as the ringleader.  Shah is in charge of Shivani's care, and if he can't convince her mother (Kirron Kher) to sign the papers to take her off life support, he'll take care of the problem himself.  It's time for Raj to take action - ill-advised and largely ineffectual action.  Fortunately minor comic relief character John Smith (Michael Maloney), a police inspector who appeared as a human interest story on The British Raj because he learned Hindi through Bollywood movies in order to woo the movie theater cashier, is on the case.

The plot of I See You is not terribly unusual; in addition to Just Like heaven and Vismayathumbathu (a South Indian movie which came out in 2004 and is, I am assured, based on the same novel), 2021's Teddy takes the same coma-and-organ trafficking plot beats and adds violence and a giant Teddy bear.  Still, the movie is reasonably well made and entertaining.  Arjun Rampal is probably miscast; he does better with brooding action heroes, but the role is crying out for Rajkummar Rao.  Still, he does his best, and the movie is sufficiently fun.

The real difference is the music.  Composers Vishal-Shekhar created a bright and poppy soundtrack with a vibrant eighties techno beat -  it's Bollywood by way of New Order, and it doesn't sound like any Indian movie I have ever seen.

You and me could write a bad romance.

 Some Bollywood heroes are charming scoundrels, some are callow youths in need of a valuable life lesson, but the hero of Gori Tere Pyaar Mein! (2013) is just a jerk.  At least to start - can he become less of a jerk?  I certainly hope so, or the movie is going to be a bad romance.

Sriram (Imran Khan) is young, handsome, rich, and a trained architect, though he spends his time partying and disappointing his father (Nizhalgal Ravi) rather than architecting.  After Sriram skips his grandfather's deathbed, and funeral, and memorial service, his family decide that the best way to deal with the lad is to get him married.  The prospective bride is Vasudha (Shraddha Kapoor), and Sriram likes her smile.  Vasudha takes Sriram aside and asks him to reject the match, since she is in love with someone else, but Sriram cheerfully accepts the match because he's a jerk.  Basically he's the unsuitable bridegroom from a more conventional Bollywood romance.

They've got nothing but time, so Vasudha tries to find out exactly what Sriram's deal is, and he tells her about his previous fiance, Dia (Kareena Kapoor.)  Dia is a social worker, loud, passionate and always involved in some charity program or protest.  The relationship was always rocky, since opposites might attract but they're still opposites, and no one is really surprised when the relationship finally crumbles and Dia goes home to Delhi.

Vasudha doesn't buy it - their first date was to a place Sriram used to take Dia, he talks about her a lot, and he still owns the pet crab that Dia adopted and left in his care.  Sriram still loves Dia, so why aren't they still together?  With some prodding he details the end of their relationship, when he sold a plot of land she wanted to use to build an orphanage because he wanted a new car, and when she confronted him he called her a hypocrite who dabbles in social awareness while shielded by her privilege, lamenting the lot of the hungry from expensive Italian restaurants.   That's more than enough to end the relationship permanently, salting the earth for good measure.

Or it would be, but Vasudha convinces Sriram to flee the wedding ceremony and go find Dia.  It's not that hard - he asks her parents, and they tell him that she's working in the tiny village of Jhumli, a place which is nearly cut off from the outside world apart from a rickety rope bridge.  Sriram travels to the village and witnesses the poverty and brutal conditions firsthand, and he also sees Dia doing everything she can to help.  Naturally he wants to take her away from all of this, but she won't leave until the work is done.  Almost all of the village's problems could be fixed if they had a proper bridge, allowing ailing villagers to go to the hospital and children to go to school, and Sriram impulsively vows to build a new bridge, while Dia impulsively vows to leave with him if he succeeds.  But they'll have to get past the region's gleefully corrupt and vengeful collector (Anupam Kher) while Sriram rockets through his character development, because the bridge is not just a bridge, it's an objective correlative.

It's hard to balance goofy romance with a redemption arc, but Khan and Kapoor are both effortlessly charming, and Sriram is such a jerk early on that every good deed feels like progress, while Dia has flaws of her own and also enjoys some character development.  I hope that they keep a relationship counselor on speed dial, but that's the case with a lot of movie couples. 

 

Come for the Machina, stay for the Deus.

 Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani (2009) presents itself as a comic book movie, complete with bright colors, pop art titles, and a literal iron man providing narration in the frame story.  Not just any comic book, though, an Archie comic book.  This isn't superhero action, it's sunny romance filtered through broad farce.

The frame story is just an excuse to talk about Prem (Ranbir Kapoor), though.  He's a fairly typical Bollywood protagonist of the era - young, charming, unemployed, and a bit of a natural con artist who spends his time hanging out with his young and carefree friends rather than getting a job.  Prem is the president of the Happy Club, the spiritual descendants of the Youth Club from Bhoot Bungla.  Unlike the older movie, the Happy Club doesn't have any "No Girls" rule, but they do have their own code.  Happy Club members help people without expecting anything in return and are particularly determined to unite star-crossed couples, when they're not busy scamming food from the restaurant owned by Prem's father (Darshan Jariwala).  Prem also has a stutter which only surfaces when he's really emotional and it's convenient to the plot.

While helping one such young couple elope, Prem accidentally kidnaps Jenny (Katrina Kaif), and it's love at first sight - for him.  Jenny is understandably upset about the whole kidnapping thing, but after a few more misunderstandings they finally become friends.  Jenny also has a stutter which emerges during dramatically appropriate moments, and when she's explaining the circumstances of her adoption to Prem she begins to stutter which makes him start to stutter.  She assumes that he's making fun of her, slaps him, and storms off.  

But this misunderstanding doesn't last long either.  They make up and become fast friends.  Prem still likes her romantically, but can't work up the courage to tell her, so he tries to remake himself to become someone she could love.  That means getting a job, and for some reason it also means eating meat; Prem is a staunch vegetarian, but Jenny is Christian so they all assume she will want a man who is non-veg.  Prem feels so guilty about the meet eating that he feels he cannot fave his own God, and instead goes to Jenny's church to confess directly to Jesus and ask Him for His help in winning Jenny's heart.  This will be important later.

However Prem is so busy reinventing himself that he doesn't have time to spend with Jenny, so he doesn't find out that her parents are forcing her to marry the genuinely awful Tony Braganza (Pradeep Kharab) until it's almost too late.  He follows the family to Goa and manages to meet Jenny.  He promises to help her . . . and she asks him to contact Rahul (Upen Patel), the handsome, muscular and rich guy that she loves.

Prem takes the news surprisingly well.  He's sensible enough to realize that Jenny never said she wanted a romantic relationship with him, and that he had never worked up the courage to ask her for one. More than anything else he wants Jenny to be happy, Happy Club is all about uniting star-crossed lovers, and his motto the entire movie has been "No complaints, no demands," so Happy Club gets to work.

And wackiness ensues fairly quickly.  After Prem arranges an elopement, Rahul vanishes from the train, leaving Jenny with nowhere to go, so Prem has to hide her in his house.  Rahul has been captured by his own father, wealthy politician Pitambar Jalan (Govind Namdeo), so Prem has to outwit Jenny's parents, Rahul's parents, his own parents, and a group of gangsters led by Sajid Don (Zakir Hussain), and that's the easy part.   

The hard part is letting Jenny go.  After all of the strife, he can't stand to watch Jenny get married to someone else, so he leaves town, which means he's not there when Jenny realizes that Prem has done an awful lot to ensure her happiness and safety, while Rahul has done basically nothing.  Prem loves Jenny, Jenny now realizes that she loves Prem, but it's too late - in order for the pair to be united they'll need a literal Deus Ex Machina, and they get one.  In this case, it's Jesus driving a pickup truck.

Divine intervention is not unknown in Bollywood romance, though it's usually Krishna doing the intervening, and the rest of the plot is classic Bollywood romantic melodrama.  What's different is the tone - the romance is completely sincere, but the rest of the movie plays out as a broad farce, with elements drawn from silent comedies.  On the other hand, this is perhaps the cuddliest farce I've ever seen, with everything leading toward an emotionally satisfying happy ending for the adorable characters.  It's a weird movie, but it's the good kind of weird.

 

They look for their destiny in parrots.

 Apparently Deewane Huye Paagal (2005) is the unofficial Indian remake of There's Something About Mary, which means that once again, I have seen the Bollywood version but not the original film.  I'm pretty the subplot about the elixir of youth is unique to this version, though.

The film opens with a cowboy hatted narrator (Vivek Oberoi) floating through a pink background.  The narrator summarizes the surprisingly complicated backstory - a brilliant but absent minded scientist (Om Puri) has developed a serum which can reverse aging.  His gangster brother Khurana (also Om Puri) wants it, and he's willing to kill to get it.  The scientist is even more absent-minded than the stereotype would suggest, and uses a stuffed parrot with a built in recording device to help him remember key information.  This will be important later.

 Meanwhile, Karan (Shahid Kapoor) is a college student working an the restaurant owned by Murugun (Johnny Lever.)  Like most of the students at his college, Karan is infatuated with Tanya (Rimi Sen), who performs concerts on campus for some reason.  Karan knows that he doesn't have a shot with Tanya, but after standing up for her mentally disabled brother Gullu (Rakesh Bedi) when he's threatened by Khurana's son Sunny (Suresh Menon) he suddenly does have a shot.  

 

Tanya and Karan grow closer, but on the night of Karan's birthday, she sees Khurana's competent son Baljeet (Baljeet Singh) murder his scientist uncle, and the parrot is left in her car.  Since the parrot holds the code to the safe that contains the youth formula, Baljeet is doubly motivated to find her, so Tanya has to flee town without telling Karan.  He looks for her, but the only thing he finds is a stuffed parrot, which he assumes is his birthday present.

And all of that is prelude.  Three years later, Karan is less geeky, but still pining for Tanya.  he bumps into some of her college friends and learns that she's moved to Dubai, and he wants to leave immediately, but Murugun convinces him to wait until they have arranged passports.  While they wait they hire private detective Rocky (Akshay Kumar) to find Tanya's address.  And that's when things get even more complicated.

 Rocky discovers that Tanya is now Natasha, and learns that she's become a popular singer who is about to release her first album, as you do when you are in hiding.  he also discovers that she's gorgeous, and quickly falls in love as well.  When Karan and Murugun arrive, Rocky spins a long list of lies, telling Karan that Tanya is overweight, in a wheelchair, running a laundry business in her home, and raising seven children with three different fathers.  Karan is even more determined to find her; if she needs him he's going to be there for her.  Finally Rocky claims that Tanya has left Dubai and is on a honeymoon with her new gangster husband, and they are also on the run from the law, so Karan sadly starts making preparations to return home and disappears from the movie for a bit.

 Rocky continues to spy on Tanya/Natasha so that he can present himself as the perfect man for her.  he also learns that he's surrounded by other men - her brother Gullu has died, but she has practically adopted Tommy (Paresh Rawal), who suffered brain damage after she ran him over with her car.  Her overprotective architect friend Sanju (Suniel Shetty) walks with crutches, and keeps telling her terrible things about her rich and charming ex-boyfriend Raj (Aftab Shivdasani).  And there's a blind man (Asrani) who keeps bumping into her for some reason.

 Rocky keeps spying and manipulating, and along the way he discovers that the men around Natasha are all in love with her and also all lying; Tommy isn't disabled at all, Sanju is an able-bodied plumber who makes things up about Natasha's suitors, and Raj is actually a decent guy, but thanks to Sanju he's out of the picture.  Rocky is better at manipulating Natasha than they are (though Natasha is spectacularly gullible, so it's not that hard) and he's nearly convinced her to marry him when Karan happens to bump into them.  

We have a love triangle!  Sort of!  Rocky is still lying, and while Karan is still devoted to Tanya, he's so reflexively noble that he's constantly about to leave so that she can be happy, and he never thinks to mention that he knows for a fact that Rocky isn't an architect or a navy captain.  

 The gangsters finally return, and secrets are revealed, leading to kidnapping, car chases, and an interminable climactic action scene involving motorcycles and an infinite supply of dune buggies.  

 This is a very silly movie, but silly isn't always bad.  There are some good things here!  Because the movie is so ridiculous, everybody pitches their performance to Johnny Lever levels, which gives him the chance to shine; Murugun is the most consistently sympathetic character in the film, and actually gets to contribute to the plot rather than just providing comic relief.  This is early in Shahid Kapoor's career, so he's still doing a Shah Rukh Khan impression here, but young Shahid does a good Shah Rukh Khan impression.

And I'm done saying nice things.  I have tried to present the plot as I understand it, but the whole thing is pretty incoherent, and even with the narrator it's hard to follow.  The actual jokes often land, but for a lot of the time the movie relies on mugging for the camera rather than bothering with actual jokes.  Tommy's mentally-challenged act is pretty gross. And even that is not the real problem.

The real problem is that the film thinks we like Rocky.  Karan vanishes for a good chunk of the runtime, and we're left to follow Rocky as he spies on, lies to, and manipulates Natasha.  Akshay Kumar is a very charismatic man, and he's great at playing lovable rogues, but Rocky is not a lovable rogue, he's a creep in dire need of a comeuppance that never quite arrives.  I don't want to follow him in his attempts at romance, and I actively don't want him to get the girl.  (He doesn't.)

 I realize that this is basically the same complaint I had about Blue, but Akshay's character here is even more unlikable.