Pride and Paneer.

 They say that Bollywood romance is dead, and it certainly doesn't dominate the industry as it did in the days when King Khan ruled the box office.   But they keep making romances.  Some movies try to reinvent the genre, and some movies, like Ginny Weds Sunny (2020) just tell a story about people.

Sunny (Vikrant Massey) has a problem.  He's a genuinely talented chef, and he dreams of opening his own restaurant, but he needs a building and infrastructure.  His father (Rajiv Gupta) is willing to hand over control of his hardware store, but only after Sunny gets married.  The problem is that Sunny is completely hopeless when it comes to dating; he's in it to get married, and he wants to sidestep as much of the build-up as possible.  His father agrees to try and arrange something; he happens to know a marriage broker, Shobha (Ayesha Raza Mishra), and he sets up a meeting.

 

Shobha has a daughter, Ginny (Yami Gautam), who has romantic troubles of her own.  Ginny broke up with her rich and handsome boyfriend Nishant (Suhail Nayyar) a year ago, and they're supposed to be platonic friends now, but it's clear that Ginny isn't over him, and Nishant is happy to string her along.  Ginny has rejected every potential groom Shobha has presented her with, and that doesn't seem likely to change.  

As it happens, though, Ginny and Sunny went to school together, and he always had a huge crush on her - Shobha can tell, using her keen Marriage Broker Senses.  So she makes a suggestion to Sunny - he can marry Ginny!  He'll have to be careful, though, since Ginny wants a love marriage, but with her mother's secret advice Sunny can befriend her, woo her, and eventually marry her.  It should be simple, right?

Shobha didn't reckon on just how bad Sunny is at romance, though.  Thanks to Shobha he manages to keep meeting Ginny "by chance," but all his attempts to impress her backfire.  So instead he tries just talking, and that makes a difference.  Sunny is goofy and earnest, Ginny is sharp and cynical, but they get along surprisingly well and slip into a genuine friendship, though Sunny is clear that he has romantic intentions and Ginny is clear that she's too hung up on her ex at the moment to make any serious commitments. Credit for honesty, except that Sunny hasn't told her that he's been working with her mother this whole time.

Ginny kind of likes Sunny, but her friends all definitely like Sunny, so he's invited along when they go on vacation, and it goes really well.  For once in his life, Sunny is in with a shot, and he picks his venue, picks his moment, and is about to propose when Nishant returns to announce that he loves Ginny after all, and he's ready to get married.

Ginny is surprised to realize that she would actually rather marry Sunny, at least until she learns that he's been working with her mother the whole time.  They're both mad, and before long Sunny is engaged to Neha (Isha Talwar), the daughter of some local gangsters, while Ginny is determined to attend their wedding and celebrate out of spite.  

Any romance is only as good as its lead characters.  Ginny is sarcastic and blunt, but she hides a lot of pain beneath her brittle exterior.  Sunny is undeniably a doofus, but he's a doofus who listens, and once he starts paying attention to what Ginny says rather than what her mother says, he is able to be honest with Ginny and himself, and to give her a truly spectacular birthday present.  This isn't a case of "opposites attract," it's a case of "opposites are maybe not so different after all."  I'm rooting for them.

 

Sowing the seeds of DEATH

 Rudraksh (2004) is an ambitious action movie, mixing elements of the Ramayana with pseudoscience to create a martial arts fueled special effects extravaganza.  It is also really bad.  I don't normally say this right at the top when talking about a movie, but I think it's worth pointing out.

let's start at the beginning.  In the early nineties, an archeological expedition in Sri Lanka has discovered what is apparently the capitol city of the rakshasa king Ravanna.  They keep digging, because there's no way that that could possibly unleash an ancient evil upon the world.  Labor contractor Bhuria (Sunil Shetty) spends his days walking around the  whip site with a whip to keep the laborers working, and his nights smuggling artifacts out with the help of his girlfriend Lali (Isha Koppikar).  After the archeologists dig up a large idol of Ravanna, Bhuria discoversd a secret compartment which contains Ravanna's rudraksha, the dried seed of an utrusam bean tree used as a prayer bead and the repository of Ravanna's power.  Bhuria immediately becomes obsessed with the rudraksha, and after the archeologist take it from him he returns to the site and kills them all.

Years pass.  Bhuria meditates on the rudraksha, gaining great supernatural powers.  he also uses his hypnotic abilities to reshape Lali's mind, Chris Claremont style, transforming her from a slightly shady rustic woman to a sophisticated and ruthless assassin and eager accomplice in Bhuria's demonic schemes.  Still, after all this time he has never been able to touch the rudraksha, and he knows that it is destined for someone else.

Meanwhile, research scientist Gayatri (Bipasha Basu) and her all-female team have arrived in India to search for evidence of psychic powers.  All she finds are frauds, at least until she discovers Varun (Sanjay Dutt), a devout spiritual healer/martial arts instructor/nightclub bouncer with a mane of long hair that is probably supposed to evoke Fabio but kept reminding me of Samurai Cop.  Varun is the real deal, able to help the afflicted by taking their pain into himself, and Gayatri thinks that he's really great, so much so that in addition to making him the center of her study, she's also dating him, because what are ethics, really?

She does have another subject, a man she calls "Pagal" (Raj Zutshi), who has been confined to an institution for years, is surrounded by an ominous black aura (kirlian photography is apparently a large part of Gayatri's work), and constantly chants a demonic mantra.  Gayatri manipulates Varun into using his powers to help Pagal, causing the healer/martial arts instructor/nightclub bouncer to fall unconscious and confront a vision of Bhuria, who calls Varun "brother" before engaging in a spiritual katana fight.

That's not Gayatri's only bit of evil science, though.  Her assistants have forced a lab rat to listen to a constant loop of Pagal's demonic chanting, which changes the rat's DNA and gives it mind control powers, which it uses to seize control of lab assistant Suzy (Agnes Darenius).  Bhuria summons Suzy to his evil lair, then sends her to attack Gayatri as a test of Varun's skills.  Varun and Gayatri travel to the Himalayas to visit his father Ved Bhushan (Kabir Bedi), a powerful sage, gives Bhuria the opportunity to attack and kill the old man.

And then the movie starts spinning its wheels in earnest - Varun and Gayatri research Bhuria's past, hoping to find clues about where he is and what he's planning.  The problem is that the audience already knows about Bhuria's past, because it was covered in the opening scenes of the movie; Varun picks up a few extra details, but they don't really change anything and they are unreliable because Bhuria is using his hypnotic powers to mess with Varun's psychometric visions.  And then Bhuria hijacks the TV to tell them where he is anyway, making the entire search for clues completely moot.  

The main problem with Rudraksh is the writing; Gayatri spouts a constant stream of garbled pseudoscience and Varun responds with an avalanche of vague platitudes about God and the internet.  And the movie takes itself far more seriously than a story involving sensual healing massage and death by rat hypnosis really should.  Add that to the inconsequential search for information and padding by flashback, and the movie plods.  The action scenes should inject a little life into the film, but they are similarly turgid and drowning in cheap CGI.

 Sanjay Dutt almost manages to coast through this movie on sheer charm and make it somewhat watchable, but he really doesn't have much to work with.  His best roles tend to be funny, and it's all just so po-faced that even he flounders.  At times it is at least entertainingly bad; it turns out that the rat hypnosis is the high point.  Still better than Samurai Cop, though.

 

 

Two jewel boxes.

 Laapataa Ladies (2023) is a new variation on Bollywood's grand old tradition of blurring genre lines.  The premise and structure says "gritty social drama", but the tone says "feel-good romantic comedy."  Can it be both?  It's going to try.

 Deepak (Sparsh Shrivastava) has just married the beautiful and sheltered Phool (Nitanshi Goel), and the pair are traveling by train to the groom's village home in the fictional state of Nirmal Pradesh.  They are not the only married couple in the compartment, and Deepak begins to feel self-conscious as the other grooms brag about the dowries they've been paid, but but he's happy with his new bride, and late at night, when the train reaches their stop, he nudges Phool awake and they leave the train.

Or so he thinks - all three of the brides in the compartment are dressed in red wedding saris, and they are all modestly veiled, which means that their faces can't be seen and they can't really see anything either.  When Deepak gets home, the family gathers to meet their new member, only to realize that the brave-hearted young man has brought back the wrong bride.  She introduces herself as Pushpa (Pritabha Ranta), and because Deepak's family are decent people, they let her stay while Deepak tries to sort everything out.

Meanwhile, Phool wakes up when the train reaches the end of the line.  She realizes that Deepak is not there and that she's at the wrong station, but thankfully she does not talk to Pushpa's new husband Pradeep (Bhaskar Jha) because he's terrible.  Pradeep stomps around the station looking for his wife, mumbles a few threats, then gives up and decides to spend the night with his mistress.  He's mostly angry because she was carrying the wedding jewelry, and because his first wife died in a mysterious and convenient kitchen fire and he doesn't want to have to deal with the police again.

 That doesn't help Phool.  She's alone in a strange city, she doesn't dare talk to the police, can't remember the name of her new husband's village, and won't return to her parents because it will bring shame to her family.  A beggar named Chhotu (Satendra Soni) gives her a place to stay for the night, and in the morning he introduces her to the magnificently cynical Manju Maai (Chhaya Kadam), who eventually takes her in and gives her a job at her tea stall, along with some excellent advice about learning to live for yourself.

Deepak goes to the police for help, but the cheerfully corrupt Sub-Inspector Manohar (Ravi Kishan) seems more interested in the extra bride.  Pushpa doesn't want to talk to the police at all, and instead slowly gains the family's trust and begins to subtly make their lives better, providing a nontoxic way to deal with the insects that are damaging the crops, and encouraging Poonam (Rachna Gupta) to develop her artistic talents.

However, Pushpa is hiding something.  Several things, really, starting with the fact that her name isn't Pushpa, it's Jaya.  Sub-Inspoector Manohar is suspicious, and starting to close in.

 The social commentary here can be quite pointed; Manju Maai in particular has a lot to say about women not realizing their own power because they're hamstrung by a strict code of social conduct.  And yet, nearly everybody is nice.  Deepak is truly devoted to his wife and desperate to find her, while Phool learns to be more independent and value herself and then chooses to go back to her husband.  Social dramas don't normally get happy endings, but I'm not complaining.

 

Some men just want to watch the world learn.

 Some movies have unlikely heroes, but Dasvi (2022) has one of the unlikeliest.  Ganga Ram Chaudhary (Abhishek Bachchan) is the charming, arrogant, and gleefully corrupt Chief Minister of the semi-fictional state of Harit Pradesh.  (The "state" is actually a region in Uttar Pradesh with some cultural and linguistic differences which some have proposed breaking off as a new independent state.  It's clearly fictional, but perhaps a bit more plausible than an American movie dealing with the internal politics of the state of Cascadia.)

 Chaudhary's crimes may have finally caught up with him; he's implicated in a scam involving funding money form the state's schools, though it's never entirely clear whether Chaudhary was involved personally.  In any case, he's sent to jail and, at first, enjoys a comfy life. He has a luxurious private room, the guards and other prisoners are obsequious, and his shy wife Bimla (Nimrat Kaur) is able to serve as CM while he's away.

Things change pretty rapidly.  Stubborn and incorruptible new prison superintendent Jyoti Deswal (Yami Gautam) takes over, and suddenly Chaudhary has to stay in a regular cell and eat and work with the other prisoners, while Bimla has broken out of her shell and learned to love being in power.  She can only be CM while her husband is in jail, so suddenly the party machine is a lot less helpful.

Chaudhary is assigned to work in the wood shop, making chairs.  He does not want to make chairs, so he tries everything to get out of it, but Jyoti won't budge.  And then he gets his big idea - education!  Many of the prisoners are studying in the prison library to earn their high school diplomas, and Chaudhary is legally entitled to the same opportunity.

 It starts as a scam, but while reading about the history of the struggle for Indian independence, Chaudhary gets swept up in the narrative and starts imagining himself as a part of history, Wishbone-style.  Chaudhary learns from history so that he won't be condemned to repeat it, and dedicates himself to earning his degree properly.  In fact, he vows that he will not serve as CM anymore unless he can earn his degree.

There is a problem - Chaudhary is kind of a lunkhead with no noticeable skills beyond politics.  Fortunately some of his fellow prisoners are there to tutor him, and bicycle thief Ghanti (Arun Kushwah) discovers the secret - he teaches math using vote counts and election probability, and Chaudhary gets it!  Soon he's making strides in every subject except Hindi, and the only one he can turn to is Jyoti.  Meanwhile Bimla has realized that if Chaudhary doesn't pass the test and earn his degree, she gets to stay as CM, so she does everything she can to subtly interfere with his efforts. This causes tension in their marriage.

Chaudhary and Jyoti grow closer, and another movie would probably end with them realizing that they love each other, but Dasvi does not.  It's refreshing to see a genuine friendship develop onscreen between a man and a woman, and see that platonic relationship presented as something valuable that's worth fighting for.

 In any case, by the end of the movie Chaudhary's true love is education.  He's still something of a lunkhead, but he's a lunkhead who wants to learn, and wants to make it possible for others to learn as well.  I expected wacky school-related hijinks, but I did not expect a movie making such a strong argument for education for its own sake.  Perhaps Chaudhary is not such an unlikely hero after all.