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.

 

Here we go again.

(No screenshots this week because of technical issues.)

Rajkummar Rao built his reputation with a series of roles in quirky movies that feature a strong social message; even the Stree franchise, his biggest success, is really about society's treatment of women rather than just ghosts.  Bhool Chuk Maaf (2025), though, looks like a family entertainer, a stealth remake of Groundhog Day combined with the traditional Bollywood liar film in which the hapless protagonist schemes and fibs throughout the film but comes clean in the end and is forgiven by all of their family and friends.

 Rao plays Ranjan Tiwari, who certainly qualifies as hapless.  Ranjan is in love with the lively, free-spirited and kind of bossy Titli (Wamiqa Gabbi).  Titli's father (Zakir Hussain) does not approve of the match, since Ranjan hasn't managed to land a government job.  Ranjan and Titli try to elope, but she has second thoughts, and they're stopped by a policeman while arguing, leading to both families feuding in the police station.  However, they do manage to reach a compromise: if Ranjan can land a government job within two months, they can get married.  Otherwise Titli will be married off to someone else.

The problem is that government jobs are a valuable commodity; they're reliable, come with benefits and even a pension, so competition is fierce, and Ranjan hasn't gotten any less hapless.  Fortunately his sister Keri (Pragati Mishra) knows a guy, and that guy leads him to Bhagwan Das (Sanjay Mishra), a shady employment broker who can get him a position in the Ministry of Agriculture for a price, and by price I mean a sizable bribe.  Titli pawns her mother's necklace, the bribe is paid, and then Bhagwan vanishes with the money.

 At this point Ranjan is genuinely desperate, and he visits a temple.  On the advice of a pandit he makes an offering to Lord Shiva and promises that if he gets a government job, he will perform an unspecified good deed.  And shortly thereafter he gets a call from Bhagwan, who didn't just run off with the money - the job is his, which means that the wedding is on!  The date is set for the 30th of the month.

Time passes quickly.  The 29th is spent in various ceremonies, he has a long and kind of romantic chat with Titli in the evening, goes to bed and wakes up . . . on the morning of the 29th.

Ranjan tries to figure out the nature of the time loop over the next few 29ths, before he realizes that he hasn't fulfilled his pledge and performed his unspecified good deed.  He tries various acts of charity without success, telling various friends and family members about the loop over and over again, and grows more and more frustrated along the way.  Finally, he stands on abridge overlooking the Ganges, preparing to throw himself off, and that;s when he meets Hamid (Akash Makhija), the man who should have gotten the job, because this is a Rajkummar Rao and the social issues are inevitable.

That doesn't mean the movie gets preachy though.  There's a very specific critique about the human cost of government corruption here, but it's wrapped in a broader message about doing good things for other people, which is in turn wrapped in a quirky romantic comedy complete with a hapless protagonist who comes clean in the end and is forgiven by all his family and friends.  All the pieces are there, and they all work.