"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.