He's not a tame lion.

 

 

 Mahavatar Narsimha (2024) is an animated Hindu devotional movie.  As usual with devotional movies, I am not qualified to judge the theology, so I will be looking at the movie as a story rather than as an expression of religious faith.

 

The movie establishes almost immediately that despite the animation it is not primarily aimed as kids, as the lovely Diti (Vasundhra Bose) interrupts the meditations of her husband, the sage Kashyapa (Dinesh Varma) to ask him to give her a son right now.  Kashyapa explains that it is an inauspicious time and any child conceived might turn out to be a demon who will threaten the entire universe, but Diti is really insistent, so he goes along with it.  And the next morning he angrily announces that Diti has conceived demonic twins who will threaten the entire universe.  When the twins are born they are taken away to be taught by the sage Shukra (Also Dinesh Varma), the guru of the asuras.

 Hiranyaksha (Sanchit Wartok) and Hiranyakashipu (Aditya Raj Sharma) grow up to be powerful leaders, spreading terror across the land. Hiranyaksha decides to provoke Lord Vishnu (Uplaksh Kochhar) by kidnapping the Earth goddess Bhumi (Nehal Pandey.)  Vishnu incarnates as the great boar Varaha, who rescues Bhumi form the bottom of the ocean and defeats Hiranyaksha in a great duel across the earth, sea, and space.  

 

Hiranyakashipu is furious, but Shukra tells him that he's no match for Vishnu, and advises him to perform penance in order to gain enough merit to gain a boon from Brahma (Abhishek Sharma).  Hiranyakashipu takes his advice, and spends years performing a penance that is so powerful that it threatens the world, so Brahma appears to grant the boon.  Hiranyakashipu has his carefully considered wording ready, asking for great spiritual and temporal power, and that he could not be killed by any of Brahma's creations, whether god mortal or beast, by any weapon or by hand, indoors or outside, during the day or the night, on Earth or in the heavens.  The overly specific boon is granted, and Hiranyakashipu goes on to conquer the world and the heavens, capturing the gods and proclaiming himself ruler of the universe.

However, during the penance, Lord Indra (Dixoan Shah) was worried about potential heirs to the throne of the Asuras, and kidnapped Hiranyakashipu's pregnant wife Kayadhu (Priyanka Bhandari), placing her in the custody of Sage Narad (Harish Moily), who teaches her to pray to Vishnu.  

Years later Hiranyakashipu has recovered his family and now rules the universe, devoting himself to punishing Vishnu's worshipers in his free time, but his five year old son Prahlad (Haripriya Matta) is gentle, saintly, and absolutely devoted to Vishnu, despite his father's best efforts.  Prahlad absolutely will not renounce his devotion, leading to an ever escalating feud between father and son.  Finally a frustrated Hiranyakashipu orders his son's execution, but the boy is protected by the power of Vishnu, and as the attempted executions become more and more elaborate, it becomes clear that Vishnu will have to incarnate once again, this time as the lion-man Narsimha (Harjeet Walia) for a final battle between good and evil.

 One advantage of using animation to make this sort of movie is scale; the action can be as big as the original stories demand.  the action here is huge; in an early battle Hiranyaksha personally destroys a fleet of flying battleships and it's a footnote, something he does on the way to the main event.  The final battle between Narashimha and Hiranyakashipu is epic, and surprisingly gory.  The movie absolutely delivers in terms of spectacle.

However, while the violence is spectacular, it isn't the main focus.  This is a story about faith, but it's also a story about resistance, and the real battle is the battle of wills between father and son.  And of course the outcome is never in question - Hiranyakashipu is a fine mustache twirling villain, but Prahlad is almost terrifying in his simple devotion and his determination to persist even when the entire world is apparently against him.  It's as much a character piece as it is an epic.

Some kissing, but not a lot of France.

 

Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari (2025) is not a close adaptation of the Hollywood movie French Kiss, but there are strong similarities.  Sunny has the same basic premise, this time with two people pretending to be a couple in order to win back their respective exes, but it does ask another question:  What if they were jerks?

"Jerks" may be a bit strong.  Sunny (Varun Dhawan) is kind of immature, but he is genuinely heartbroken when his girlfriend Ananya (Sanya Malhotra) turns down his Bahubali-themed proposal because she doesn't feel ready for marriage, and he's even more heartbroken when he learns that she's now engaged to the immensely rich and handsome Vikram (Rohit Saraf).  He mopes for a while, then does some digging and learns that Vikram has also recently broken up with his girlfriend of twelve years, Tulsi (Janhvi Kapoor).  

Tulsi is a schoolteacher who always considered herself plain and boring, and Vikram's terrible family have never approved of her.  She's absolutely devastated by the break-up, though she struggles to put on a brave face.  And then she meets Sunny, who lays out the obvious (if terrible) plan: Sunny and Tulsi will pretend to be a couple who are "accidentally" staying at the same resort where Vikram and Ananya are holding their wedding, and the exes will be so jealous that they call of the wedding and comer back to their former loves.

They set off, with Sunny's best friend Bantu (Abhinav Sharma) in tow, and the plan actually works really well; Vikram and Ananya are properly befuddled, and Sunny and Tulsi keep getting invited to the wealthy couple's many, many wedding functions, making them very jealous over the course of three musical numbers.

Both Tulsi and Sunny are aware that they're being very manipulative, and Ananya and Vikram are both nice people.  Our protagonists are interfering with a wedding, which can have real social consequences, rather than seeing off a nasty gold-digger.  On the other hand it is an arranged wedding rather than a love match; Vikram and Ananya are still getting to know each other, so they don't know about things like Vikram's potentially fatal allergy to fish.

If you have ever seen a movie before, you can probably guess how this is going to end, and especially if the movie you've seen was Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna.  This is a very Karan Johar sort of movie (though Johar only produced this one, and makes a cameo appearance) so there will be plenty of noble self sacrifice, longing glances, silly bickering, and references to other movies.  I am a fan of old school Karan Johar movies, so I am here for that.

However, there's an issue.  Tulsi and Sunny are aware that they're manipulating people and breaking up a wedding for their own purposes, but they're still doing it.  And even after they inevitably fall for one another (without telling each other, because that would make things too simple) they continue to disrupt the wedding, hoping to provide each other with a happy ending.  I honestly preferred Vikram and Ananya.

But the character I was really invested in was Rakhi (Manini Chadha), the wife of Vikram's brother Param (Akshay Oberoi).   Rakhi was a gifted fashion designer before giving up her career to please her mother-in-law (Monika Kohli), and she's been offered a prestigious internship in Paris but the family won't let her go.  It's a heartbreaking little subplot that the movie never properly resolves.

Some French, but not a lot of kissing.

 

The Indian film industry used to have a . . . relaxed attitude toward intellectual property, freely lifting songs, scenes, dialogues, and sometimes entire movie plots from international sources, because who's going to check?  That sometimes leads audiences to overcorrect and declare a movie a ripoff if the plot or even the premise bears a superficial resemblance to a Hollywood movie, but I am very comfortable in saying that Pyaar To Hona Hi Tha (1998) is a shameless copy of 1993's French Kiss, and I am not just saying that because of Ajay Devgn's spiffy Kevin Kline mustache.

Sanjana (Kajol) lives alone in Paris.  She's quirky and clumsy and terrified of air travel, which will be important later.  She's also an orphan, but she is engaged to Rahul (Bijay Anand) for reasons which probably make sense to her; even this early in the film he's dreadful  Still, Sanjana has saved up enough money to buy them a small house, which will also be important later.   

And then Rahul has to travel to India for business.  Sanjana is supposed to join him, but her fear of flying is so bad that she gets kicked off the plane instead, and Rahul goes on alone.   A week later he calls Sanjana and tells her that it's over, he's in love with someone named Nisha (kashmera Shah), and he's never ever going back to France.  Which means that Sanjana needs to conquer her fears and fly to India!  

She tries, but sitting in her seat in the surprisingly spacious and comfortable plane (air travel has really changed since 1998) she starts panicking until Shekhar (Ajay Devgn), the man who happens to be in the seat next to her, starts an argument which distracts her long enough for the plane to take off, and then, since this is Bollywood, leads the passengers in a chaotic musical number to distract them when the plane encounters turbulence, pausing just long enough to see Yamaraj the God of Death on the wing of the plane.

 Shekhar has his own problem - he's a thief, returning to India after stealing a priceless diamond necklace.  (Well, not really priceless, but expensive.)  He's hidden the necklace in a small houseplant, which makes no sense in this context; it's a detail lifted from French Kiss, but Kevin Kline's character was from a family of vintners and hid the necklace in a grape vine which he had a reason to be transporting.   Obviously Shekhar's friendly nemesis Inspector Khan (Om Puri) is at the airport, and obviously Shekhar hides the plant in Sanjana's bag, and obviously after failing to meet Rahul at his hotel Sanjana's luggage is stolen so Shekhar has to help her try to get it back.

By the time they track down the thief, Sanjana's money is gone, and so is most of her luggage.  She finds her handbag, but Shekhar doesn't find the plant.  He needs to stick with Sanjana until he can figure out if she has his precious necklace, so he offers to help her win Rahul back by pretending to be her boyfriend and making Rahul jealous.  Rahul and Nisha have moved on to a beachside resort, so it's time for a roadtrip, but first they stop in Shekhar's village, where she meets his wonderful family and learns his sympathetic backstory.

 If you have ever seen a movie before (and especially if that movie is French Kiss) then you know how this is going to go; Sanjana will realize that Rahul is a vile little toad of a man and start to develop feelings for Shekhar, Shekhar will discover that he loves Sanjana, and one or both will wind up sacrificing their love in order to make the other one happy.  It's the details that matter.

Kajol is always great and this movie plays well into her talents.  She sparkles in the comedy bits early in the film, then carries the dramatic load later in the movie when the romance plotline takes over.  She's so good in this movie, in fact, that she was nominated for a Filmfare award for the role, only to lose out to . . . Kajol in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.  (There were five nominees for Best Actress that year, and three of them were Kajol.)

 Ajay Devgn, on the other hand, is better known as an action star than as a comedian or romantic lead, but he does suit the role of dashing rogue well, and the filmmakers have added action scenes to showcase his talents and allow Shekhar to crash cars and beat up masked gunmen.

Translating a story from America to India can be tricky, though it helps if you have a relaxed attitude toward intellectual property.  Pyaar To Hona Hi Tha isn't perfect, but it makes the transition well. 

 

Just one look and I can hear a bell ring.

 

The late eighties and early nineties were something of a golden age for star-crossed romance in Bollywood, and the young lovers in Banjaran (1991) are if anything more star-crossed than usual.  The film pairs the usual young aristocrat with a member of the nomadic Banjara people, set in a corner of Rajastan which has been stricken with drought since the pair were murdered in their previous and equally star-crossed incarnations.

The titular Banjara is Reshma (Sridevi), daughter of Sardar Malik (Sudhir Pandey).  She is young, but for once she is not carefree; every month, on the night of the full moon, she suffers terrible recurring nightmares, and to make matters worse, her father has arranged her marriage to Shakti Singh (Gulshan Grover).  Shakti is not only obviously evil (he is played by Gulshan Grover, after all), he's also a vain drunkard with a truly awful mullet.  Everyone says that Shakti once killed a lion with his bare hands, though nobody seems to have seen him do it.

 

Meanwhile, Kumar (Rishi Kapoor) has just returned to his ancestral palace after completing his studies.  His aristocratic father Rana (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) and mother (Anjana Mumtaz) are thrilled toi see him, and so is childhood friend Neha (Renu Arya).  neha obviously has feelings, and he is just as obviously not interested, but he does agree to paint her portrait.  However, the painting doesn't go as planned; Kumar seems to go into a trance while painting, and when he finishes he hasn't painted Neha, he's painted a mystery woman who looks exactly like Reshma.  Since neither Neha not Kumar have met Reshma yet, they're both mystified.

 

The mystery deepens when Kumar and his parents are invited to attend a Banjara festival to celebrate the band's ancestral ties to Rana's family.  Reshma is the featured dancer, and when she sees Kumar in the crowd she recognizes the literal man of her dreams.  She pulls him into the dance, and he performs well, but that ought to be the end of the matter.

 It is not the end of the matter.  The pair keep meeting, at first by accident, but they are clearly drawn to one another, and there's a mystery there, a mystery that only deepens when they take refuge from a dust storm in a ruined mansion, and the mute caretaker Girja (Sharat Saxena) seems to recognize them and points to another painting of Reshma on the wall.  Kumar and Reshma are gone by the time Girja has fetched the local sage Thakur Baba (Pran), but Thakur Baba is sure that his daughter has been reborn and that his penance is finally at an end.

Reshma and Kumar inevitably fall in love, but there's no way that a young aristocrat can marry a Banjara.  They are both promised to other people, and Neha's father is violently opposed to Kumar marrying anyone else, though Neha, to her credit, knows when she's not wanted and doesn't want to push things.  Rana and Sardar Malik, on the other hand, have a furious argument and both take stupid vows of vengeance.  Kumar leaves thew house after a confrontation with his father, while Sardar Malik takes his daughter away, imprisoning her until she agrees to marry Shakti.  Reshma is so opposed to marrying anyone with that haircut that she stops eating and throws things at Shakti every time he shows his face.  The Banjaras start to believe that she is possessed, and send for an exorcist, which gives Kumar a chance for shenanigans.

Reincarnation melodrama is a well established subgenre in Bollywood, though this one plays out a little differently than usual, since the people who remember Reshma and Kumar from their previous lives are repentant rather than malevolent; we have Pran to explain things to the angry parents rather than Amrish Puri menacing the hero's mother.  The reincarnation really acts as more of a frame story, allowing the movie to speed through the falling in love part and get to the star-crossedness, and allows the young lovers to have a happy ending and meet a tragic end.

 

This is very much a movie of its time, with wild swings in tone and mood, long and elaborate dance numbers,a nd entirely too much slapping in the second half (though most of the time it's not Sridevi getting slapped.)  Still, it is a well-executed movie of its time, and Sridevi is luminous as always.