Believe it or not, I'm walking on air.

 

 A Flying Jatt (2016) is a classic superhero story, with colorful costumes, a secret identity, and a character arc that starts with clumsy flying and ends with a kung fu fight in space.  That doesn't mean it's a good movie, but it does mean that there's always something going on.

 Rakesh Malhotra (Kay Kay Menon) is rich, powerful, brilliant and arrogant; he's basically Single Dad Lex Luthor, dividing his time between his toxic chemical business (I'm not sure what he's supposed to be manufacturing, but he produces an awful lot of toxic waste) and his precocious young daughter (Mahi Milan.)  Malhotra wants to build a bridge across a lake to allow his factory in Punjab to dump toxic waste more efficiently, but the locals won't sell their land, because the project requires cutting down a sacred tree.

Fortunately the tree is defended . . . by feisty hard-drinking widow Mrs. Dhillon (Amrita Singh), who owns the land the tree is located on.  Mrs. Dhillon has two sons - Rohit (Gaurav Pandey), who is not the designated protagonist, and Aman (Tiger Shroff), who is.  Aman is a study in contradictions; he's a skilled martial artist who teaches karate at the local school, but the kids don't respect him and he's being bullied by Goldy (Sushant Pujari), the violin teacher.  He's in love with his colleague Kirti (Jacqueline Fernandez) but can't bring himself to tell her how he feels.  And he's a devout Sikh, but he's too embarrassed to live as a Sardar, and has disappointed his mother by cutting his hair and refusing to wear a turban.

Malhotra tries buying off Mrs. Dhillon, then tries threatening Aman.  Neither tactic gets him what he wants, so he puts out a hit on the tree, hiring scary mercenary Raka (Nathan Jones) to chop down the tree late at night during a dramatic thunderstorm.  Aman happens to be there at the tree, praying for his mother's safety, and they fight.  Raka gains the upper hand but lightning strikes just as he's about to kill the young man; Raka flies into a convenient vat of toxic waste and is definitely dead and not going to come back with pollution-based superpowers, while Aman is thrown into the tree.

And in the morning Aman wakes up from a deep sleep, completely unharmed.  After a confrontation with more of Malhotra's goons it becomes clear that he now has superpowers, so Mrs. Dhillon rents a bunch of superhero DVDs for research and they experiment to discover just what Aman's powers are.  It's a diverse powerset - Aman can fly (though he's still afraid of heights), he's strong and fast and heals almost instantly, he can temporarily absorb the qualities of physical media, allowing him to play the violin and dance like Michael Jackson and/or Sunny Leone.  Mrs. Dhillon makes Aman a costume, and he takes the name "Flying Jatt," which was his late father's nickname back in the Shaolin temple.

And then the movie settles into Greatest American Hero-style shenanigans for a while, as Aman learns to be a hero while fighting crime and saving people from disasters throughout Punjab while protecting his secret identity.  He also finds himself in a love triangle with himself, as Kriti falls head over heels in love with the new superhero while assuring Aman that he's still her best friend.  

The good times don't last, though.  In a completely unexpected development, Raka emerges from the toxic waste with pollution-based superpowers.  Aman beats him a few times but Raka feeds off pollution, and he keeps getting stronger.  Soon he has the upper hand, seriously injuring Aman and boasting that he cannot be defeated anywhere on Earth, because pollution is everywhere.

A Flying Jatt is juggling two main themes.  Aman's personal journey as he grows into a hero and learns to embrace his culture is compelling; in context the line "It's twelve o'clock" hits hard.  Punjab as a setting also adds a bit of interest - we do get glimpses of how a superhero operates in a more rural context rather than spending all their time in a big city.

On the other hand, the environmental message is handled with all the subtlety of an episode of Captain Planet.  The main takeaway is that pollution is bad, and we should stop it somehow.  And then there's Raka.  He's mean, he likes hurting people, and he wants more pollution so he can become more powerful, and that's pretty much it.  He's the final boss, but he's not a compelling antagonist.

This movie is reasonably entertaining nonsense, but there are frustrating hints that it could have been more. 

The Life and Loves of a Nice Lady

 Despite some superficial similarities in plot, Biwi No. 1 (1999) is not based on Faye Weldon's dark feminist fable The Life and Loves of a She-Devil.  On the other hand, it is pretty blatantly inspired by the 1989 movie She-Devil, which pretends to adapt Weldon's novel.  It's an adaptation of an adaptation, and the results are decidedly mixed.

 Pooja (Karisma Kapoor) lives a happy life in her spacious house with her husband Prem (Salman Khan), her children Rinku and Pinky (Master Shahrukh and Baby Karishma), her mother-in-law Sushila (Himani Shivpuri), and their dog Tiger.  Prem is a successful advertising executive (very successful - their house is huge!), Pooja is the perfect housewife, and everybody's just really, really happy.  

Prem is looking for a new model for the agency, and just as he's describing his ideal candidate (5'8", brown eyes, and a 36-24-36 figure - Prem is a simple man) aspiring model Rupali (Sushmita Sen) walks in, and she's 5'8" with brown eyes and a 36-24-36 figure.  She gets the job, and Rupali and Prem keep meeting by "coincidence."  In another movie Rupali would be a greedy gold-digger pursuing a married man, and she does tell her smitten photographer friend Deepak (Saif Ali Khan) that she's looking for a man who can support her in comfort, but it's Prem doing the pursuing here, and Rupali doesn't yet know that he's married; Pooja was too busy to go to the movie with him one time, so he decided to plummet headlong into adultery.

Prem arranges a trip to Switzerland for himself and Rupali, and at the airport he runs into his old friend Lakhan (Anil Kapoor) and his lovely wife Lovely (Tabu), who are also on their way to Switzerland.  naturally wackiness ensues, and after a series of farcical events Lakhan has learned that Prem is having an affair, while Rupali has learned that Prem is married. Prem manages to smooth things over with the old "My parents forced me to marry a mentally unstable woman, but I really love you, baby!" routine, and they all return to India.

For some unfathomable reason Lakhan decides to keep Prem's secret, while Prem buys Rupali a house and a car and uses her for all of the agency's modelling work, and he keeps on lying to absolutely everybody.  It can't last, though, mostly because Prem is a numpty.  Tiger the dog discovers Prem celebrating Karva Chauth with Rupali and brings Pooja to the scene (because this is the kind of thing that dogs do in Bollywood) and Pooja gives her husband an ultimatum: give up Rupali or leave the house.  He leaves the house.

Pooja is heartbroken, but Lakhan has realized his mistake and promises to bring Prem home.  It doesn't work, so instead he urges Pooja to fight back using the weapons at her disposal, starting with the children.  Soon Pooja drops Rinku and Pinky off at her estranged husband's doorstep, telling him that they're his children and she doesn't want anything to do with them. The children immediately start acting up. (In this movie the children are in on the plan, while in Weldon's novel they're just naturally horrible.)  Next, she drops off Prem's mother, who is also in on the plan.

 On paper Prem owns 49% of the advertising agency, while Pooja owns 51%.  Pooja takes advantage of this by firing Rupali, which ,means that Rupali has been forced into the role of housewife and mother, while Pooja is pretending to be young and carefree, wearing Western clothing and even putting together a portfolio of modelling shots.  Prem is becoming jealous, and Pooja is just getting started.

Or she would be, but here's the thing.  Weldon's novel is the story of a woman scorned who takes revenge on the people who wronged her, taking everything that belonged to other woman Mary Fisher.  The 1989 movie wasn't anywhere near as dark (or as good) but it was still a black comedy about revenge.  Biwi No 1 was directed by David Dhawan, who is anything but a feminist, and Pooja isn't interested in revenge, she just wants her man back. That changes everything.  The goal is to preserve the marriage at all costs, and nobody really stops to question whether Prem is worth the bother.

Biwi No. 1 features a fantastic cast, and also Salman Khan at his most annoying; It is a minor miracle that Sushmita Sen manages to make Rupali a sympathetic character when the script is against her.  The songs are mostly good (apart from the title song), and the movie is occasionally funny, but I have never seen an adaptation undercut the spirit of the original work this comprehensively.