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. 

 

When you're a Bichchoo, you're a Bichhoo all the way.

 

Two street gangs, both alike in dignity

(In lovely Goa, where Josh (2000) lays its scene)

 From recent grudge break to more mutiny

Where filmi blood makes filmi hands unclean.

Now shadowed o'er the star-crossed lovers are,

For Shah Rukh Freakin' Khan is in the cast

Thru schemes of real estate, a silly car

And baking pranks, the end will come at last.

 Josh is loosely (very loosely) based on Romeo and Juliet; there's some strong influence from West Side Story (including an awful lot of snapping in the choreography)  but the end result is closer to Shakespeare than to Broadway, while being very much its own thing.

 In the year 2000 Shah Rukh Khan was Bollywood's King of Romance, but he was also old enough that no one would buy him as Romeo.  Instead, he's playing Tybalt, or the 19802 Goan equivalent.  Khan plays Max Dias, leader of the Eagles, one of the two street gangs that dominate the town of Vasco.  The gangs have split the town neatly in half, and Max is quick to defend his territory, but he also hangs out with his twin sister Shirley (Aishwarya Rai) and still finds time to harass sensitive and classy violinist Rosanna (Priya Gill.)

 The other gang is called the Bichhoos, led by Prakash (Sharad Kapoor).  While the Eagles are locals, the Bichchoos are largely from neighboring Maharastra, and they are Hindu while the Eagles are Christian and wear bright pastels while the Eagles wear leather.  The Bichhoos also have something like a regular racket; Goa's transition from Portuguese possession to Indian state caused many of the landholders to leave suddenly, so squatters are common and who owns which property can be hard to figure out; the Bichchoos help large real estate companies by driving inconvenient people from potentially valuable locations.

The situation is tense but stable, at least until Prakash's brother Rahul (Chandrachur Singh) returns home from college in Mumbai.  He's keen to take his mother (Suhas Joshi) and brother back to Mumbai with him, but they do not want to go.  Meanwhile Rahul decides to roam the streets and see the sights.  He wanders into Bichhoo territory and catches sight of Shirley.  It's love at first sight for Rahul and he follows her around for a while before approaching her in church.  It is not love at first sight for Shirley, though - she laughs in his face and tells him that if he wants a guide, he should ask Max.  

That's not the end of it.  Rahul is a man in love, and he decides to stay in Vasco and open a pastry shop.  Shirley is not exactly interested, but she is impressed by how Rahul stands up to Max, and makes a bet with the brave baker; if he dares to approach her in front of her overprotective brother she'll give him a kiss.  And there just happens to be masked ball coming up . . .

Rahul and Shirley move closer to a relationship, Max finally manages to win over Rosanna by remembering that he's played by Shah Rukh Freakin' Khan, and the movie stops being Romeo and Juliet for a while and focuses on real estate shenanigans as Prakash hatches a scheme to sell off the town square, a scheme made possible because Rahul accidentally discovered that the incredibly wealthy landlord Alberto Vasco had a couple of secret heirs.

Star-crossed lovers aren't exactly rare in Bollywood, and both Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story are easily adapted to Indian sensibilities.  In some ways Josh manages to improve on its inspirations, since the relationship between Rahul and Shirley actually develops over a period of time rather than jumping immediately to true love.  Shirley is kind of a terrible person for much of the first act, but she does improve considerably.

However, it's really not their movie - the relationship is a catalyst for what happens, but Max is played by Shah Rukh Khan and oozes screen presence, which means that Josh inevitably becomes a movie about Tybalt, and Max gets most of the big dramatic beats in the second half of the film.  It's really a great part for Khan, combining the goofy charm he's known for with the intense menace that made him a star.  

Colors are bright, emotions are big, the plot is twisty, and the music is fun.  I don't think Josh makes many top ten lists, but it's a fine example of late nineties Bollywood.

My Brother the Car

 

 Kutti Pisasu (2010) looks like a bit of a mess, a confusing blend of genres which includes vengeful ghosts, transforming robots, a spunky kid, a tiny evil guru, and the Invisible Man, all with Shaktimaan-level special effects.  But there's more to this movie than meets the eye: this is a devotional movie, and the end result is something like "Devi Maa meets Transformers."

Gayathri (Sangeetha) and Pichumani (Ramji) are a happily married Brahmin couple with a very nice house which they share with their precocious daughter Priya (Baby Geethika) and Gayatri's pandit father (Delhi Ganesh).  Priya is about five, but she's such a talented dancer that she gets to star in a big televised dance number, and this has no bearing on the plot whatsoever.  The art contest she won at school is a bit more impactful, as her teacher and classmates are all impressed by the yellow antique car she claims to have drawn without noticing.

Priya is slightly odd in other ways as well - when her grandfather asks her about favorite family members, she mentions a dark brother who only appears in her dreams, and she keeps repeating things that Gayatri's deceased friend Savithri (Kaveri) used to say.  And sure enough, on a dark and stormy night Priya is possessed by Savithri's spirit.

Surprisingly, that is a good thing.  Savithri's family have been protected by the Goddess Kali (Ramya Krishnan) for the past two hundred years, after an ancestor asked the Goddess for a boon, and while Kali clearly enjoys her work, she still takes it very seriously.  So what happened to Savithri?  A flashback eventually explains.

 Five years ago Savithri lived with her brother Karuppu (Ganja Karuppu).  She was absolutely devoted to her friend Gayatri, and for some reason as also engaged to scuzzy biker Nanjappan (Riyaz Khan.)  Nanjappan and his friends like to hang out in an apparently haunted mansion which is also a cave, and that's where they are reunited with old friend Mandhira Moorthy (Shafi), who is now a powerful magician.  Moorthy has a plan to attain the power of a god, but it requires a virgin sacrifice, and Nanjappan is happy to volunteer his fiance.  Kali appears to Karuppu and delivers a vague warning, but Karuppu refuses to interfere with his sister's wedding plans and tells the mystery woman to go away, which means that the Goddess is powerless to help.

The ritual is scheduled to take place on the same day that Gayatri goes into labor, and after dropping the mother to be off at the hospital, Karuppu goes to fetch his sister, only to discover that she's been abducted and taken to the haunted house.  He reaches the house and manages to spoil the ceremony, but dies alongside his sister, and the vengeful magician binds his soul to his car, chaining the vehicle to prevent him form taking automotive vengeance.  (Moorthy may have seen Taarzan the Wonder Car and decided to play it safe.)  

Five years later, Kali destroys the chains binding the car, and Savithri takes possession of Priya, because it is time for vengeance.  And so they take vengeance!  On Saturday one of Nanjappan's friends is ambushed down at the docks by an old yellow car which transforms into . . . well, it transforms into Bumblebee from Transformers.  Priya shows up to join in the fight, and the fire-breathing five year old delivers the coup de grâce.  Priya returns home and darkly warns that someone killed on a Saturday will be joined by someone else on the next Saturday.  And sure enough, on the next Saturday another of Nanjappan's friends is killed at an empty circus, and the security footage shows Nanjappan performing the deed.  He's arrested.

Priya/Savithri convinces Gayatri to let her continue her vengeance, but asks her to swear not to tell anyone, which I am sure will not cause any problems down the line.  Mandhira Moorthy returns and breaks Nanjappan out of prison, then sends his tiny Nepalese guru Kullumani (Kadhal Dhandapani) to impersonate Priya and convince Gayatri to tell the spirit of her friend to go.  Bad things happen, and soon it's clear that Kali will have to personally intervene; it may be what She was planning all along anyway.

I do not have the space to explain just how bonkers this movie gets, and just how bad the special effects are.  Still, the presence of Kali really ties everything together, and the Goddess is so powerful that pretty much everything can be explained.  Ramya Krishnan obviously having a fantastic time, and her performance drives the movie, which is just as well because the apparent lead, Baby Geethika, is a child who was probably cast for her dance skills rather than her acting.

Grave matters.

 

 Uppu Kappurambu (2025) begins with a dramatic voiceover explaining the history and peculiar customs of the village of Chitti Jayapuram, dramatized by children playing with traditional dolls.  The history isn't that important to the plot, but the customs are: the position of Village Head is strictly hereditary, and the villagers bury their dead rather than cremating them.  And when the Village Head dies, both customs are tested.

The late Village Head doesn't have any sons, so the position passes to his daughter Apoorva (Keerthy Suresh.)  She's shy and awkward, but her father has prepared her well, and she's armed with pat answers to most of the problems the villagers are likely to bring to her.  Unfortunately, the village is home to two rich and powerful men, and both stern and stentorian Bheemayya (Babu Mohan) and slick and vain theater owner Madhubaba (Shatru) want her to fail, so both men have their henchmen and sycophants ask a series of complicated questions to disrupt her first village council meeting.

Apoorva may be awkward, but she's quick on her feet and manages to deflect every question thrown at her, until Chinna (Suhas), the village undertaker, comes to her with a real problem: the cemetery is running out of space, and there are only four plots left.  The village laws are very strict about everyone being buried in the same graveyard, north of the village, and the surrounding area belongs to other villages.  There is no chance that anyone will agree to switch to cremation, so the four remaining plots are suddenly the hottest commodity in town, and a useful wedge issue for Bheemayya and Madhubaba to use to get Apoorva to step down.

 Apoorva doesn't step down yet, though.  She asks for time, and then consults with Chinna to find a solution.  Chinna knows the graveyard business, and he's clever, caring, loyal and highly motivated, since his own mother (Talluri Rameswari) is very ill, and her dying wish is to be buried in the village, in the shade of a large tree.  

And that's the plot; Apoorva and Chinna try to solve the cemetery problem while dealing with  a village of eccentrics and a cluster of unexpected deaths, and along the way they develop a genuine respect and an unlikely friendship.  (Just friendship - the lack of a romantic subplot is kind of refreshing.)  This is a quirky comedy, so everything rests on the characters, and these charcaters fit the bill.  They're flawed but compelling, and it's worth spending some time to watch them grow.

Merry Monster Mash: Thamma

 It was bound to happen sooner or later.  The Maddock Horror Comedy Universe has been dropping hints about vampires for a few movies now, and the bloodsuckers arrive in force with Thamma (2025), bringing us that much closer to Bollywood's own House of Frankenstein, though perhaps not Abbot and Costello Meet Stree.

This is Bollywood not Hollywood, and like the other Maddock movies the film mixes movie monster mythology with ancient Indian legend; strictly speaking these are Betaals rather than vampires, created to protect the world by drinking the spilled blood of the demon Raktabīja.  We first see the Betaals in action as they feast on the armies of Alexander the Great, but by the present day they appear to be confined to a stretch of forest in northern India, and bound by a strict code that forbids the drinking of human blood.  Not every Betaal is happy with this arrangement.  In particular, Yakshasan (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), the sire and leader (or Thamma) of this sect believes that they should grow their forces and use their power to take over the world.  He is confined to a cave and bound by mystical chains until one of his descendants breaks the law and sires another Betaal, though, so it should be fine.

Mild-mannered journalist Alok Goyal (Ayushmann Khurrana) is not fine.  His attempt to create a viral  video clip has gone viral for all the wrong reasons, so he's gone camping with some colleagues deep in a secluded stretch of forest in northern India.  His selfie is photobombed by an enormous and angry bear, and he is chased through the woods by said bear, finally collapsing in a makeshift center, so he doesn't notice when something tosses the bear away and rescues him.

 When Alok wakes up, he's being tended by the beautiful but mysterious Tadaka (Rashmika Mandanna).  She promises to take him home when he's recovered from his bear-inflicted injuries, and that gives them plenty of time to fall in love, though every time Alok tries to kiss the girl, she vanishes.  (Mostly because she doesn't want to be tempted to drink his blood; Tadaka is obviously a Betaal, and the movie doesn't try to hide that fact.)  Tadaka is not supposed to keep humans in Betaal territory, though, so they are captured and brought to answer for their crimes.  They escape, and Alok convinces her to return to Delhi with him, because it's time for some fish out of water comedy.

Alok was declared dead after he went missing in the forest, and while his mother Sudha (Geeta Agarwal Sharma) is just happy to see him, his father Ram Bajaj (Paresh Rawal) is suspicious, especially because this striking woman appears to be interested in his son.  The comedy gets more complicated when a group of Betaals are sent from the forest to bring Tadaka back, Tadaka reveals her true nature to Alok while defending him and herself from a gang of rowdies, and Police Inspector P. K. Yadav (Faisal Malik), assigned to investigate the fallen rowdies, turns out to be a member of an urban faction of Betaals. Yadav insists that Tadaka go home.  She does, Alok follows, and after a fatal car crash Tadaka has to make a choice.  She chooses to save Alok by turning him into a Betaal, and then things get really complicated.

 Thamma is deeply rooted in the Maddock Horror Comedy Universe; Alok's father consults with Elvis Karim Prabhakar (Sathyaraj), the faith healer and exorcist from Munjya, and series stalwart Jana (Abhishek Banerjee) is also consulting with Prabhakar on a werewolf-related problem, leading to a cameo by Varun Dhawan and a completely gratuitous "Wolfman vs. Dracula" clash.  

On the other hand, this is a slightly different genre than the other Maddock movies.  They were all intensely personal hauntings that happened to resonate with particular social issues, while this is a story of star-crossed lovers set against a background of grand vampire politics.  Thamma is funny, but it's romantic-comedy funny rather than comedy-comedy funny.

Still, Thamma hits the necessary romantic beats, giving Tadaka a bit more agency than the usual star-crossed heroine while letting Alok display the appropriate dogged determination.  The movie has a great cast and some interesting world-building, and it sets up big things for the future of the franchise while still delivering a satisfying and self-contained story.

Merry Monster Mash: Veerana

 Veerana (1988) is billed as a vampire movie, and there is certainly a blood-drinking creature of the night who leans heavily into vampire tropes, but this is also a partial remake of the 1983 American horror movie Mausoleum, and that's just the start; this movie is a rich stew of cultural influences, mixed together with a bit of gore, annoying comic relief, and as much sex as the filmmakers could get past the censors.

The movie was written and directed by the Ramsay Brothers, and every good Ramsay movie needs a curse.   This time heroic Thakur Mahendra Pratap (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) and his brother Sameer (Vijayendra Ghatge) discover that something is preying on the villagers and drinking their blood, so Sameer goes out looking for the creature responsible, armed only with a jeweled Om given to him by his brother.  While driving through the woods he's approached by a mysterious woman (Kamal Roy) with a bat pendant and fantastic hair, and she invites him back to her haveli.  After chatting for a while, Sameer decides to take a bath, and the woman invites herself along, but at the last minute he snatches the bat pendant and she transforms into the hideous witch Nakita.  Sameer subdues her with the Om and takes her to the village, where the villagers hang the witch and seal her in a coffin.

What they don't know is that Nakita has help.  Baba (Rajesh Vivek) is an evil wizard who lives in an underground lair decorated like the cover of the 1978 AD&D Player's Handbook, assisted by a cabal of black-robed monks straight from a classic Italian horror movie and a silent circle of rock-headed guys who wandered onto the set from a Hercules movie.  Baba retrieves Nakita's coffin and vows vengeance.  Soon he gets his chance when Sameer is driving Thakur's daughter Jasmine (Vaishani Mahant) back to her boarding school.  the car breaks down and Sameer wanders off to find water for the radiator, giving Baba the opportunity to hypnotize Jasmine and take her back to his lair, where he performs a ritual to bind Nakita's soul to the girl.  Sameer follows them to the lair, but he is quickly overcome by the evil monks.

Baba brings Jasmine back to her home and explains that the car met with an accident and Sameer died.  A grateful Thakur offers Baba a job in the house as a creepy servant, and strange things start to happen, because this is now The Omen.  Jasmine occasionally acts very strange, and she's oddly hostile to Sameer's widow Preeti (Rama Vij).  Things escalate, and when Preeti mysteriously dies (not that mysterious, since she was alone with Jasmine and screaming "she's going to kill me" at the time) Thakur sends Sameer and Preeti's daughter Sahila to stay with her grandmother in Bombay.  

 Time passes - twelve years, to be exact.  Sahila (Sahila Chaddha) has passed her exams, and Thakur invites her to visit and celebrate.  She makes her way back to the village, accompanied by her cousin Hitchcock (Satish Shah), an aspiring horror filmmaker.  They are waylaid along the way by a large henchman (Gorilla - that is the actor's screen name) sent by Baba, but fortunately they are rescued by Tarzan.  Well, they are rescued by Hemant (Hemant Birje), but the script makes sure to remind the viewer that Birje played Tarzan in the 1985 movie Adventures of Tarzan.  Hemant needs a job, so Sahila invites him to join her, and after a short interlude in a strange hotel and a dance number, the pair are in love.

Meanwhile, Jasmine (Jasmin Dhunna) has grown up beautiful and strange.  She spends most of her time in her room, but occasionally wanders in the forest and around the village, seducing lonely men and taking them to secluded places where she can kill them and drink their blood.  All her family knows is that she's still having fits, and the family doctor (Narendra Nath) says that she needs a psychiatrist.  Fortunately he is a psychiatrist, which means that they don't need to introduce a new character.  On thew other hand, skeezy servant Raghu (Gulshan Grover) knows more than he's telling; he tends to follow Jasmine when she wanders, so he knows about the seducing lonely men but not about the blood drinking.

 

And then the movie spins its wheels for a while; the bodies keep piling up, Jasmine is acting stranger than usual and occasionally shows her true face, but it takes a while before anybody manages to connect the dots.  Instead, the movie keeps cutting back to Raghu's bitter feud with Baba's pet cat.  Eventually Hemant realizes that there's something suspicious about Baba the sinister bearded manservant who carries a black cat everywhere, and the movie rockets to a suitably bonkers conclusion, complete with a genuinely clever method to permanently dispose of the vampire.

 

This is probably not a very good movie, but I really enjoyed it.  The film has tremendous style.  Actually it has several styles, but when it;s concentrating on horror it echoes classic European Gothic horror movies from the seventies, and the cinematography is genuinely good.  Jasmin Dhunna is magnetic, Satish Shah is less annoying than the usual comic relief in this sort of movie (Hitchcock even gets a moment of heroism), and Hemant Birje quickly settles into his role as a modern day Peplum protagonist who wandered into the wrong genre.  It's a wonderful blend.

 

A bonus screenshot for Ek Chatur Naar.

 It doesn't fit in the review, but I really like it!

 

 

This isn't technically a snake movie, but it deserves an honorable mention.

 The first thing we learn about Mamta (Divya Khosla Kumar), the protagonist of Ek Chatur Naar (2025) is that she loves watching TV serials about shapeshifting snakes bent on revenge.  Mamta watches them with her mother-in-law Radha (Chhaya Kadam) while her son Sonu works on homework for his online school, and they do it all in the dark because they're hiding from loan shark Thakur (Yashpal Sharma), who is still trying to collect on a debt owed by Mamta's late husband.  They're poor, in other words, and likely to stay that way for the rest of their lives.

Mamta works at a metro station in Lucknow, and she happens to be watching the CCTV when a passenger drops his expensive phone and a thief runs off with it.  Mamta is hoping for a permanent job at the station, so she gives chase and nearly recovers the phone, but winds up with a gash on her head for her troubles.  Or at least that's what Mamta wants you to think - she really hired the thief, because she wanted a nice phone for Sonu to use for his homework.  Before she gives the phone to Sonu she needs to see what's on it, and there's . . . actually quite a lot.

The phone belongs to smarmy accountant Abhishek Verma (Neil Nitin Mukesh), who is rich, handsome, charming, and corrupt, working with shady government minister Qureshi (Zakir Hussain) to siphon government funds intended for poor farmers into their own pockets.  Abhishek is married to Anjali (Rose Sardana) and having an affair with his secretary Tina (Heli Duruwala), and he was careless enough to leave evidence of both the affair and the government corruption on his phone.

So what's a hardworking woman like Mamta to do?  Obviously try to blackmail Abhishek.  It doesn't feel like a fair contest; Abhishek has wealth, power, political connections, and the help of Police Inspector Triloki Singh (Sushant Singh), while Mamta has her wits, moxie, and the help of her alcoholic mother-in-law, so you would expect that she's going to wipe the floor with him.  However, Abhishek is ruthless and has a certain low cunning, so he eventually shows up at Mamta's house, threatens Sonu, and has Radha arrested, which  means Mamta has to escalate by getting a job in Abhishek's house as the new maid.

This is a black comedy rather than a straightforward crime drama, so while there are real stakes and a genuine sense of threat, the constant escalation and one-upmanship feels more like a Bugs Bunny cartoon than the usual filmi noir; Mamta transforms herself into a trickster figure, using her beloved snake serials as a motif.   Still, the mystery plays fair, and after the big twist everything makes more sense rather than less.

Ek Chatur Naar translates to "a clever lady," and that is exactly what you get with this movie.  It has a flawed but compelling protagonist, a charming but despicable villain, a solid mystery, family drama, and some solid jokes.  Very filmi, sort of noir, and a lot of fun.

 

 

Cultures clash again.

 Bollywood romance isn't really dead, but it doesn't rule the box office in the same way it did back in the Nineties.  Still, people keep trying to bring back old-fashioned romance with movies that tend to involve Janhvi Kapoor.  Param Sundari (2025) certainly fits the bill - in fact it may be a little too old-fashioned, despite the frequent references to apps, algorithms and AI.

 Param Sachev (Siddharth Malhotra) is a charming young man living in Delhi who loves the electronic world; he uses apps for everything, especially dating, and he's borrowed money from his father Parmeet (Sanjay Kapoor) to invest in a string of failed tech start-ups.  This time, he thinks he's found his "unicorn": Soulmates, an app which matches people based on their spiritual energy rather than looks or personalities.  Param is willing to try the app out, and he is matched to a woman living in a village in Kerela named Thekkepattu Sundari Damodharan Pillai (Janhvi Kapoor), but she doesn't have a social media presence so there's no way to find out much about her.  However, Param is going to try, especially since Parmeet has threatened to force him to work in the office if this investment doesn't work out.  Param needs to find his soulmate, and he's got a month to do it.

Param and his sidekick Juggy (Manjot Singh) travel to Kerela, where they discover that Sundari runs a small boarding house with her terminally online sister Ammu (Inayat Verma).  Param and Juggy check in.  Their cover story is that Param is writing a book about his travels through the area, but he's really there to conduct a full, filmi style charm offensive, complete with a little light stalking.

If you've seen one of these North meets South Bollywood romances, this will be pretty predictable; Param, tries to fit in with the villagers, leading to cultural misunderstandings, and he makes a poor impression on Sundari's stern and overprotective guardian Bhargavan (Renji Panicker.)   He does start to bond with Sundari, especially after a simple act of kindness, but he keeps missing her references to someone named Venu, so he's completely blindsided when Venu (Siddhartha Shankar) shows up and is revealed to be Bhargavan's son and Sundari's childhood sweetheart.  And then Bhargavan announces that it's time Venu and Sundari get married, because that's what her parents always wanted.

Param is worried on multiple levels - if Sundari marries someone else, his investment fails and he has to work in his dad's office, but he's also developed genuine feelings for Sundari, so he feels he has to do something.  He fixates on helping the village win the competition surrounding the upcoming Onam festival, reasoning that if he can win the village over, the girl is sure to follow.  The trouble is that despite being a fit young man Param is hopeless at all the games, except for rowing, and what are the chances that the competition will come down to a climactic boat race?  

The plot is very predictable.  Of course Sundari is going to walk in right when village nurse Jincy (Gopika manjusha) is putting the moves on Param.  of course Juggy is going to pick up a love interest of his own.  Of course Parmeet is going to show up at exactly the wrong time, and of course the truth is going to come out.  (Also, of course the app is a scam.)  Predictable is not bad when it;s done well, though, and this movie certainly tries.  The cinematography is fantastic (Kerala really is gorgeous), the music and dancing is good, and the leads are both charming (though Malhotra is better at "solid and dependable" than he is at "rogue with a heart of gold.")

The problem is that the leads are mostly charming separately; the chemistry never quite works, and that's kind of important for a romantic comedy.  And while this is an old-fashioned story, it's also hip and modern and self-aware which means that the characters often directly reference classic romances when it should not be inviting comparisons.  The movie is fine, it's fun, but this is not the film to put romance back on top.

 

Don't mind me. Just posting a map.

 This is random, but hosting an image for another internet thing.

 

 

Home for the Holidays

 Greater Kalesh (2025) is a Netflix-original short film, but it manages to perfectly capture the feel of a holiday-centered TV movie, and I have to think that that is deliberate.  This time the specific holiday is Diwali, but the idea of the adult child returning home for the holidays and resolving family drama is pretty much universal.

The adult child in question is Twinkle Handa (Ahsaas Channa), who has a good job in Bangalore working with computers but is finally returning home to Delhi to surprise her family and attend their annual Diwali party.  Twinkle loves Diwali, and she loves her family, and she looks forward to sharing it with her father Ranjan (Happy Ranajit), mother Sunita (Supriya Shukla) and annoying younger brother Ankush (Poojan Chhabra).  But her wistful voice-over comes to an abrupt stop when she gets to the front door of the family home and overhears a bitter argument.  She rings the doorbell and Sunita lets her in, but everyone insists that everything is fine.

 Everything is not fine.  It takes persistence, but Twinkle learns Ranjan father never actually owned the house; his brother did, but now the house is going to be sold and this will be their last Diwali in what they thought was their home.  Sunita is planning to join her daughter in Bangalore (which is a surprise to Twinkle), and everyone is also mad at Ankush because he's apparently dating an older woman.  (Ankush is not dating an older woman.)  Twinkle is keeping her own secret as well - she's in a serious relationship with Rishi (Aditya Pandey), but can't bring herself to introduce him to the family.

Fortunately, Twinkle also has Pankhuri (Akshaya Naik), the obligatory plucky best friend, to give her advice.  Pankhuri points out that the problems in the home aren't actually about Twinkle, and with that added perspective, Twinkle decides to use the Diwali party to solve everybody's problems for them.  (She may have missed the point of "it's not actually about you.")  And her plan starts with inbviting Ankush's college friend Karan (Keshav Mehta) to the party.

And that's the movie.  It's a cozy and insubstantial bit of family fluff, so while the characters have problems, nobody is a villain, and everything will be solved in the most heartwarming way possible.  It's heartwarming family drama, like a 90s Bollywood movie where they're solving their own problems instead of relying on Shah Rukh Khan.  

A Bad Bromance

 Kabir (Hrithik Roshan), the edgy loner of Yash Raj Films' "Spy Universe", was last seen at the end of Tiger 3 accepting a dangerous undercover mission in order to defeat a mysterious and terrifying enemy; his mentor Colonel Luthra (Ashutosh Rana) warns him that the mission will test him, blurring the lines between good and evil and requiring him to perform terrible deeds in order to safeguard India.  And as War 2 (2025) opens, it seems that Luthra was right.  Kabir is working as a one man mercenary battalion, slicing his way through a katana-infested Japanese temple in order to eliminate his target, befriending a wolf and blowing up a helicopter along the way.  

Kabir meets his contact in Germany, and she tells him that from now on he'll be working for a secret organization called Kali.  After the customary drugging and kidnapping, Kabir wakes up in a secret lair and discovers that Kali is an international cartel with members from all of the countries surrounding India, and that they like to protect their identities by teleconferencing with high tech red shifted holograms.  It's exactly the kind of cartel you see in older movies like Mr. India; I like to think that they are literally the cartel from Mr. India, searching for a figurehead who can match the charisma and style of Mogambo.

 Kali have arranged a test for Kabir, to prove that he's not secretly still working for RAW: they've kidnapped Luthra, and want Kabir to kill him.  Kabir is reluctant, because of course he's secretly still working for RAW, but Luthra insists that he completes his mission, and finally and reluctantly Kabir pulls the trigger.  The members of Kali are pleased, and Kabir is rewarded with a meeting with India's representative in the cartel, Gautam Gulati (K. C. Shankar.)  Gulati is a villain for the modern era, an amoral billionaire who just wants more money and more power, but who can't muster thegravitas of Amrish Puri in a bad blond wig.

However, just to be very sure that Kabir isn't secretly still working for RAW, Kali send the video of Luthra's death to Indian intelligence, and Vikrant Kaul (Anil Kapoor), the new head of RAW, puts together a team to take Kabir down, because apparently Luthra was the only person who knew about Kabir's secret mission.  (I too have seen Don.)  The team includes Luthra's daughter Kavya (Kiara Advani) and decorated veteran Vikram Chelapathi (NTR Jr.) who is introduced in his own physics defying fight scene, establishing that he's skilled, a bit of a lone wolf, and played by that guy from RRR.

 The team discuss Kabir and his possible motives, and they confidently note that Kabir doesn't have any family or loved ones outside of RAW.  In the next scene Kabir is in Spain, visiting Ruhi (Arista Mehta), the young girl he adopted at the end of the last movie.  There's a chase and a fight and a train crash, and Kabir decides that Vikram can be trusted.  The men meet secretly, Kabir tells Vikram about the mission Kali has given him, and asks the other man to stop him.  Vikram eagerly agrees, and the men perform a big dance number while singing about how they're best friends now and would give their lives for one another.

But of course there's a problem.  The movie is called War, and so these two can't be friends forever.  The previous film kept Kabir's loyalties ambiguous for much of the runtime, so there was a real question of whether Kabir or his rival/protege Khalid (Tiger Shroff) was the real villain.  This time we know Kabir is on the up and up - we saw Luthra assign the mission, and we have followed Kabir closely throughout the movie, so we know he's really good.  That leaves Vikram, though the movie does manage to make the obvious twist more complicated than "he's working for Kali."

 Hrithik and NTR have great chemistry, and the movie really does set up the bromance as something that's both deeply unhealthy and very important to both men.  The rest of the movie is kind of overshadowed, though.  The plot is basically nonsense, the action scenes range from "over-the-top" to "so over-the-top that my sense of disbelief is shattered", and Kiara Advani doesn't really have much to do.  In theory she's supposed to be Kabir's love interest, but they don't have many scenes together and it's Vikram that gets the big dance number and declarations of eternal devotion.  

War 2 does add something to the evolving Spy Universe; Kali provides the franchise with a useful and uncomplicated bad-guy operation, a Bollywood SPECTRE or Hydra (and the heroes even mention that if you cut off one head, two more will take its place.)  And it is always nice to see Anil Kapoor, even though Vikrant Kaul is probably not Arun Verma in disguise.

 

 

Bhooty Call - Makdee

Writer-director Vishal Bhardaj is best known for his trilogy of Shakespearean tragedies: Maqbool (based on Macbeth), Omkara (based on Othello), and Haider (you guessed it - Hamlet.)  However, while Maqbool was an early success, Bhardaj's directorial debut was the children's fantasy film Makdee (2002).  And while Makdee is a story about a village haunted by a witch, alternately light-hearted and spooky, you can totally tell it's the same guy.

The ghost is established early, as a group of angry villagers led by the boisterous butcher Kallu (Makarand Deshpande) chase a young thief (Pappu) into the witch's house.  Nobody wants to follow, especially not village policemen Banta and Ghanta (not credited on the IMDB), until eleven year old troublemaker Chunni (Shweta Basu Prasad) appears and shames them into following her.  They're already too late, though, and everyone flees when they discover that the witch has transformed the thief into a goat.

Despite being an eleven year old girl, Chunni is very much a stereotypical Nineties Bollywood hero, complete with the confident swagger and love of pranks.  In other words, she's kind of a jerk and not quite as charming as she thinks she is.  Her twin sister Munni (also Shweta Basu Prasad) is demure and studious and kind.  And sidekick Mughal-e-Azam (Aalap Mazgaonkar) is loyal, not especially smart, and consistently hungry, since Kallu doesn't feed him if the chores aren't done properly.  Chunni can't stand Kallu, and he's a frequent target of her pranks, while he tends to chase her with a butcher knife whenever he catches her.

Things escalate when Chunni releases all of Kallu's chickens into the village.  He's furious, and chases the girl he thinks is Chunni into the witch's house.  It's not Chunni, though, it's Munni, and when Chunni realizes that her sister is in danger because of her she loses her swagger and breaks down, begging the responsible adults in the village for help.  They all assume it's another prank, though, and finally she has to enter the house herself.  And that's when she meets the Witch (Shabana Azmi).

 The Witch knows who Chunni is, and reveals that she's transformed Munni into a chicken.  She promises to turn Munni back into a human, but only after Chunni brings her one hundred hens to sate her hunger.  Not all at once, though - she's not a monster!  (Actually she is a monster.)  She demands one hen a night, and if Chunni tells anyone the consequences will be dire.  So Chunni has to collect the hens, impersonate her own sister well enough that nobody notices, and do her own homework!

Makdee goes surprisingly hard for a children's film.  As a horror movie it relies on dread rather than gore, but there is plenty of dread to spare, and the scenes in the house are wonderfully Gothic. The Witch is cruel, taunting Chunni at every opportunity and even swinging outside her classroom at school just to keep the poor girl on edge, and it's soon clear that she can, will, and indeed has hurt a child.  

 And that brings me to the acting.  Shabana Azmi is an art film legend, so it's no surprise that she brings the Witch to sadistic life.  Makarand Deshpande is another art film stalwart, and he's great whether he's singing a duet with a chicken, chasing children with a knife, or coming to the rescue when nobody else will.  But Shweta Basu Prasad was eleven years old when this movie came out, and she is amazing here.  She's not just great for a child actor, she's great for an actor of any age, balancing two distinct characters (one of whom impersonates the other) and portraying a genuinely harrowing emotional arc.  Bhardwaj's direction is confident and skillful, but Shweta makes the movie.

Bhooty Call: Kaatteri

 There are horror comedies and then there are horror comedies.  Some movies mix classic Bollywood monster movie characters with a powerful social message, some movies use spooky imagery to tell a charming story about a child gaining confidence and wisdom with the help of a friendly ghost, and some movies mix Indian folklore, cosmic horror, and gritty crime drama with a heaping helping of farce.  Which makes me think that I am probably overselling Kaatteri (2022).

 Gajja, Sankar and Kaliyurunda (Karunakaran, Kutty Gopi, and Ravi Mariya) are petty gangsters working for the ancient crime boss Naina.  They aren't very good at crime, but while searching for their missing associate Maanga Mani (Yogi Babu) they manage to kidnap perky (and presumably wealthy) psychiatrist Kamini (Nathmika).  Naina is not impressed, and informs the trio that if they and their friend Kiran (Vaibhav Reddy) don't return the money that Maanga Mani ran off with in a day, he'll have them all killed.

The trio go to meet Kiran, who is trying to enjoy his wedding night with Shweta (Sonam Bajwa) and explain the situation.  Shweta adjusts surprisingly quickly, and comes up with a plan: the gang can steal Kamini back and hold her for ransom, using whatever money they can get from that to pay back Naina.  Despite their ineptitude they manage to kidnap Kamini again, but the plan goes off track when Kamini reveals that Maanga Mani actually traveled to the remote village of Kolaatipuram in search of a fabulous treasure.  Figuring that digging up treasure will be easier than arranging a ransom, the gang heads to the village, dragging Kamini with them.

And then things get weird.  the people in the village are . . . odd, and Kiran is accosted by a mysterious old man (Lollu Sabha Manohar) who gives him enigmatic warnings and a pacifier, but they manage to trace Maanga Mani to a bungalow just outside of town.  They question the residents, don't get any useful response, and bumble their way into taking the family hostage as well.  But after night falls and spooky things start happening, they realize that the house is haunted.

 While trying to escape from the house, the gang get separated, and each little group realize that the whole village is haunted by a variety of ghosts.  In fact, everyone in the village is a ghost of one kind or another, but the most dangerous spirit they meet is Mathamma, who appears as a lovely woman who approaches her victims and asks if she is beautiful, then carries them away if they answer yes or no.  Or perhaps the most dangerous spirits they meet are the withered green specters who silently surround the group and follow Weeping Angel rules, reducing their victims to dust if they can get close enough.

Mathamma has more personality, though,  and when she manages to spirit the group into her house, she tells them a story that mixes fact and fiction, a story about stifled dreams, murder, and a hungry well that promises untold wealth in exchange for human flesh.  

This is a movie with a great premise, reminiscent of the beautiful and bleak cosmic horror movie Tumbbad, but with broad farce rather than a cold and merciless universe.  The gang are incompetent buffoons as well as criminals, and nobody is particularly sympathetic, with the possible exceptions of Kamini and Mathamma herself.  Many of the jokes fall flat, but there are some moments of genuine humor, as well as a few moments of genuine unease as the gang try to escape the village and keep on winding up in the carnival at the center of town.  It's okay, but it could have been great.

 

Bhooty Call: Chandramukhi 2

 Horror comedy reigns supreme in Indian cinema at the moment, so it was probably inevitable that 2005's Chandramukhi was going to get a sequel.  And that is exactly what happened; Chandramukhi 2 (2023) shares a number of plot elements with the earlier film, including an ancestral curse, a broken family, a clever outsider charged with solving everyone's problems, and of course the Room Which Must Never Be Opened.  In this case, though, it's the same Room Which Must never be Opened, because Chandramukhi 2 is a direct sequel to the earlier movie.

Wealthy matriarch Ranganayaki (Radhika Sarathkumar) and her family have faced a series of disasters in recent years, including the family factory burning down and a car accident which put younger daughter Divya (Lakshmi Menon) in a wheelchair.  The family's Guru (Rao Ramesh) suggests that the family have neglected their ancestral deity, and the solution is for the family to gather in Vettaiyapuram and perform prayer sin the ancestral temple.  This will require the entire family, including the two orphaned children of the daughter who ran away to marry a man "from a different religion," as the subtitles delicately put it.  The daughter and her husband died in a plane crash years ago, and the family have made no effort to contact the children (Manasvi Kottachi and Sanjiv V) but now they are needed.

The children are introduced on a school bus which has been taken hostage by a band of violent and well-armed thugs.  Fortunately, the kids have a protector, their guardian Pandian (Raghava Lawrence), who arrives and defeats the bad guys in spectacular fashion, because while Superstar Rajnikanth doesn't return for the sequel, this is still very much a Rajnikanth movie.

Ranganayaki rents a castle near the temple from  Murugesan (Vadivelu), who was comic relief in the first movie and continues to be comic relief here, and the family movies in, bringing the children and Pandian along with them.  And then the movie focuses on family drama for a while, as Ranganayaki learns to stop being a jerk and accept the kids, while Pandian makes a connection with Lakshmi (mahima Nambiar), beautiful daughter of the groundskeeper.  

Lakshmi has always wanted to explore the palace, and late at night Pandian helps her sneak in.  They explore the forbidden south wing, and Lakshmi discovers The Door That Must Never Be Opened, though she does not open it at this time.  Still, the genre shifts at this point.  The family temple is overgrown and needs to be cleaned before the rituals can be performed, though the temple's priest (Y. G. Mahendran) warns them that that will release a dangerous spirit.  They hire workers from outside the area, but after a pair of tragic deaths the workers leave, and so Pandian clears the temple himself, starting a fire in the process.  He's met by a mysterious sage (so mysterious that I don't know who played him) and learns that the angry ghost of Chandramukhi (Kangana Renaut) has possessed one of the women in the household.

The possession in the previous movie was ambiguous, but probably psychological rather than supernatural.  This time it is definitely the ghost of slain dancer Chandramukhi, who is definitely here to take her revenge on Vettaiyan (Raghava Lawrence), who murdered the man she loved and then ordered her burned alive, though the backstory from the first movie is needlessly expanded and we learn that  Vettaiyan is actually a general named Sengottaiyan, who murdered the actual king (Shatru) and Dread Pirate Robertsed himself onto the throne in an effort to possess Chandramukhi.  

 Despite that twist and the added supernatural elements, though, this is basically the same plot as in the first movie, and plays out in much the same way; the giant snake from the first movie appears and does nothing again, and they even use the same trick to convince Chandramukhi to leave.  Everything is bigger, though - the special effects are flashier, the scenes set in Chandramukhi's time feature fight choreography lifted from Bahubali, Chandramukhi gets a dramatic sword fight after her big dance scene, and there are actually two ghosts, both of which are real.

Well, almost everything is bigger.  There is nothing in this movie to match Jyothika's magnetic performance in the original, and while Raghava Lawrence is doing a very good Rajnikanth impression, he's still not Rajnikanth.  The scale is bigger, but the ambiguity that made the first movie work is completely gone, leaving us with a very by-the-numbers haunted house movie and broad comedy scenes that just keep going and going.  This is skippable - you're better off watching the Bhool Bhulaiyaa sequels, which at least mix up the plot a bit.

Bhooty Call: Maa

 Maa (2025) takes place in the same universe as 2024's Shaitaan, a movie which I have not seen.  I don't think I need another cinematic universe in my life, but Maa is mostly standalone and features both Kajol and Kali, making it hard for me to resist.

 The movie starts forty years ago in the village of Chandrapur, in West Bengal.  the people of the village are performing a Kali Puja as the wife of the local landowner, gives birth to a son.  And then a daughter, and in accordance with the village's tradition and a prophecy from Kali (as interpreted by the men of the village) the newborn girl is taken into the woods and sacrificed.

 The newborn boy is not harmed in any way, and grows up to be Shubankar (Indraneil Sengupta), a family man living in Kolkata with his wife Ambika (Kajol) and twelve year old daughter Shweta (Kherin Sharma).  Shubankar has broken with decades of horror movie tradition by telling his wife all about the curse on his family and the dark traditions of home, though they have not yet explained things to Shweta, who is curious about the ancestral village that her parents refuse to talk about.

Before any further exposition can be delivered, Shubankar receives a call from Joydev (Ronit Roy), informing him that his father has died.  Subankar returns to Chandrapur for the first time in years, and makes arrangements to finally sell the family mansion, but on the way back home he's killed by a demonic tree. 

A few weeks later Joydev calls Ambika, asking her to come to the village and finalize the sale of the mansion.  Ambika agrees, but Shweta insists on coming along, and the locals are oddly hostile to the girl, though she does manage to befriend Deepika (Roopkatha Chakraborty), daughter of the mansion's caretakers.  The real estate broker says that finding a buyer will be more difficult than expected, because of the curse, so Ambika and Shweta stay a little longer than anticipated.

Meanwhile, things go horribly wrong.  Shweta convinces Deepika to take her to see the cursed tree in the nearby forest, and that night Deepika vanishes.  Ambika asks the locals, with the help of stolid policeman Sarfaraz (Jitin Gulati), and learns that in the past few months all of the young girls who started menstruating have vanished, and then returned a few days later; Joydev blames a mysterious old woman who lives in the woods (Vibha Rani), but there's no evidence that the woman did anything wrong. 

 And then Deepika's grandfather, who had been catatonic before Shweta arrived, hands Ambika a scroll, revealing the actual circumstances of the curse, involving a demon created by a single drop of blood from the demon Raktibaija, when Kali and the other incarnations of the Goddess destroyed him.  The new demon, Amsaja, seeks to use a mortal maiden of the landowner's family to reproduce, and they have been sacrificing their daughters for generations.  The girls of the village have become Amsaja's minions, and they abduct Shweta.  

Ambika wants her daughter back, but she's going to need help - divine help.  She performs the Kali Puja with the women of the village, and then enters the forest with  the blessing of Kali.

 Maa has a plot that hearkens back to classic Bollywood horror - in a lot of ways this plays out like a Ramsay Brothers film with CGI special effects and (thankfully, given the subject matter) a lot less exploitation.  It also works as parental horror; Ambika is the viewpoint character, and she's struggling with bringing up a preteen daughter in a world that is sometimes predatory, but her ordinary struggles are amplified by the supernatural elements.

But it's not just a horror movie, this is a sort of Gothic Devotional, mixing sincere religious elements with some tremendous spooky style.  (I've seen my share of Hindu devotional movies over the years, and they usually don't have so many bats.)  

In short, there's a lot going on here, and I'm not quite sure the plot actually holds together; everything runs on coincidence and a series of terrible decisions.  On the other hand, Kajol is compelling, attacking the sometimes shaky script with her trademark sincerity.  I'm not sold on the so-called "Devil's Universe," but Maa is a good reminder of just how talented she is.

Bhooty Call: Munjiya

I have a theory about ghost stories: it's never just about the ghost.  The best stories, and the best movies, use the ghost as a lens to examine something else.  And the movies of the Maddock Horror Comedy Universe certainly support my theory; Stree is about learning to see women as people, Bhediya (werewolf not ghost, but stick with me) is about preserving the environment and tearing down regional prejudice, Stree 2 is about how societal oppression hurts everybody, and Munjya (2024) - well, I'll get to that.

 The movie opens in 1954, with a boy named Gotya (Ayush Ulagadde) who is obsessed with his neighbor Munni, who is seven years older than he is.  When Munni's marriage is arranged, Gotya lashes out, going so far as to attempt to poison her fiance. The boy is punished, but he only spirals further out of control, finally dragging his sister Gita (Khushi Hajare) into the woods as a human sacrifice so that he can perform a dark magical ritual to win Munni.  Gita escapes, and Gotya accidentally sacrifices himself.  His remains are buried under a tree in order to bind his spirit, because he has become a Munjya.

 Years pass.  In the present day, Gita (now played by Suhas Joshi) lives in Pune with her widowed daughter-in-law Pammi (Mona Singh) and grandson Bittu (Abhay Verma).  Bittu is awkward and shy, but he has dreams.  He wants to study Cosmetology and is also secretly in love with his slightly older childhood friend Bela (Sjarvani), who has just returned from America with her annoying boyfriend Kuba (Richard Lovatt) in order to open a Zumba studio.  

Bittu has literal dreams as well, and they're not as nice; he's haunted by flashes of a phantom with a voice that sounds an awful lot like Gollum and keeps talking about marrying someone named Munni.  

 Bittu's cousin Rukku (Bhagyashree Limaye) is getting married, so the family travels to their ancestral village for the engagement ceremony.  Pammi clashes with her sexist and brutish brother-in-law Balu (Ajay Purkar), who blurts out the secret of Bittu's father's death: he was attempting to burn down a tree in the nearby cursed forest that the family owns.  Bittu visits the tree and is attacked by the Munjya.  he's saved by Gita (who is awesome) but Munjya manages to kill his sister and mark Bittu with a handprint.

 Bittu returns to Pune, but Munjya comes with him.  Only a blood relative can see the wicked spirit, and Munjya threatens to kill Pammi unless Bittu finds Munni for him.  With no clues, Bittu is forced to wander the streets late at night, while Munjya plays wicked pranks on everyone.  Bittu turns to his friend Spielberg Singh (Taranjot Singh) for help, and eventually figures out that Munni is Bela's grandmother Akka (Padmini Sardesai), which causes Munjya to transfer his obsession to Bela instead.

Bittu needs more help, and it is a well established fact in Indian horror movies that Christian clergymen  have magical powers, so Spielberg takes him to see revival preacher Elvis Karim Prabhakar (Sathyaraj), who seems to be and in fact is a bit of a huckster.  He does have actual knowledge of evil spirits, though, and he's dealt with munjyas before.  Elvis has a plan.  It's not a great plan, and because this is a horror comedy it's bound to go cattywampus in amusing ways, but it is a plan, so Bittu and Spielberg return to the village to arrange a wedding.  First, they'll have to find a goat.

 The other Maddock Horror Comedy Universe movies are playing with established Bollywood horror archetypes, and there's some of that here; Munjya is a more sinister version of the mischievous child ghosts you see in some Bollywood movies, crossed with the ancient and hungry grandmother from Tumbbad, and like the grandmother he draws a lot of influence from Gollum as portrayed by Andy Serkis.  I think that's actually appropriate, since all three characters have been twisted and transformed by a sense of longing, whether that's for a ring or gold or a person.

It's that longing that drives Munjya.  (Both character and film.)  In some ways this is the anti-Darr, portraying obsession as anything but romantic.  Despite the similar situations, Bittu is not tempted to become like Munjya, and instead serves as positive model of unrequited love; it's clear that Bela sees him as a friend, so he resolves to be the friend that she needs, without expecting anything in return but friendship.  The movie is not just about the ghost, it's about respecting the relationships you have rather than twisting them into something else.

 (And yeah, the werewolf makes a cameo in the end credits scene.)

Bhooty Call 2025

 It's October, and the world is a scary place.  I think a monthlong celebration of the ghosts of Bollywood would help me feel better, though, so once again it's time for a Bhooty Call.

I need some dramatic relief.

 Son of Sardaar 2 (2025) is not a direct sequel to 2012's Son of Sardaar; it shares a title, some cast members and character names, a genre (romantic action-comedy), and a general theme of an upright Punjabi man navigating sometimes brutal family politics in the name of love.  Not all of the cast returns, however.  There's no Sanjay Dutt, and sadly there's no Juhi Chawla either.

 

 

 Jassi (Ajay Devgn) is a humble and devout farmer living a simple life with his mother (Dolly Ahluwalia).  Jassi is married, but his wife Dimple (Neeru Bajwa) has been living in Scotland for the last eleven years, and Jassi has been waiting all that time for a visa so he can finally join her.  And then the day finally arrives, Jassi flies to Edinburgh, and is reunited with Dimple, who introduces him to her boyfriend and announces that she wants a divorce.  Jassi is devastated, and spends the next month moping on the couch of a friend from his ancestral village.

Jassi can't couch-surf forever, though, and after a humorous misunderstanding in which Pakistani wedding dancer Rabia (Mrunal Thakur) stabs him with a fork, she invites him to stay with her troupe.  Rabia has her own problems; her husband Danish (Chunky Panday) has abandoned her, her stepdaughter Saba (Roshni Walia) is in love with spoiled rich boy Goggi (Sahil Mehta) but refuses to let him meet her family, and her friends and roommates Mehwish (Kubbra Sait) and Gul (Deepak Dobriyal) are . . . pretty great, actually.  But Rabia is under a lot of stress.

 Things get worse when Goggi proposes; his father Raja (Ravi Kishan) is a powerful man with a huge sheep farm, a dubious past, and a bunch of heavily armed henchmen.  Raja is also a proud Indian from Punjab, and due to his own overly complicated backstory, he will not accept a daughter-in-law who is Pakistani, or even worse, a dancer.  This calls for a wacky scheme, with Jassi roped in to act as Saba's father and Rabia's husband.  And because this is a movie the lies spiral out of control from there, with Jassi posing as a retired Indian Army Colonel presiding over  a family which is definitely not from Pakistan, while Raja and his dimwitted brothers try to catch them in a lie.  Jassi wants to run, but he is a Sardaar, and he cannot turn his back on people in need, or ignore his developing feelings for Rabia.

This is a very silly movie.  I say that a lot, and usually I mean that the movie is trying to be an insubstantial bit of comedic fluff, and should be judged on those terms.  Son of Sardaar 2 is a very silly movie, and that's a bad thing.  The movie has a heart, and the performances are good, but everything is buried under a thick layer of farce, and all of the jokes land with heavy thuds, one after the other.  The basic plot is fine, but the details are baroque and need to be fixed; it's hard to take the underlying romance seriously when everything is sidetracked by the tragic accidental death of Raja's English stepmother, the former pole dancer.  

 

Still, the city is gorgeous, though they never do explain how Rabia can afford her spacious apartment located just off the Royal Mile.