Bhooty Call: Bhoothnath

 Bhoothnath (2008) is a movie of two parts.  The film opens with the classic Bollywood haunted house scenario.  Aditya (Shah Rukh Khan) and Anjali (Juhi Chawla) are an attractive and modern young couple who have just moved in to a house on the outskirts of Goa with their young son Banku (Aman Siddiqui).  It's only when they move in that they realize that the house is supposed to be haunted, though the audience has already glimpsed the ghost driving people away.

As is typical in these films, Aditya has a job that takes him out of town; he's the chief engineer on a cruise ship, and he promptly sails away, leaving Anjali to deal with Banku, an oversized house with a very dangerous staircase, and Anthony (Rajpal Yadav), the alcoholic homeless man who used to squat there. She's already overwhelmed just getting the place cleaned when nobody is willing to work there, and that's before she realizes that Banku has a new invisible friend.

But this isn't a horror movie, it's a children's movie about a boy and his magical friend, so the ghost isn't a threat.  Banku manages to out-prank Bhoothnath, the spirit of Kailash Nath (Amitabh Bachchan) in short order, and after the requisite fall down the stairs the two become fast friends.  Which is good, because someone has to help Anjali with the house, as well as Banku's mean principal (Satish Shah) and classroom frenemy Jojo (Devandra).

It's all very by the numbers, though during the school sports day Bhoothnath refuses to use his ghostly powers to help Banku beat Jojo, instead encouraging the boy to work harder for what he wants.  Bhoothnath is full of good advice, actually, much of it revolving around forgiveness.  He helps the boy make peace with Jojo, then reconcile with Anjali after the mother and son have a nasty argument.

And that's when Vijay Nath (Priyanshu Chatterjee) returns to Goa.  Vijay is Kailash's son, and he's here to sell the family home; he's not a monster, and is quite happy to find Aditya and Anjali another place to live, but Banku doesn't want to go, and Bhoothnath absolutely refuses to lose his new family.

Normally this kind of problem is resolved through magical pranks, but the movie has already gone to great lengths to set up the importance of forgiveness and reconciliation.  Aditya returns, because it's time for the movie to enter its second part, as the senior actors all earn their keep with an emotional story about death and moving on.  The second part is pretty solid; it's a very filmi and melodramatic story, and well within the respective skill sets of Bachchan, Chawla and Khan, but it's a heck of a tonal shift, and Banku and the more comic actors like Satish Shah and Rajpal Yadav either fade into the background or vanish entirely.

Whether the movie is a children's fantasy or an emotional melodrama, though, one thing remains consistent: it is not scary at any point.  Some of the trappings of horror appear, but it's a story about family dynamics in a large but surprisingly cozy house.  They really need to do something about those stairs, though.

Return of the Yodha

 Kalki 2898 (2024) opens in the distant past, during the terrible last days of the war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas.  (You don't need a working knowledge of the Mahabharata to follow this movie, but it helps.) Ashwatthama, son of the great teacher Drona, unleashes the Brahmashirastra, the most destructive weapon in existence, in an attempt to kill the last unborn heir to the Pandava dynasty, only to be stopped by Lord Krishna (Krishnakumar).  Krishna declares that Ashwatthama is the worst sinner on the battlefield, and sentences him to live, alone and pained by his unhealed wounds, until the final incarnation of Vishnu is born.  

And he does live, for thousands of years, as an animated montage displays humanity's worst crimes, starting with Roman gladiatorial games and building up to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Holocaust; this sequence does not pull any punches.  When the movie shifts back to live action, the world is a very different place.

The world is a grim post-apocalyptic wasteland, stripped of resources; one of the early scenes is set in a truck hovering over the dried bed of the Ganges river.  Kasi is the last city on Earth, dominated by a range of scavengers and other lowlifes, but people from tiny villages in the wastelands still keep coming, because there's nowhere else to go with any resources.

Hovering above Kasi is a flying structure known as The Complex, where the fortunate few live lives of luxury.  In theory, anyone can buy their way into The Complex, but in practice gathering the required amount is practically impossible.  It's quickly made clear that these are very bad people who collect any fertile women they can find and force them into Project K, a scientific experiment at the behest of the decrepit Supreme Yaskin (Kamal Hassan), who rules the complex like a despotic god.

The Complex is opposed by a band of rebels who huddle in their hidden city of Shamballa.  many of the rebels believe in the impending incarnation of Vishnu, inspired by stories told to them by Mariam (Shobana).  Others are more cynical, but they are all devoted to overthrowing Yaskin and his minions.

But it's not all worldbuilding - there are characters as well.  It starts with plucky young girl Raia (Keya Nair) sneaks into Kasi disguised as a boy, but narrowly escapes being detected and conscripted into Project K.  She flees the city pursued by a robot, and takes shelter in the cave where Aswatthama is meditating.  he makes short work of the robot, but refuses to listen when Raia tries to convince him to join the rebels; he's here to save one person, not fight in anyone else's war.  But that's about to change.

Within The Complex, SUM-80 (Deepika Padukone) is going about her daily routine as part of Project K.  The subjects who have not been successfully implanted care for their pregnant sisters, at least until the scientists decide to brutally harvest them for the serum that keeps Supreme Yaskin alive.  What no one knows is that SUM-80 is also pregnant; she doesn't know how it happened, but she wants to keep her child from being harvested.  Unfortunately, time is running out.

And then there's designated Han Solo homage Bhairava (Prabhas), a skilled bounty hunter with an array of cool gadgets and a high tech dune buggy with a chatty AI named BU-JZ-1, or "Bujji" (Keerthy Suresh).  Bhairava is obsessed with the idea of getting into The Complex, and he's thrilled to discover that his occasional girlfriend Roxie (Disha Patini) has landed a maintenance job there.  He talks Roxie into getting him a temporary job as well, and once they make it to The Complex he convinces her to sneak away with him and explore, which involves a ride along the beach next to an artificial ocean, a dance number, and crashing a fancy party, but it all comes crashing down when Bhairava accidentally destroys Michelangelo's David.  

This leads to SUM-80 making a literally miraculous escape into the waiting arms of the resistance.  Commander Manas (Saswata Chatterjee), who acts as a sort of middle-management Darth Vader, offers an enormous bounty for SUM-80's return, which could be the one big score that Bhairava was waiting for, but he'll have to fight his way through rival bounty hunters, raiders, and Aswatthama in order to get to her.  The last one turns out to be the problem; Aswatthama isn't just a giant immortal, he's a mythical warrior from an age of legends, and is more than capable of dealing with Bhairava's technological tricks.  SUM-80, named "Sumathi" by a friendly but doomed rebel, makes it to Shambala, where she's greeted as . . . well,as the mother of the next incarnation of God.

She knows it's not safe.  Aswatthama knows it's not safe.  The audience definitely knows it's not safe.  manas and his men are searching for her, Bhairava wants to find his bounty and to outdo the one giant man who beat him in a fight.  It's all leading to a climactic battle in Shambala which will end in widespread destruction, a key character twist (which is well telegraphed if you're familiar with the Mahabharata) and a cliffhanger, because apparently this is the first movie in the Kalki Cinematic Universe.

It's easy to think of this movie as "Bollywood Star Wars," and there's some truth to that, even though the lightsabers only appear in one brief flashback scene.  On the other hand, I can see some influence from other sci-fi films of the Seventies and Eighties, like Zardoz and Warrior of the Lost World; Bhairaya even drives his AI-equipped vehicle through the illusion that masks the secret home of the Resistance.  That's not a bad thing; those movies were not great, but Kalki 2898 inherits some of their better ideas, and the whole production is infused with a gritty, run-down Seventies sci-fi style, only with a much bigger budget.

 

Prabhas is genuinely charming and the cast is engaging, but Amitabh Bachchan towers over everybody else, both literally and figuratively.  Aswatthama has the strongest backstory and the clearest character arc, and he has the added advantage of being played by Amitabh Bachchan, who is famously good at acting.  Saswata Chatterjee is another standout; Manas is a genuinely terrible person, and he alternates between over-the-top villainy and resigned banality of evil.

The movie looks great, and the plot is compelling, but there are a lot of characters and it does take a long time to get going.  Trim the padding, and we could have gotten one complete story instead of another epic that will take real world years in order to resolve, but people like their cinematic universes these days, and the movie we do get is pretty fun.

Jaanemonth - Veer-Zaara

 It's common in Indian cinema for the titles of historical romances to be the names of the lead characters, without any pesky ampersands.  Examples include Bajirao Mastani, Jodhaa Akbar, and of course Veer-Zaara (2004), a movie set in the glamorous and distant past of 1982.

Prisoner 786 (Shah Rukh Khan) is an Indian man who has been confined to a prison in Pakistan for the last twenty two years.  Officially, his name is Rajesh Rathore, and shortly after being arrested, he signed a full confession and hasn't spoken a single word since.  Getting Prisoner 786 his freedom is the first case for newly minted lawyer Saamiya Siddiqui (Rani Mukherjee), and it already looks hopeless.  However, Saamiya does have one advantage: she knows that Prisoner 786 is really named Veer Pratap Singh.

After hearing his own name spoken after so long, Veer starts to speak.  First he talks about planes, and  his days as a rescue pilot for the Indian Air Force.  But Saamiya wants to hear the story of how Veer wound up in prison, and to tell that story, he has to start with Zaara.

Zaara Haayat Khan (Preity Zinta) is the daughter of the wealthy and respected Jehangir Haayat Khan (Boman Irani.)  She is young and carefree and convinced that nothing will ever change her, and she sings a song to that effect.  And then things start to change.  Her beloved governess Zahida (Zohra Sehgal) dies, and her last request is that Zaara take her ashes to Punjab and immerse them in the Sutlej River.  Zaara can't refuse, and she sneaks off to India, leaving her maid/sidekick Shabbo (Divya Dutta) to cover for her.

In India, Zaara's bus crashes, and she's rescued by handsome Indian Air Force rescue pilot Veer Pratap Singh.  She drops her bag during the rescue and insists on retrieving it; after they've made it to safety, Veer scolds her and stomps off.  That's not the end of the story, though; she bumps into him later, apologizes and explains that her bag contains Zahida's ashes, and Veer decides to help her on her journey so that he won't have to spend his life wondering what happened to that Pakistani girl.

After further delay and misadventure, Zaara succeeds in performing last rites for Zahida.  She asks Veer how she can ever repay him for his help, and he asks her for another day.  He takes her to his home village, introduces her to his aunt Saraswati (Hema Malini) and uncle Choudhary (Amitabh Bachchan), they celebrate Lohri, and everybody has a wonderful time and grows much closer.  It is really obvious to Choudhary that Veer loves Zaara, and he urges the younger man to confess his feelings before it's too late.

The next day, it's time for Zaara to return home to Pakistan.  Veer takes her to the train station, but before he can confess his love, they are met by Zaara's fiance, Raza (manoj Bajpal) and she quickly explains that her marriage has already been arranged.  Veer confesses his love anyway, but makes it absolutely clear that he doesn't intend to interfere with her wedding, and he goes away.

Of course Zaara loves Veer as well, and after she returns home she starts feeling his presence everywhere she looks; once again, there's a whole song about it. Shabbo can't stand to see her falling apart like this,. so she quietly contacts Veer.  He promptly leaves the Air Force (since an active officer can't visit Pakistan), crosses the border, and appears at one of the pre-wedding ceremonies.  Zaara runs to embrace him, while her husband collapses from shock.  Normally, that would be the end of the movie, but Veer-Zaara is three hours long, and there's a lot of crying still to come.

Zaara's mother Mariyam (Kirron Kher) approaches Veer and asks him to leave in order to save her husband's life (and political career, but she doesn't dwell on that.)  Veer is a noble soul, and agrees.  He talks to Zaara, and they decide to go their separate ways, live the best lives possible, and just keep loving one another hopelessly forever.  

They part, but when Veer boards the bus to take him back to India, he's arrested as a spy and dragged off to jail.  There Raza shows up to gloat, and tells Veeer that if Veer signs the confession, he'll ensure that Zaara has a blissfully happy life, but if Veer doesn't sign, he'll do everything possible to make her life hell.

Veer signs without hesitation, and becomes Prisoner 786.  The bus he was supposed to be on drives off a cliff, leaving no survivors, so as far as the world knows, Veer Pratap Singh no longer exists.  In the present Saamiya tries to convince Veer to let her get Zaara to testify, but he is a man of his word and won't do anything to risk her happiness.  Saamiya knows the case is probably lost without Zaara, but Veer is stubborn, so instead she travels to India, hoping to find someone from his village who can identify him.  She is not prepared for what she finds there.

Raza is terrible, but the real villain of Veer-Zaara is . . . okay, the real villain is still Raza.  He's the absolute worst, and he stands out even more because nearly all the other characters are so nice.  But the other real villain of Veer-Zaara is the border itself; one of the key themes of the film is that the only thing that really separates Pakistan's Punjab from India's Punjab is the border itself.  The land looks the same on both sides of the border, and the people share a culture and values, but that line on the map is enough to let Raza destroy a man's life out of spite.

One of the advertising taglines for Veer-Zaara was "A New Love Legend," and the film is definitely pitched as "grand, sweeping romantic drama."  It mostly succeeds, do ion large part to the cast; Shah Rukh is in his element here, showcasing goofy charm and teary nobility.  Preity made her name as the bubbly carefree love interest, and Zaara gives her the chance to transition form that to very much not that.  And Rani Mukherji is here to show sincerity and marvel at the noble spirits of the star-crossed lovers, and she sells sincere marveling completely.

That's not to say the movie is perfect. The script is suitably epic, but some of the plotting gets a bit muddled; the biggest unexplained plot hole is just how Saamiya knew Veer's name in the first place.  Also, the old age makeup used for present day Veer and Zaara is a bit distracting, especially since both characters are in their mid-forties at most.  But these are tiny issues.  Veer-Zaara promises grand romance, and it keeps its promises.

The Long Goodbye

RRR is a great movie, but not every Indian movie can be RRR.  And thank goodness for that!  If every movie is a bombastic, testosterone fueled festival of action, then they all start to blend together.  Soemtimes you need a change of pace, like a quirky feel-good family comedy set at a funeral.  And that's where Goodbye (2022) comes in.

Newly minted lawyer Tara Bhalla (Rashmika Mandanna) wins her first case and goes out to a nightclub to celebrate.  She leaves her phone at the club, only finds out that her mother Gayatri (Neena Gupta) has died suddenly when the bartender who returns her phone tells her.  She immediately makes plans to return to her childhood home in Chandigarh to be with her stern and very traditional father Harish (Amitabh Bachchan.)  She decides to leave her live-in boyfriend Mudassar (Shivin Narang) behind, since Harish doesn't approve.

Meanwhile Harish and the family housekeeper Delna (Payal Thapa) are trying to contact the rest of the family.  Oldest brother Karan (Pavail Gulati) and his wife Daisy (Elli Avrram) promptly catch a flight form their home in Los Angeles.  Adopted son Angad (Sahil Mehta) has a bit more trouble, and winds up stuck in Dubai for an extra day.  And nobody can get through to middle son Nakul (Abhishek Khan), who is off climbing a mountain somewhere.

Most of the family finally arrives, though there's still no sign of Nakul, and the preparations for the funeral rites begin, under the direction of busybody neighbor P.P. Singh (Ashish Vidyarthi).  And they bicker; Tara doesn't feel that the very traditional funeral rites are what her not especially traditional mother would have wanted.   Harish doesn't think his sons are taking the rites seriously enough.  P.P. Singh is just kind of patronizing.  And the Greek chorus of neighbors and friends of Gayatri marvel at the goings on; it's definitely sad, but not solemn, as good-hearted people bumble their way through personal loss, trying their best to make everything perfect because it's the only thing they can do.

And then things start to get better.  With the help of an unconventional pandit (Sunil Grover) the family start talking to each other rather than at each other.  Secrets are revealed, but they're generally nice secrets.  Tara and Harish start seeing things from one another's perspective, and Nakul finally shows up.

And that's it.  That's the plot.  People suffer a devastating loss, and they process it onscreen.  It's a very gentle film, very quirky, and above all very human, mixing moments of gentle comedy with Amitabh's big speech.  It's definitely worth a look if you want a change of pace.

Shiva Universe

Brahmastra Part One: Shiva (2022) is a movie with a lot of jobs to do; it's a superhero origin story and the first film in a planned trilogy and lay the foundation for a new cinematic universe.  But there's a reason why most cinematic universes never really get going.  You can't spend your entire movie setting up future projects; the movie the audience is watching now has to be about something.  Fortunately, Brahmastra is about something.

But before the movie can really get started, it has another job to do: enable celebrity cameos.  Shahrukh Khan plays scientist Mohan Bhargav, and somehow I didn't already know that, so I was the ideal audience for the reveal. 

Mohan is alone in his Delhi apartment studying a mystical artifact when his home is invaded by thugs Zor (Saurav Gurjar) and Raflaar (Rouhallah Gazi.)  Fortunately for Mohan, he has an ancient artifact of his own, the Vanarastra, an anklet which gives him the proportionate sass of a monkey, along with heightened agility and jumping powers.  Mohan casually humiliates his attackers Spidey-style until their boss shows up; Junoon (Mouni Roy) has an artifact of her own, and she uses it to overpower Mohan.

Meanwhile, in Mumbai, plucky DJ Shiva (Ranbir Kapoor) is living his best life.  He keeps catching glimpses of Isha (Alia Bhatt), and he falls for her - plummets for her, really.  He manages to make contact by climbing up the outside of an elevator, and after a lot of banter invites her to a party at his place, and it's actually cute and charming rather than creepy because they're both being really open and honest about their intentions.

The party turns out to be a birthday party for a little girl at the orphanage Shiva cares for, and Shiva reveals a bit of his backstory and motivation: he was orphaned as a baby, left with only a conch shell to remind him of his mother, and he cares for other orphans and looks for the light in every situation.  The romantic mood is spoiled somewhat when Shiva runs away after being suddenly overwhelmed by visions of Mohan being murdered in Delhi, though.  When he returns home, Isha is gone, and he starts to lament the fact that he has no way to find her again but the kids cut him off and explain that Isha is their Facebook friend now.

 Shiva tracks Isha down at her wealthy grandfather's estate, but along the way he catches a news report about Mohan's "suicide," and realizes that his visions are real.  Then he realizes that the next target he saw in the visions, artist Anish Shetty (Nagarjuna Akkineni) is in terrible danger.  So he rushes off to Varanasi and Isha insists on coming along and they . . . spend some time enjoying a romantic tour of the city.

Then Shiva lets slip that he is immune to fire and has a sort of vague control over it sometimes, and they remember the superhero plot and go looking for Anish. Before they find him, though, Shiva sees Junoon and the boys and they realize they have very little time, especially since Raflaar is wearing the Vanarastra.  Shiva and Isha manage to find Anish first, and Anish helps them escape with his ancient artifact, the Nandiastra, which gives him the power of a thousand bulls.  

The trio flee the city, headed for the mountain ashram maintained by Anish's guru Raghu (Amitabh Bachchan), but Junoon and her crew are following in a truck.  Anish sacrifices himself to send Junoon and Zor over the edge of a cliff, but Raflaar still has his heightened leaping powers, and tracks Shiva and Isha to the gates of the ashram.  Then he makes the mistake of threatening Isha, and Shiva unleashes a torrent of flames, burning him to ash.

Then Amitabh Bachchan appears and delivers exposition.  Long ago a group of sages used the celestial energy of Brahm Shakti to produce astras, talismans which function as weapons of incredible power, representing a number of animals and forces.  At the same time, they accidentally created the Brahmastra, mightiest of the astras, a weapon so powerful that it could destroy the world if activated.  The sages became a secret society known as the Brahmansh, charged with guarding the astras, and Mohan and Anish were both members of the society and guarded a third of the now broken Brahmastra,  And Shiva is himself an astra, the Agnyastra, able to control fire without the need for any talisman.  

There's more exposition available, but Raghu won't deliver it unless Shiva agrees to stay at the ashram (which doubles as a school for young Brahmansh to learn to use their powers, like a Himalayan X-Mansion.)  Nandini is sent away, which is a shame because Shiva's power springs from love.  And of course Junoon and Zor survived the fall, and they're building a dark army to attack the ashram.

Most of the elements of Brahmastra are things that I have seen before; there's a hidden school for budding superheroes like in the X-Men, a scavenger hunt for mystical talismans like in Jackie Chan Adventures, and a fighting style that mixes martial arts and elemental power like in Avatar.  And of course the secret society of Indian monks empowering a champion to protect the world is straight out of Shaktimaan. The real bad guy even has a secret origin that's almost identical to that of Tamraj Kilvish.   Like Shaktimaan, Brahmastra is really taking its inspiration from Hindu devotional films, but with a much higher budget.  It's executed well.  It's a tight superhero origin story with consistent rules for the superpowers.

Still, originality and execution are nice, but a movie should still be about something, and Brahmastra is about love.  Shiva is driven by love.  He's powered by love.  He saves the world through the force of his love, not in some hackneyed metaphorical sense, but literally loving the world enough to save it.  And while the movie gets dark at times (this is an Indian superhero movie, so it is not afraid to threaten children) there's a sense of optimism and hope throughout.  It's one of the most relentlessly positive superhero stories I've seen in ages.  

And then the movie ends with a plug for the sequel which couldn't be any more obvious without Nick Fury showing up.  But that is a story for another time.  Brahmastra is surprisingly self contained, despite being Part One.

Vikram and Ajju's Excellent Adventure, Expanded Edition

 This is an old review, but I am older and wiser and have more Bollywood experience than the first time I watched Fun2ssh . . . Dudes In the 10th Century; at the very least, I am better at taking screenshots.  Let's see what Me From the Past had to say.

Superman versus the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants

 Krrish 3 (2013) is the sequel to Krrish, which is the sequel to Koi . . . Mil Gaya.  It's an odd way to build a superhero franchise, because Koi . . . Mil Gaya is not a superhero movie, it's a Bollywood spin on ET mixed with Flowers For Algernon; friendly alien Jadoo gives bullied and developmentally disabled Rohit Mehra (Hrithik Roshan) advanced physical and mental powers, enabling him to save the day, get the girl (Preity Zinta), and earn his happy ending.  Then, between movies, Rohit is kidnapped by Bollywood Lex Luthor Siddhant Arya (Naseeruddin Shah), and his wife dies of grief.  Fortunately, in the next movie Rohit's son Krishna (also Hrithik Roshan) becomes the superhero Krrish (which is still one of the lazier superhero names since Blackagar Boltagon started calling himself Black Bolt), rescues Rohit, and defeats Doctor Arya's future-predicting supercomputer.

Now, Rohit is a respected scientist working for the Indian Research Institute, and Krishna is married to plucky reporter Priya (Priyanka Chopra).  Krishna can't manage to hold a job, because he's always rushing off to save the day as Krrish.  However, Priya is expecting their first child, and the little family is absurdly happy and frankly adorable.

Meanwhile, quadriplegic and telekinetic scientist Kaal (Vivek Oberoi) has created a team of mutants enhanced with animal DNA.  There are a lot of them, including Ant Man, Rhino Man, and Scorpion Woman, but the important ones are Striker (Gowhar Khan), a dangerous brawler with a prehensile tongue, and Kaya (Kangana Renaut), whose chameleon DNA gives her the power to be Msytique.

But mutant making is only one of Kaal's interests.  He also creates viruses, releases them on unsuspecting cities, and then, as the head of Kaal Pharmaceuticals, he sells the cure for an absurd amount of money.  (And I have to say, this particular plotline hits differently in 2021 than it did in 2013.)

During the first part of the movie, the forces of good and evil don't really interact.  Kaal stays in his evil lair, making mutants, unleashing plagues, and gnawing on the scenery.  Rohit tinkers unsuccessfully with a device to replicate Jadoo's power to channel sunlight into lifegiving energy (and what are the odds of something like that paying off before the end of the movie?), and Krishna divides his time between hanging out with his family and saving people from various disasters, along the way inspiring a movement by telling a boy he's rescued that "Anyone who takes away tears and spreads happiness is Krrish."  It's a lot like the Shatktimaan Friends Club, only with more foreshadowing.

And then Kaal unleashes his latest virus on Mumbai.  Krrish does what he can, but this is a problem that he can't solve, even with superpowers.  But Rohit can; he notices that Krrish is seemingly immune to the virus, so he uses Krishna's blood to create a cure rather than wait for Kaal Pharmaceuticals.  Kaal is both furious and confused; both the virus and the cure are based on his own DNA, so how could anyone else make a cure?  He decides that it is, finally, time to unleash the mutants.

This is not the most original movie ever made.  Kaal's mutants are blatantly lifted from the X-Men movies, and while Kaal is no Magneto, he does seem to use his telekinesis to movie metal objects almost exclusively.  Meanwhile, Krrish is faster than a speeding bullet, stronger than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, though he combines the Superman power set with Peter Parker's career aptitude, and during one fight scene he duplicates Shaktimaan's trademark spin.

Original or not, though, Krrish 3 is a remarkably efficient distillation of my favorite superhero tropes.  Yes, there are amazing action scenes, but Krrish doesn't just fight bad guys and brood on rooftops.  He save people.  He inspires people.  (I am an absolute sucker for a good "I am Spartacus"/ordinary citizens standing up to the supervillain scene, and this movie has a great one.)  And he does it without ever losing sight of the people who love him.  This is "Stuff That I Love About Superheroes: The Motion Picture."

Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna

Writer/director Karan Johar is either becoming more of a cynic or more of a romantic, and I’m really not sure which. Either way, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006) continues Johar’s examination of the boundaries of love. In Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, the boundaries are self imposed; Rahul is a widower who believes one can only love (and marry) once, while Anjali is engaged to someone else. In Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, the lovers have to cross boundaries of class and religion, and face familial opposition. In Kal Ho Naa Ho, Naina loves one man, and is forced by circumstances to marry another. KANK continues the theme of transgressive love by presenting star crossed lovers who are married to other people. In a Hollywood movie, this would be no big deal, but within the moral universe of Bollywood, it’s a daring move.

For rising soccer star Dev Saran (Shahrukh Khan), love is certainly not friendship. (This movie takes place in New York City, in that strange alternate dimension where Oxford University is in London, men’s soccer is a major US sport, and everybody is played by Shahrukh Khan.) He’s married to Rhea (Priety Zinta), an old friend from college, and the cracks in the relationship are already beginning to show; both are growing increasingly focused on their respective careers. Still, when he meets Maya (Rani Mukherjee), a reluctant bride wondering whether to go through with her own marriage to childhood friend Rishi (Abhishek Bachchan), he advises her to go ahead with it. He tells her that while she doesn’t really love Rishi, it’s better to marry now then wait for a love that she may not find, and that love won’t find her after marriage unless she goes looking for it. She’s convinced and goes inside to get married, while Dev is promptly hit by a car.

Four years later, Dev is a children’s soccer coach with a bad leg and a worse attitude. He’s the kind of coach who motivates his charges by shouting at them. He’s particularly nasty to his son Arjun (who plays soccer badly and really only wants to play the violin) but Dev is thoroughly unpleasant to everyone he meets. Rhea now runs a fashion magazine called Diva, and while she’s able to provide a very comfortable life for Dev, Arjun, and Dev’s mother Kamaljit (Kiron Kher), the disparity in incomes adds another layer of conflict to an already strained marriage.

The relationship between Maya and Rishi is also strained. He’s a bit of a slob, while she’s a neat freak bordering on obsessive compulsive disorder. More seriously, she doesn’t like him to touch her; naturally, Rishi is a bit frustrated.

Dev and Maya meet again by chance. I won’t get into details; the entire “Black Beast” subplot is goofy, and not in a good way. What’s important is that they meet, and make a bad impression. They cross paths again at a party Rishi’s publicity company is throwing for his father Sam (Amitabh Bachchan), and this time they realize that if nothing else, they share a dislike of big musical numbers. Fate keeps throwing them together, and they finally decide that they may as well become friends.

Thew evolving relationship between the two is handled very well. They really have a lot in common. (Maya is just as serious about keeping the world at arms length as Dev is, she’s just more polite about it.) Initially, the pair give each other advice with their respective marriages. None of their plans work out, and after a particularly unfortunate evening the pair meet up at a train station, and finally realize that they love each other. It’s a nice scene, featuring the most romantic line in the film: “I like blue.”

Dev and Maya drift into an emotional affair. Rhea and Rishi, meanwhile, rededicate themselves to making their marriages work. Unlike Dev and Maya their plans involve communicating with their spouses, so they meet with considerably more success. Both marriages suddenly have a fighting chance, but Dev and Maya start getting jealous, and so it is then and only then that they decide to sleep together. 

I like Karan Johar.He’s a very good writer, and has a fantastic ear for dialogue. KANK is no exception; the dialogue positively sparkles at times. (”I like blue,” indeed.) Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna is an interesting examination of his usual films; I was particularly struck by the fact that in all his movies, the lovers need an outside push before they can be united. Production values are high. The cast does quite well with some very heavy material. Dev, in particular, is a far cry from Shahrukh’s usual persona.

The problem is that I like Shahrukh’s usual persona. I don’t like Dev. Most of the main characters in this movie are varying degrees of unpleasant; Kamaljit is a virtuous Bollywood mother, and while Sam is a bit of a lad he gives good advice and his heart is clearly in the right place, but the rest? I often end reviews by essentially saying, “This is a terrible movie, but I enjoyed it.” Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna is the flipside of this; it’s a very good movie, probably, but I didn’t like it.

They laugh alike, they walk alike, at times they even talk alike.

Amitabh Bachchan was the King of Bollywood in the Seventies and Eighties, the "angry young man" who captured the spirit of the era.  Today, Bachchan is the industry's reigning patriarch, the finest of stern father figures, and he's branching out into a number of offbeat roles.  But there's a long stretch of time between these two periods in which Bachchan was appearing in movies like Bade Miyan Chote Miyan (1998).  

 

Bachchan plays police inspector Arjun Singh, who is not particularly angry or young.  Singh has a mother (Sushma Seth), a spunky younger sister named Seema (Raveena Tandon), and a partner, Pyare Mohan (Govinda).  Pyare and Seema secretly love each other, but they know Arjun would never approve, so they plan to get Arjun married to someone, hoping that it will put him in a better mood.

 

Meanwhile, hotel maid Madhu (Divya Dutta) sees smuggler Zorawar (Paresh Rawal) and his henchmen murdering a police officer.  She escapes, and files a report with Pyare and Arjun, but when she returns Zorawar is waiting and kills her.  Madhu's roommate Neha (Ramya Krishnan) witnesses this murder, escapes, and calls the police, but insists she will only speak to Pyare.  Since Pyare is out, the Commissioner (Anupam Kher) orders Arjun to pretend to be Pyare.  He does, and takes her to hide out at Pyare's home, which means that Pyare has to go and stay at Arjun's house.  With Seema.  Wackiness ensues.

 

Arjun and Neha fall in love, because it's that sort of movie, but she still thinks that he is Pyare, which means that a mistaken identity plot is inevitable.  It doesn't last long, though, and soon both couples are happily in love and Zorawar politely steps out of the spotlight so that the movie can introduce Bade Miyan and Chote Miyan (Bachchan and Govinda), two thieves who happen to look exactly like Arjun and Pyare, leading to an entirely different mistaken identity plot, this time partly cribbed from Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. 

 

Despite the tenuous Shakespearean connection, though, this is an aggressively dumb movie.  The pacing is off, with much of the early runtime devoted to setting up the first mistaken identity plotline, a plotline which is almost immediately discarded.  Zorawar just wanders from place to place menacing and murdering, rather than following any sort of coherent scheme, and one of his henchmen is killed at least twice but still shows up for the final fight scene.  And the movie never quite decides which Bachchan-Govinda pairing are the protagonists until the very end.

On the other hand, aggressively dumb movies can be fun, sometimes.  Bade Miyan Chote Miyan has some funny jokes and goofy action scenes and brightly colored dance numbers with terrible costumes and a completely gratuitous cameo by Madhuri Dixit.  Clearly a lot of people liked it, since it was the second biggest box office success of 1998, only overshadowed by megahit Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.  It was one of the high points of the low point of Amitabh Bachchan's career.