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.

Bhooty Call: Jadu Tona

 Horror movies, both Bollywood and otherwise, will frequently involve a conflict between rational, scientific thought and traditional spirituality. Science is always at a bit of a disadvantage, of course, since if there are ghosts or vampires or werewolves running around then clearly there are things Science Does Not Know, but the conflict has never been quite so one sided as it is in Jadu Tona (1977).

Wealthy and thoroughly modernized businessman Aamir (Prem Chopra) brings his two daughters back to the ancestral village to visit with their grandparents. Along the way, they meet a servant who urges them to pay their respects to the banyan tree at the edge of the village, but Aamir, educated man that he is, scoffs and drives on.

Oldest daughter Varsha (Reena Roy) spends her time in the village reading a book, rolling her eyes, and waiting until it’s time to go back to Mumbai. Little sister Harsha (Baby Pinky), on the other hand, is pious, respects her elders, and has a warm word for everyone she meets, so she sings a song about how wonderful the village is, then follows an unconvincing (and secretly evil) butterfly into a haunted house.

In the house, Harsha meets a solitary old man with a supernaturally deep voice, who asks her to fetch his medicine. Harsha, being the horribly wonderful and helpful and cheerful and friendly child that she is, is happy to help, but when she opens the bottle, something escapes. After a few minutes of thrashing and eye rolling and spectral laughter and stock footage of a scary cat, Harsha is possessed.

Aamir sends for a doctor, who diagnoses epilepsy, then flees after Harsha breaks his arm. (With one hand.) The grandparents send for a tantrik (Premnath), but before he can even look at the girl, Varsha insults him and sends him away. Before leaving, though, the tantrik gives the family a sacred amulet; once the amulet is tied onto Harsha’s arm, she immediately returns to normal.

And with that, the problem is solved, so the family returns to Mumbai. Every time the amulet comes off, though, Harsha reverts to scary possessed girl, so they consult with Mumbai’s finest bare chested macho psychologist/pilot, Kailash (Feroz Khan).

Kailash insists on removing the amulet while he takes an x-ray (?), and it conveniently bursts into flame and is never mentioned again. After his examination, Kailash declares that the girl is suffering from “paranoid” (I’m guessing that the producers were trying for paranoid schizophrenia here; it’s also not the correct term for a split personality, but it’s a much more common mistake.) and begins treatment.

We don’t see much of the actual treatment, of course. Kailash spends most of his screen time canoodling with Varsha, while every time she gets a cut Harsha reverts to spooky possessed girl and takes revenge on the circle of corrupt businessmen who murdered the ghost in the first place.

To be fair, I had a lot of fun watching Jadu Tona. The film has a relentless sense of energy, and Baby Pinky is clearly having the time of her life. The stupid comic relief is kept to a minimum, the plot is remarkably free of holes, and the special effects, while universally awful, tend to be visually interesting; the guy in a skeleton costume is particularly cool, despite looking nothing like a skeleton.

Fun or not, though, the movie is still enormously flawed. It’s clear that the producers were aiming for a message about respecting tradition because science can’t explain everything, but as presented in Jadu Tona, science can’t explain anything; it’s basically gibberish with a few medical terms thrown in. And the citified characters don’t fail because they’re unwilling to look beyond their narrow scientific paradigm, they fail because they’re all cripplingly stupid. (I don’t mean that they’re not genre savvy, I mean that they’re idiots who do things like get on a plane, alone, with a girl who has frequent violent fits during which she displays supernatural strength without taking any precautions at all.) In this world, faith trumps science, but only because science is dumb.

The other "The Others"

Like Hum Kaun Hai?, Anjaane (2006) lifts its plot from the Hollywood movie The Others. In my review of HKH, I was very careful to avoid spoiling the movie. That is not the case here; if I didn’t know Anjaane’s big twist before watching I never would have figured out what was going on.

Shivani (Manisha Koirala) lives in a big creepy house with her annoying children, Tanwi (Tanvi Gauri Mehta) and Mannu (Akshay Bhatiya). It’s clear that Shivani parted from her husband Aditya (Sanjay Kapoor) on bad terms; we first see him standing at the gate to the house, spattered in blood, shouting that he’s come to take the kids, while she threatens to kill the children and herself before they let that happen.

While the family seems to be getting on well without any servants, Shivani hires a trio of strangers who show up at the door looking for work. “Auntie” (Helen), the new housekeeper, is nice enough, and Baba (Mushtaq Khan) is gruff but essentially harmless. Nandu (Atul Parchure), on the other hand, is consistently described as “pagal”. Crazy. In this case, crazy seems to mean “We didn’t have enough money to hire Johny Lever”; Nandu spends most of his time doing the typical annoying Bollywood comic relief schtick, though occasionally he’ll put on a wedding dress and frighten Shivani and the kids.

And it’s at about this point that confusion sets in. Unlike many Bollywood horror movies, Anjaane includes songs. I am normally a big fan of gratuitous dance numbers, but Anjaane’s songs are inserted into the narrative with no relation to what’s going on in the movie at the time. For example, while giving Auntie a tour of the house Shivani explains that the kids must stay inside at all times, and that they are deathly afraid of sunlight. This would be fine except that we just saw the children singing and dancing in the bright sunlight at McDonald’s.

Nandu isn’t the only Nandu in the house. Tanwi delights in scaring her brother by telling him about the other Nandu, a boy who lives in the house with his parents, and whom only she can see. The film makes many jokes about confusion between the two Nandus. None of the jokes are funny.

In between spooky happenings, lame jokes, and random songs, we’re given bits and pieces of backstory. It turns out that Aditya was having an affair with Sonia (Tejaswini Kolhapure). Shivani is the kind of Bollywood housewife who doesn’t take that kind of crap from anyone, so she smashes the windshield of the car they’re making out in, confronts Aditya, and when Sonia tries to butt in, she slaps her.

Aditya has to make a choice, and because he is an idiot (and has never seen Biwi Number One) he chooses the floozie, and stays with her even when it becomes clear that Sonia is an evil controlling cow. She’s also infertile, so Aditya dutifully goes to court to seek custody of the children. Shivani misses a court date, so the judge promptly awards custody to Aditya and Sonia.

Sonia doesn’t really care about the kids; she hopes to gain her revenge on Shivanui by taking her children away and giving them a life of misery. (Her revenge on Shivani for slapping her. Once. After being caught with her husband . . . I don’t like Sonia.) She announces her nefarious plans while meeting with her mother, Shivani’s new housekeeper. Though I have yet to figure out exactly why, Auntie has infiltrated Shivani’s house on Sonia’s orders, and that’s where the movie gets really confusing. (And I will be spoiling the film pretty heavily from here on in, so if you really want to be surprised, stop reading now and I’ll see you next week.)

The problem is that Shivani and her children are dead. She gave them poisoned milk after losing custody. Auntie and the other servants are also dead; Shivani stumbles across a newspaper article about the three of them, along with Aditya and Sonia, dying in a car crash. Auntie drops a few hints that, unlike Shivani and the kids, she knows she’s a ghost. So why is she there? The children are dead, so how is she going to take them away? Did Sonia come up with this plan before or after dying, and before or after Shivani died? Why is Nandu wearing a wedding dress?

My head hurts.

Anjaane tries to mix supernatural suspense and family drama. Bollywood movies pull off this kind of balancing act all the time, but in Anjaane the two genres never quite mesh. Unless you’re a really dedicated Manisha fan, you’re better off watching Hum Kaun Hai?.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Cyrus

 Being Cyrus (2005) is not a typical Bollywood film. Being Cyrus isn’t a typical anything, really; it’s a film that defies easy classification. Is it a family drama? Is it a black comedy? Is it film noir? I don’t know. It’s a pretty good movie, though.

Cyrus (Saif Ali Khan) is a drifter and self-confessed sociopath (”distant from the emotions of human life”, as he puts it.) After a miserable childhood with only his sister for company, Cyrus is searching for a place to belong. His search lands him at the front door of retired, drug-addled sculptor Dinshaw Sethna (Naseeruddin Shah) and his wife Katy (Dimple Kapadia.) Cyrus claims to be a potential student for Dinshaw’s pottery school (total student body after Cyrus joins: 1) and soon he is living in the house, enduring Dinshaw’s marijuana-fueled ramblings about life, and Katy’s desperate come ons.

Cyrus narrates the film, and he is the archetypal unreliable narrator; it’s very clear that he’s up to something, and he admits (to the viewer) that the thing he likes about Katy is that he knows he can manipulate her.

Katy seems to have her own agenda as well; she receives mysterious daily phone calls which she says are from her brother, and she seems very keen to move to Mumbai and reconcile with Dinshaw’s estranged brother Farokh (Boman Irani), their senile but extremely rich father Fardounjee (Honey Chhaya), and Farokh’s much younger “mail order” bride. Soon, at Katy’s insistence, Cyrus is acting as the ambassador between the two branches of the family. Through his eyes, we get a good look at just how deeply messed up these people are. And then it all goes horribly, gloriously wrong.

And I’m brought back to the difficulty of classifying the film. This is a dark movie about very flawed people who do some very bad things, but it has a curiously light touch. On the other hand, while there are funny moments, it’s not really a black comedy; the film doesn’t really laugh at its characters. Even Farokh’s tirade after having been bitten by a dog goes on just long enough to make it sad rather than funny.

Regardless of genre, though, Being Cyrus is a good movie. All of the leads put in very strong performances, including and especially Saif Ali Khan. It’s an achievement when the emotional heart of a film is a self-professed sociopath.

Indian Proposal

 The apparent moral of Judaai (1997) is “If someone offers to buy your spouse for twenty million rupees, say no.” I’m enough of a crazy optimist to believe that most people already know that. If they don’t, I doubt even Sridevi can convince them. No, the real moral of Judaai is “Before marriage, it’s best to do a little research.”

The film opens with the wedding of Raj (Anil Kapoor) and Kaajal (Sridevi). Kaajal’s father (Kader Khan) is thrilled with the match; Raj in an engineer, and should make good money, with plenty of extra income from bribes. He’s a little taken aback when he sees Raj refusing a very expensive wedding gift from a contractor because he does not intend to do business with the man, and Kaajal herself is disappointed when she arrives at her new marital home only to discover that there is no air conditioning, and not even a refrigerator.

Poor but honest is still honest, though, and Kaajal and Raj (and eventually their two children) settle into a reasonably happy life. Kaajal still longs for more material things, but it’s a Lucy Ricardo or Hyacinth Bucket sort of longing; she’s a bit pretentious, and sometimes she spends too much money or lies to the neighbors, but she loves Raj and he loves her and in the end they always make up.

Meanwhile, Kaajal’s Bollywood-obsessed brother Harilal (Johny Lever) provides another example of “look before you buy.” He hears a mysterious voice singing, and assumes that the singer is Vani (Upasna Singh), daughter of Raj and Kaajal’s landlord Hasmukhlal (Paresh Rawal). Hari has seen Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, so he assumes the role of the heroic suitor trying to win over his beloved’s stern father. While he’s no Amrish Puri, Hasmukhlal is in fact sort of intimidating; he dominates every conversation with a never ending stream of questions, and even has a question mark on his forehead like a low-rent Indian version of the Riddler. Hari brings home the bride, but it isn’t until the wedding night that he realizes that Vani has a severe case of Bollywood Mystery Disease, and the only thing she’s able to say is “Abba dabba jabbha.” (The entire subplot basically goes nowhere, but it’s worth mentioning because while the basic premise is stupid, Johny Lever is actually really funny in this movie.)

Raj works for Mr. Sinha (Saeed Jaffry). Sinha has a niece, Janhvi (Urmila Matondkar) returning from America. Since all of his drivers are out on other jobs, he sends Raj to the airport to collect her, and the pair immediately start arguing. Janhvi is intrigued, however, and soon decides that Raj is the man for her. Finding that he’s married really doesn’t deter her. As she sees it, Raj would hardly be the first man in India to take a second wife.

(A slight digression - Janhvi is terribly impressed upon seeing Raj refuse a lucrative job offer because, unlike the prospective employer, Sinha gave him a chance when he was just starting out, and he refuses to betray him. This is portrayed as a wonderful demonstration of loyalty, but it strikes me as arrogance more than anything. Raj has a family, money is definitely tight (they’re saving up to buy a small cassette player) and financial issues are a constant source of strain in his marriage. While ethics are important, there’s nothing wrong with finding a better job for the sake of your family, or at least asking your obviously very rich employer for a raise. Working exactly the job you want without caring about the money is a luxury best reserved for the single.)

Raj has no interest whatsoever in marrying another woman; despite the occasional arguments, he loves Kaajal. Janhvi refuses to give up, and so she approaches Kaajal at the temple and makes an indecent proposal. Kaajal will receive twenty million rupees if she convinces her husband to take Janhvi on as a co-wife. Kaajal is shocked and horrified, but then she keeps thinking about all she could do with the money. She had always wanted to put the children into a good, English, school, and they could move to a better house, buy a nice car instead of taking the bus everywhere . . . Her father thinks it’s a great idea, while her mother (Farida Jalal) tries to explain how insane the very notion is.

Kaajal makes her decision. When Raj refuses to even consider the idea, she goes on a hunger strike until he agrees. Finally he breaks down, she and Raj get a divorce, he is married to Janhvi, and they all teleport to Las Vegas for some very bad dancing before moving in together. What could possibly go wrong?

While he’s agreed to the marriage, Raj is sullen and wants nothing to do with Janhvi. Kaajal is so consumed by her new life as a wealthy woman that she has no time for anything else, though, while Janhvi transforms herself into the perfect submissive Indian wife. She wins over the children with what may well be the lamest joke ever written, and patiently sets out to woo Raj. He’s reluctant, but he finds himself more and more drawn to the woman who’s actually paying attention to him. Kaajal and Raj keep drifting farther apart, Janhvi and Raj keep drifting closer together, and then, finally, Kaajal realizes what she’s given up and decides she wants it back.

Judaai has a great cast. It is always nice to see Farida Jalal in action, and Johny Lever was (as previously mentioned) genuinely funny. Sridevi, meanwhile, is fantastic. The early portions of the film showcase her comic talents (when Janhvi approaches her at the temple, she hides behind a pillar with a strange little hop that was so funny I had to rewind and watch it again) and in the second half of the film she displays considerable dramatic depth.

On the other hand, the message of the film is a bit muddled. The idea is that Kaajal has done wrong and needs to purify herself through suffering. The characters in the film go to great lengths to point out that yes, Kaajal did ruin her own life, but it’s not until the very end of the movie that someone points out the simple fact that there were other people involved. The whole thing was Janhvi’s idea, after all, and if Raj had been more concerned about the welfare of his family than with his personal code of honor, the whole mess could have been avoided. Most importantly, Raj and Kaajal could have saved themselves a lot of grief by sitting down and talking for half an hour before marriage.

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.

Too much toon, and not enough loony.

Toonpur Ka Superhero tells the story of a Bollywood actor who is suddenly pulled into a world of living cartoons. From the premise, it sounds like it’s going to be Who Framed Rajiv Rabbit, and it is, sort of, if you replace Bob Hoskins with Ajay Devgan and swap out Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse for a bunch of characters that nobody has ever heard of.

You might think that Bollywood superstar Aditya Kumar (Ajay Devgan) has it all, but look closer and . . . well, you’d probably still be right. He has fame, fortune, a loving and only slightly crazy wife named Priya (Kajol), and two beautiful children. The only cloud on the Kumar horizon is Aditya’s relationship with his son Kabir (Ameya Pandya); Kabir is so upset about his father missing the school’s track and field day again that he stomps off the track in the middle of his race, and later accuses his father of being a “fake hero” who lets his stuntmen do all the work.

Now, if this were an American movie, then the dad (probably played by Tim Allen) would have forgotten all about his son’s sporting event until the very last minute, leading to a desperate race across town only to arrive a second too late. Not here, though; Aditya does everything he can, short of throwing a diva tantrum and storming off the set, to see his son run, he just doesn’t quite make it. That’s one of the nice things about this movie; the adults consistently behave like adults.

Meanwhile, the cartoon inhabitants of Toonpur have a problem. Ever since the good king Tooneshwar was overthrown by his treacherous general Jagaaro, the good hearted Devtoons have been oppressed by the mischievous Toonasurs. The Devtoons need a hero, and one of their number, a young Bollywood fan named Bolly, suggests his favorite action hero, Aditya Kumar.

The Devtoons send a couple of their number into the real world to kidnap Aditya. They do, and once he realizes that he’s in Toonapur . . . well, you could probably write it yourself. There are a few crazy cartoon hijinks, and Aditya comes to care for his new cartoon friends, leading them to battle and finally facing Jagaaro in a video game which has all the excitement of watching your little sister play Tomb Raider.

The inhabitants of Toonapur are all original characters, created for this movie. The Devtoons are all based on Bollywood stereotypes – there’s the aforementioned starstruck Punjabi boy, the overbearing filmi ma, the lazy policeman, the meek South Indian accountant, the perpetually lovestruck damsel, and so on. The Toonasurs are a bit more varied – they’re mostly stock Bollywood thugs, but they do have a Sumo wrestler, a caveman, and a shameless Jessica Rabbit ripoff.

The problem with the Devtoons isn’t that they’re new characters, it’s that none of them are particularly interesting. It’s like watching a movie about the supporting cast of a Bugs Bunny short. They don’t act like cartoons, they act like . . . well, like a random assortment of Bollywood stereotypes. In the fight scenes, it’s Aditya who takes advantage of cartoon physics.

The sole exception, the one cartoon character who actually behaves like a cartoon character, is Rubdoot, cartoon god of death (the name’s a pretty good pun) and Aditya’s biggest fan. (Sorry, Bolly.) Rubdoot is genuinely loony, and his big scene is a high point, but he doesn’t get much screen time at all.

It’s a shame that the cartoon world is so bland, because the scenes set in the real world are actually pretty good. Aditya is written as a grown up who’s trying to do his best, rather than as an arrested adolescent who needs to recapture the wonder of something or other, and he displays a great chemistry with his film family. Ajay Devgan is one of nature’s great straight men, but he needs someone else to deliver the punchlines, and that doesn’t happen here.

You can tell they're twins because they have the same mustache.

Twin movies are fairly common in Bollywood, and they tend to follow the same basic formula. Identical twins are separated at birth. One twin grows up poor and feisty, raised by humble working folk. The other twin grows up wealthy and meek, terrorized by evil rich relatives who are after their money, though the rich twin usually also has a good-hearted but vulnerable relative that they need to protect. Just when it seems all hope is lost, the twins accidentally trade places, with the poor twin overcoming the villains, the rich twin developing a spine, and everybody gaining a love interest. Kishen Kanhaiya (1990) follows this formula as well, but with some surprising tweaks.

The film begins just as you might expect; tragic birth, dead mother, one twin spirited away to be raised by the midwife, while the other is left with his wealthy and now widowed father, Sunderdas (Shreeram Lagoo). While Sunderdas is a devoted parent, he’s overwhelmed, and decides to marry Kamini (Bindu), the sister of his employee Gendamal (Amrish Puri). Gendamal and Kamini are, of course, evil, and soon Gendamal arranges for Sunderdas to take a convenient fall, leaving him mute and paralyzed. Thanks to a complicated will, though, Gendamal needs to keep Sunderdas and baby Kishen alive until Kishen’s 24th birthday, then force the young man to sign over the property. And in order to make this possible, Gendamal and Kamini raise the boy through terror and abuse. By the time he grows into an adult (and is played by Anil Kapoor), Kishen is basically a servant, completely cowed by his uncle, stepmother, and her illegitimate son Mahesh (Dalip Tahil).

Kanhaiya (Anil Kapooor), on the other hand, was raised by the midwife (Subha Khote), and has grown up fearless, lazy, and a bit shady, but basically good hearted. Kanhaiya is obsessed with movies, and spends his days at the movie theater, dressed in fancy clothes borrowed from his best friend Lobo (Johnny Lever). After inadvertently picking a fight with a much larger man, his filmi fisticuffs catch the eye of fellow cinemaniac Anju (Madhuri Dixit), daughter of wealthy and cranky businessman Vidya Charan (Saeed Jaffrey), who happens to be a close friend of Gendamal.

And at this point, with the characters clearly established, that you’d expect the twins to switch places. But no, not yet. Both brothers have fully developed romantic subplots under their own identities, rather than meeting their love interests while switched. Kishen falls for milkmaid Radha (Shilpa Shirodkar), and surprisingly, Gendamal is all for the match, figuring that a wife would help keep Kishen docile, and an educated woman would be harder to control.

Kanhaiya, meanwhile, grows closer to Anju, who assumes that he’s also the child of a rich family. While pursuing this relationship. Kanhaiya casually and repeatedly humiliates Anju’s “uncle” Sridhar (Ranjeet), a business associate of her father’s. Sridhar has an unhealthy interest in Anju, and is nasty enough to expose Kanhaiya’s poverty, have the young man brutally beaten, kill his adopted mother, and then shoot him in the head.

Kishen, meanwhile, suddenly grows a spine and refuses to mark the papers transferring control of the family fortune, because Radha doesn’t want him to. Gendamal does not take this refusal well, and orders Mahesh to kill Kishen and dump his body in the sea. And then, with Kishen presumed dead and Kanhaiya’s life in ruines, Kanhaiya’s adoptive father explains the switch, and Kanhaiya deliberately assumes Kishen’s identity in order to root out the villains and perhaps discover what happened to his twin.

Kishen is not really dead, of course. Anju discovers him wandering the city street and thinks he’s Kanhaiya; he cannot contradict her, because he has amnesia. Anju tries to help him recover his memories by dressing up as Raj Kapoor, but surprisingly it doesn’t work.

Kishen Kanhaiya hits many of the same story beats as, say, Seeta Aur Geeta, but it steers clear of some of the twin movie cliches. (Kanhaiya lets all the nice people know who he is as soon as possible, for instance, so there’s no tearful rejection by the family he’s trying to save.) It’s an old story, but different enough to be interesting, and the cast is full of people I like, so I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.

Here’s to you, Mrs. . . does she even have a last name?

I love Bollywood DVD clearance sales. I can get stacks of movies for as little as 49 cents apiece, and because they’re often movies starring nobody I’ve ever heard of, and I have no information on the film other than an often inaccurate cover blurb, watching them is always an adventure. Sometimes I discover an amazing jewel in the rough, and sometimes I discover Kya Aisa Hota Hai Pyar (2004).
Karan (Hussein Sheikh) and Aditya (Sumeet Chawla) are college students and the best of friends. Karan is athletic, popular, dating the lovely Poorvi (Parita Vora), and secretly craves the approval of his distant workaholic father (Rajvansh Malhotra). Aditya is not particularly interested in girls, but that doesn’t stop him from toying with the emotions of Gia (Namita Shrivastav), Poorvi’s friend and roommate.

After a particularly dismal evening out with Gia (which she paid for, because Aditya is a selfish jerk) Aditya’s motorbike gets a flat tire, and older woman Aanchal (Samrita Singh) stops to offer him a ride. (Samrita Singh can’t be much older than me, but the lighting and makeup people are doing her no favors in this movie.)

Aditya may not be all that interested in girls, but Aanchal makes it very clear that she is interested in him. He’s a lttle intrigued, and agrees to meet her later, but when he arrives at her house she’s performing a sleazy dance number with some random guy who never appears again. Suddenly, Aditya is very intrigued, and soon he’s coming over to canoodle every day after school.

It’s an odd dynamic; Aanchal tries to communicate her philosophy of living for the present, and Aditya pretty much behaves like a lovestruck puppy. He’s in love for the very first time, and unfortunately, the person he chooses to share the happy news with is Gia, whom he knows is in love with him.

Karan invites a small group of friends, including both the lovesick Aditya and the heartbroken Gia, to his family estate for a few days because there’s no way that could be awkward. The kids are not alone, though. Karan’s father is there for a brief visit, and leaves the gang in the care of Karan’s beloved Auntie Aanchal. Yes, that Aanchal.

I’m trying to come up with some nice things to say about Kya Aisa Hota Hai Pyar, and it’s not easy. Samrita Singh managed to give a poorly written and cliched character some small degree of depth before what little character development Aanchal had was undone by the final scene, in which she picks up and hits on yet another young college kid. Bhaskar, the comic relief with the incredibly stupid beard made me really appreciate the acting talent and subtle comedic timing of Johnny Lever. And I’m sure the whole thing was well intentioned; it reminds me of an afterschool special about the horrible dangers of dating older women, complete with a narrator who pops up onscreen occasionally to spout gibberish about love.

Well intentioned or not, though, the final product is kind of skeezy. Aanchal is oversexed and sort of predatory, and even nice girl Gia has a scene where she writhes on the bed and displays her cleavage to the camera for no apparent reason. Comic relief guy spends his time making unwanted sexual comments to a woman who is clearly not interested, and everyone else thinks this is hilarious. And in this movie, women appear to be interchangeable; after a brief conversation with comic relief guy, Aditya goes from pining for Aanchal to pining for Gia, without even pausing for breath.

In short, this movie is not very good. Save your 49 cents.

Blindsided.

Lafengey Parindey (2010) is a good example of how hard it can be to judge a Bollywood movie by its DVD cover. It’s the story of a fighter in an underworld boxing ring and his love for a blind dancer, so I was really expecting a lot more Ghulam II: The Blindening, and not so much roller dancing.
Our fighter is Nandu (Neil Nitin Mukesh), or “One Shot Nandu” as he’s known in the ring. Nandu has a pretty impressive gimmick; he fights blindfolded, taking a beating until he can figure out exactly where his opponent is, then dropping them in one shot.

Nandu fights for gambling kingpin Usmaan Ali (Piyush Mishra), who treats him like a clever and talented child. Despite working for a mobster, Nandu has managed to avoid being corrupted by the people around him, but he does look up to Anna (Kay Kay Menon), one of Usmaan’s top men, so when Usmaan asks him to drive Anna on a mission, Nandu is happy to agree. Anna is a little less happy, and tries to steer Nandu toward an honest job as a bouncer, but without much success.

Nadu drives Anna to his destination, and then everything goes horribly wrong – Anna has been shot, men with guns are chasing them, and as Nandu drives through the pouring rain he accidentally runs over a young girl. Anna convinces Nandu to get out of the car and then drives away, happy to take the blame for the hit and run since he’s dying anyway.

The victim of the hit and run is Pinky (Deepika Padukone), a talented dancer and skater who dreams of roller dancing on India’s Got Talent. The accident leaves her permanently blinded and unable to skate, and a guilt-ridden Nandu suddenly realizes that while he doesn’t have enough money to make a real difference, he is uniquely qualified to help her learn to see without using her eyes. Time for a training montage!

Montage completed, Pinky feels ready to skate again, and she needs a partner. Since she trusts Nandu, he’s the one that she wants. He reluctantly agrees, and the pair . . . I was going to say they drift into a relationship, but that’s really not the case, since Pinky is very much the instigator. (Nandu falls for her during the training montage, but he feels too guilty to make a move.) However, police inspector K.K. Sethna (Manish Chaudhary) knows that Anna wasn’t driving when Pinky was struck. Despite being ordered off the case, he keeps investigating, and quietly builds an impressive case against Nandu, who still hasn’t told Pinky the truth.

You may think that the plot is building toward one final climactric boxing match in which Nandu tries to earn the money to get Pinky’s eyes fixed, but that’s exactly what doesn’t happen. While Lafengey Parindey is kind of a sports movie, the sport in question isn’t underground blindfolded bareknuckle boxing, it’s reality show rollerdancing. The “big game” isn’t a boxing match, it’s the India’s Got Talent finals.

Another movie would have focused on the boxing, but that’s because that other movie would be about Nandu, while this movie is about Nandu and Pinky. At heart it’s a romance which happens to have some “gritty crime drama” trappings. The streets may be mean, but the people by and large aren’t; even Usmaan, the obvious villain of the piece, makes a fairly reasonable offer that Nandu can’t refuse. It’s like a Jane Austen novel, but with more gangsters and less insight into the human condition.

Pong: The Next Level

As long time readers know, I love Indian special effects extravaganzas, movies starring Shahrukh Khan, and thinly veiled retellings of the Ramayana, so yes, I was really looking forward to Ra.One (2011). It isn’t quite what I was expecting, though; I thought it would be Bollywood Tron, steeped in cultural references, and instead I got a Bollywood remake of that episode of Star Trek where Geordi accidentally brings Moriarty to life. As a reviewer, where am I supposed to go with that?

Khan plays software designer Shekhar Subramanium, who is a lucky, lucky nerd. Sure, he’s clumsy, socially awkward, and has a terrible haircut, but he’s married to the lovely and intelligent Sonia (Kareena Kapoor), he has a great job at a large electronics firm in London, and he’s a fantastic dancer. The only problem is that his son Prateek (Armaan Verma) doesn’t respect him.

When Shekhar and his team are assigned to create a new videogame for the Indian market, Shekhar sees a chance to change that. Prateek thinks heroes are lame and villains are cool, so Shekhar designs a game around Ra.One, the coolest villain ever, a bad guy who can never be beaten. And of course there’s no way that could possibly go horribly wrong, unless they designed the Ra.One character as a separate program which is capable of learning and adapting to the game, and the company was also working on a system for projecting digital information into the real world without the need for a screen. And what are the odds of that?

(The video game featured in the movie is, as you’ve probably guessed, terrible. It’s a fighting game with one protagonist, one opponent, and one backdrop – basically a fancy version of Pong. Like in Toonpur Ka Superhero the game has three short levels so that our protagonists can play through the entire game at the climax without the movie being fifty hours long; unlike Toonpur at least all three levels come from the same game here. As lame as the game itself is, though, the hardware involved, and especially the adaptive antagonist, would be revolutionary.)

Work on the game moves quickly, and the company holds a party to celebrate the game’s completion. While the adults drink and have a dance number, Prateek insists on trying out the game for himself – he’s nearly won when it’s time to go home, so the game is shut off. And then everything goes horribly wrong. Ra.One, who cannot accept defeat, uses the company’s technology to enter the real world, uses his shape changing and mind control powers to kill and impersonate Akashi (Tom Wu), Shekhar’s coworker, and goes in search of “Lucifer,” which happens to be Prateek’s gaming handle. Shekhar quickly realizes what has happened and tries to stop Ra.One by claiming to be Lucifer, but Ra.One doesn’t believe him and kills him anyway.

Grief stricken, Sonia decides to take her son back to India. Prateek, meanwhile, is convinced that his father didn’t die in an accident, he was killed by Ra.One; investigating the labs, he quickly learns that he’s right, and that Ra.One is on the way. He tries to pull the hero of the video game, G.One (who was modeled on Shekhar) out of the game as a protector, but without apparent success. And then Prateek is finally caught . . . by Sonia. Unfortunately, Ra.One is close behind.

After a lengthy and destructive car chase through the streets of London, Ra.One catches up with mother and son, but G.One appears at the last moment and apparently defeats Ra.One, who collapses into a pile of shiny cubes and is buried under the road. With nowhere else to go, G.One joins Sonia and Prateek as they travel to India.

The family quickly settle into life in India, though Sonia is a little disturbed by the superpowered robot with her dead husband’s face hanging around the house. Still, he’s useful, and before long sparks are literally flying.

Before they can get too comfortable, though, Ra.One reforms, this time taking the face of a male model from a nearby billboard (Arjun Rampal). He quickly tracks the family back to India and mayhem ensues.

This movie looks fantastic. The production design is spot on, the action sequences are kinetic but shot without a trace of shakeycam, and only a few of them are ripped off from The Matrix and Terminator 2. Prateek’s opening dream sequence, which features Khan as Lucifer as long-haired Final Fantasy-styled prettyboy using his oversized sword to fight Sanjay Dutt on the Moon is amazing.

As impressive as the visuals are, though, I was left feeling a bit . . . unfulfilled. The movie rushes from gorgeous set piece to gorgeous set piece without really giving the characters time to react to anything, so the whole picture is lacking in context. There are moments of pathos, but they’re mostly crammed into a song and then forgotten about. The lack of feeling is particularly jarring because this movie stars the Rajah of Relationships, the Maestro of Melodrama, the Tzar of Manly Tears, but for most of the film he’s playing an emotionless robot.

I can understand the lack of melodrama because this movie is clearly aimed at the younger set, and adolescent boys are not known for their interest in interpersonal drama and talking about feelings. My real problem with Ra.One is that the movie keeps introducing interesting ideas, and then refuses to follow up on any of them. For example, there’s a wonderful character bit where Prateek takes a handful of his father’s ashes and, instead of immersing them in the river, he sticks them in his pocket. It’s a great character bit which could be used to set up either some genuinely satisfying character development or an emotionally manipulative sci-fi climax (or both!) but it is never mentioned again.
(I don’t mind the Chitti cameo, though, because it’s so gratuitous and bizarre. It’s like Batman popping up in the new Spider-Man movie to have a cup of coffee, and then leaving.)

I’m a little frustrated. I want to like Ra.One, and I guess I do, but I’m afraid it will always be my second favorite Indian movie about robots.

The Taming of the Jerk

Dulha Mil Gaya (2010) is never going to win any awards for originality; the story of the scorned or neglected wife winning back her husband by harnessing the twin forces of jealousy and a fabulous makeover is one of those stories that recurs over and over again in Bollywood.

Let’s start with the husband. At the start of the film, Tej Danraj (Fardeen Khan), known as Donsai to his friends, is a billionaire playboy who lives in the West Indies with his manservant Hussain Bhai (Johhny Lever.) Donsai takes his job as a billionaire playboy seriously, and spends his time winning the hearts of beautiful women, and then not marrying them.

Unfortunately for the eternal bachelor, his late father’s will was very specific; Donsai inherits everything, but only if he marries Samarpreet Kapoor (Ishitta Sharma), daughter of a family friend. On the advice of slimy family lawyer Vakil (Vivek Vaswani) Donsai (as Tej) flies out to the Punjab, meets the Kapoors (who are naturally wonderful people and the salt of the Earth), marries Samarpreet in a quite civil ceremony, then flies back home, sending the family a check every month in order to soothe his wounded conscience.

Samarpreet grew up knowing she’d be marrying Tej someday, and upon meeting him she instantly falls in love. When months pass without even a word from her new husband, she’s heartbroken, and finally decides to fly to the West Indies herself and find out exactly what’s wrong. Naturally, the trip is a complete disaster; nobody’s there to meet her at the airport, the security guards won’t even let her in the house, when she does manage to sneak in she finds there’s a party going on and her husband is making out with a stranger in a bikini, and after she’s thrown out of the house crying, she’s promptly hit by a car.

What Samarpreet needs is a fairy godmother. What she gets is Shimmer (Sushmita Sen), an eccentric supermodel and Dorsai’s friend and neighbor. Shimmer literally picks Samarpreet up off the street, and after learning her story, resolves to help. Naturally, that means transforming simple Punjabi girl Samarpreet Kapoor into the beautiful and glamorous Samara Capore.

Shimmer has her own romantic troubles, of course. The incredibly wealthy and successful Pawan Gandhi (Shahrukh Freaking Khan) is completely devoted to her, and she probaly loves him too, but she’s too wrapped up in her career to admit it – at least, that’s what her sidekicks Lotus (Howard Rosemeyer) and Jasmine (Suchitra Pillai-Mallik) think. Samarpreet decides to repay Shimmer for her kindness by helping Pavan and Shimmer to get together.

Introducing the Pavan and Shimmer romantic subplot could have been a problem; Fardeen Khan is a fine dramatic actor and one of the best creeps in Bollywood, but when it comes to playing the romantic lead, he’s no Shahrukh Khan, while SRK is. The writers wisely decided to make this a plot point, with Donsai feeling completely inadequate in the face of Pavan’s amazing romantic charisma.

Another nice touch is that Shimmer encourages Samarpreet to ask herself if she really wants her husband back, rather than assuming that existing relationships must be preserved at all costs. Of course, Samarpreet does decide that yes, she does want him, because he’s become much less of a jerk (and because existing relationships must be preserved at all costs) but it was refreshing that the characters didn’t consider it a foregone conclusion.

Apart from these flourishes, Dulha Mil Gaya is . . . solid. It’s an entertaining movie with a good cast and some funny bits. It won’t go on my list of best Bollywood movies ever, but I’m glad I watched it.

The streets could be meaner.

Legendary Bollywood actor Dev Anand died this month, so this week I’m reviewing Taxi Driver (1954), which is at once a charming romance, a gritty crime drama, and a reminder that “gritty’ doesn’t always mean “dark.”

Taxi driver Mangal (Anand), known as “Hero” to his friends, is decidedly scruffy, his best friend Mastana (Johnny Walker) is a pickpocket, and he spends his evenings in a bar; not the ideal romantic lead, in other words. Still, Hero is a genuinely nice guy and very protective of the people around him; there’s a reason they call him “Hero,” and a reason why he’s caught the eye of sultry bar-dancer Sylvie (Sheila Ramani).

When Hero rescues Mala (Kalpana Kartik, the future real life Mrs. Anand) from a pair of lecherous goons, life suddenly gets complicated. Mala is a simple girl from the village, in Bombay to look for Ratan Lal, the music director who complimented her voice while passing through the village a year ago. Unfortunately, the address she has for Ratan Lal is a year old, and she has no idea how to track him down. Mala has no money, and she can’t go home, so Hero takes her to his apartment, and goes outside to sleep in the car.

The next day, Hero and Mala look for Ratan Lal, without success. The day after, they do it again. Gradually, though, their odd living arrangement becomes the new status quo; Hero returns to driving the taxi, but with Mala as his secret house-guest.

Just when everything is going well, Hero’s sister-in-law comes for a visit. There’s no way she would understand an unrelated woman living in Hero’s apartment, so he quickly comes up with the worst plan possible, and disguises Mala as a boy, probably just so we can see Kalpana Kartik learn to swear and walk like a man. Bizarrely, it works, and soon Mastana and the rest of the gang are introduced to “Rajput”, Hero’s new cleaner.

One of the lecherous goons from the beginning of the movie (I don’t think the character is ever named, but I like to call him Frenchie, since he’s a string of onions and a beret away from looking like a stereotypical cinematic Frenchman) hasn’t forgotten about the girl who literally got away. he follows Hero to the bar, hoping to pick a fight, but Sylvie manages to defuse the situation with a quick dance number. Undeterred, Frenchie and the gang steal Hero’s taxi and use it as the getaway car for a bank robbery. Hero makes a full report to the police, and he and Mala are both in danger when the gang decide they need to be silenced.

As a romance, Taxi Driver works very well; Anand and Kartik have a fun, light-hearted chemistry and the relationship that develops onscreen is so understated that neither character seems to notice it until it’s threatened. As a gritty crime drama? Well, there is crime, and the movie’s Bombay certainly looks and feels seamy, but it’s nowhere near as seamy as it could be. And Frenchie and his gang are so wildly incompetent that it’s hard to take them seriously; when you try to silence a witness by shooting him in a crowded nightclub full of potential witnesses, you’re probably better off in jail, anyway.

Romeo must play dead.

Roadside Romeo (2008) is, in theory, a joint venture, produced by Yash Raj Films and the Walt Disney Company. I’m really not sure how much input Disney had, but after an introductory, mostly silent short in which Donald and Mickey discover that cooking Indian food is hard and they should get a woman to do it for them, the film is a whole lot of Yash Raj, and a little bit Disney.

Romeo (Saif Ali Khan) was a pampered family pet, living in a mansion and apparently given the run of the place, including his own bedroom and access to the family pool. That’s all over, now – the family moved to London and left their dog behind.

Romeo wanders the street in abject poverty for about fifteen minutes before being cornered by a street gang of Bollywood stereotypes, including Guru, the tough leader with a heart of gold (Vrajesh Hirjee); Hero English (Kiku Sharda), the guy who thinks he can speak English but really can’t; Mini (Tanaaz Currim Irani), the tough girl who wants to be just like the boys, who in this case is a tough cat who wants to be just like the dogs; and Interval (Suresh Menon), the annoying comic relief who speaks entirely in movie quotes and bad impressions. (There’s also an adorable orphan/mouse, but he doesn’t do much.) Romeo quickly wins over the gang with his amazing grooming skills, and they decide to open a salon together. (Because of course stray dogs have a functioning economy, based on the bone standard, can use scissors, and are able to redecorate a vacant lot without any humans noticing.)

There’s a problem, of course. The gang started the salon business without consulting Charlie Anna (Javed Jaffrey), the local canine crime lord who maintains control of the neighborhood with ht ehelp of his “angels,” a sultry trio of kung fu canines.

When Charlie’s official sidekick Chhainu (Sanjay Mishra), the ugliest dog in the world, comes by to collect protection money, Romeo chases him away. This does not make Charlie Anna happy, but before he can properly torture the gang, Romeo manages to smooth things over.

Then Romeo makes things worse. Late at night, Romeo hears a mysterious voice singing. He follows it, and discovers Laila (Kareena Kapoor) dancing alone on a rooftop. He’s immediately smitten, but she’s reluctant. What he doesn’t know is that Charlie Anna is also plenty smitten with Laila, and makes a habit of roughing up dogs who get too close. Romeo escapes a beating by promising to help Charlie win Laila’s heart, and it’s just about this time that Laila decides she really likes Romeo after all . . .

The animation in Roadside Romeo is pretty good, as Indian animation goes. It’s certainly not on the level of what you see in, say, Kung Fu Panda, but it’s comparable to what you see in Legends of Awesomeness. I do have an issue with the character designs, though; they display a sort of quantum anthropomorphism. Sometimes the dogs move like dogs, sometimes they move like dogs walking on their hind legs, and sometimes, especially when dancing, they move like people. Watching the dogs shift from Tom and Jerry to Lady and the Tramp and back is a little disturbing.

If the characters were not dogs, Roadside Romeo could be an average Bollywood romantic comedy from the 90s, the sort of thing that launched Saif Ali and Kareena’s respective careers. The movie is for children, of course, so everything is softened somewhat; Charlie Anna threatens and throttles, but never actually beats anyone up, for instance, and Laila is basically a bar dancer but faces no social stigma at all. Still, this is a movie with a Disney look and a Bollywood heart.

The Gang That Wasn’t There

C Kkompany (2008) isn’t just a Bollywood screwball comedy about a gang of lovable losers looking for one big score that will change their lives forever. It also flirts pretty aggressively with the populist notion of the common man standing together to achieve what the government can’t or won’t. It’s an idea that shows up often in Bollywood, and that’s understandable, given that the modern Indian state was born from just that kind of action. Granted, I don’t think that extortion by telephone was quite what Gandhi had in mind.

Our three protagonists are relatively ordinary men with relatively ordinary problems. Ramakant Joshi (Anupam Kher) is a retired accountant living with his very successful but deeply ungrateful son Purshottam (Nitin Ratnaparkhi). Labhodar (Rajpal Yadav) is short, angry, and lives in fear of the day that his horrible wife tells their son that he actually works at the mall, in a chicken costume.

And then there’s Akshay Kumar (Tusshar Kapoor), a crime reporter who is in love with Priya (Raima Sen), who happens to be the much younger sister of brutal but soap opera obsessed crimelord Dattu (former Disco Dancer Mithun Chakraborty, who has grown much scarier with age). Akshay and Priya want to get married, but they’ll need money to fly away to somewhere safe first, so that they can avoid being killed. (“Crime reporter in love with a gangster’s sister” doesn’t really strike me as a common man with common problems, but then again I don’t live in Mumbai.)

The three friends play a prank on Purshottam in order to convince him to treat his father a little better; Labhodar calls up and pretends to be a gangster looking for money in exchange for lack of violence, then Ramakant takes the phone and diffuses the situation. And the three friends note that Purshottam is really eager to pay, and they toy with the idea of another call, but then laugh and forget it.

Then everything gets worse. After a fight, Labhodar’s wife drags their son to the mall to show him his father at work. Pushottam garlands his dead mother’s picture with artificial flowers rather than “waste money” on real ones. And Dattu arranges his sister’s marriage to another gangster, meaning Akshay has to raise the money to run away with Priya within a month or lose her forever. Suddenly blackmail and extortion doesn’t seem so bad.

The trio, after much consideration, name their fake criminal enterprise “C Company,” and send Pushottam a fake DVD showing the fake murder of the fake gangster from their previous prank. Pushottam is terrified, and agrees to pay up by the end of the month. Unfortunately, Akshay leaves a copy of the DVD at the TV station he works at, and the next day the media is buzzing about the mysterious “C Company.”

That would be the end of it, but Ramakant learns that a friend is being evicted by a greedy developer, along with his entire neighborhood, in order to make space for a shopping mall. Ramakant convinces Labhodar to help, and after a flashy scheme, the developer backs down, and the media are even more obsessed with C Company, who have been labelled the “Robin Hoods of the Underworld.”

The developer in question was paying protection to Dattu, which means that C Company is now hurting his business. Dattu questions Akshay about the new gang, and Akshay claims to know nothing. He’s now really, really sure it’s time to end the C Company business, and then his network assigns him to host a reality show in which ordinary people call in to talk about their problems, and find out whether the government or C Company solves them first.

The trio can’t help but get involved when they hear the stories of the people who call in, meaning more phone calls, and the C Company craze spirals completely out of control; suddenly, it’s not a fake gang anymore, it’s a fake political movement. And then Dattu, still determined to wipe out the Company, gets the lead he’s been hoping for.

C Kkompany is pretty good, as Bollywood screwball comedies go. The three leads manage to stay sympathetic throughout, and while the plot is completely unrealistic, it’s consistently unrealistic; if you accept the conceit that three knuckleheads could manage an extortion ring without anybody finding out or saying no, then the plot holds together very well. And Rajpal Yadav delivers a strong performance as an angry man who discovers a positive outlet for his boiling rage.

Still, I can’t help but be a little frustrated by the movie. The idea of the imaginary gang turning into an imaginary revolution with real results is fascinating, but the film too concerned with Akshay’s love life and Ramakant’s family woes to really focus on the implications. It’s an idea that’s too big for this movie.

Bhooty Call: A Flat

At first glance, A Flat (2010) looks like a typical modern Indian ghost story, right down to the angry vengeful ghost’s long black hair and bad posture. And honestly, the story is very traditional, but it’s told in a very different way. Not entirely successful, mind you, but it is different.

Prompted by a bad dream, Rahul (Jimmy Shergill) calls his former girlfriend Preity (Kaveri Jha) and learns that she’s getting married, and that she really doesn’t want to speak to him. Rahul immediately makes plans to leave America and return to India, but by the time his plane lands, Preity has vanished and his father (Sachin Khedekar) has been horribly murdered while preparing Rahul’s apartment, which means that a romantic reunion is pretty much off the table.

After his father’s funeral, Rahul visits the apartment, and discovers that it’s full of flashbacks. He basically wanders from room to room while remembering every stage of his (not entirely healthy, as it turns out) relationship with Preity.

He also keeps finding strands of long black hair throughout the apartment, and it’s clear to the viewer, but not to Rahul, that there’s something supernatural and really ticked off lurking in the background.
Preity finally calls. Rahul makes arrangements to meet her, but both the elevator and the stairs lead him directly back to his 17th floor apartment. The ghost begins haunting in earnest, and herds Rahul into the bedroom, where he discovers a diary belonging to Geetika (Hazel Croney), a simple, free spirited village belle who was rescued from an angry mob by Karan (Sanjay Suri), Rahul’s good friend and the guy who rented the apartment while Rahul was in America. That means more flashbacks, as Rahul learns how the happy filmi romance of Geetika and Karan went horribly, horribly wrong.

There are a lot of flashbacks in this movie. Most of the character development is discovered through flashback, rather than a more linear presentation of events. On the positive side, that means that the main plot itself is incredibly focused on the worst afternoon of Rahul’s life, so much so that it practically follows the Aristotelian Unities.

On the other hand, the movie is just over an hour and a half long, and with so many flashbacks, that means there’s time for maybe twenty minutes of scary stuff. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a scary twenty minutes, but it’s still only twenty minutes.

Bhooty Call – Shukriya

Despite the supernatural elements, Shukriya: Till Death Do Us Apart (2004) isn’t a horror movie, it’s a family melodrama like Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, a story of star crossed lovers who are surrounded by the nicest family in the world.

London-based businessman Karam Jindal (Anupam Kher) really does have it all: a loving wife, Sandhya (Rati Agnihotri); two beautiful daughters, Anjali (Indraneil Sengupta) and Sanam (Shriya Saran); an apprentice, Yash (Indraneel), who is ready to taker over the company and is practically part of the family; and, of course, lots and lots of money. Karam plans to celebrate his sixtieth birthday by using some of said money to open a new hospital, named after his late mother, which will treat the poor free of charge.

Anjali is married to a nice young man who politely stays offscreen for most of the movie. Sanam is single, and while the family really wants her to marry Yash, who absolutely adores her, but she thinks of him as a friend. Instead, she uses a bizarre little fortune telling box which informs her that her true love will be a musician. Soon after, she meets aspiring musician Ricky (Aftab Shivdasani). She likes him, he likes her, she invites him to her father’s birthday party, and, after she’s gone . . .


He’s hit by a truck and dies.

Karam, meanwhile, is haunted by a voice which claims to be Death – his death, specifically. Karam does not want to die, so he convinces the voice to let him have four more days, which will be long enough to put his affairs in order and oversee the opening of his hospital. He also tells the voice that it doesn’t understand how hard it is to be human, so Death decides to take a holiday, borrowing the body of the recently deceased Ricky to become a guest in the Jindal household. Sanam doesn’t understand why Ricky is calling himself Rohan, but she’s thrilled that the man she believes is her destined love is staying with them, while Death/Rohan/Ricky is intrigued by her and the promise of this Earth thing called kissing. And you can probably predict exactly what happens next.

Or maybe you can’t. The twist, if there is one, is that Karam has no need to learn any valuable lessons (except maybe listen when the doctor tells him to cut down on the salt, but that ship has pretty much sailed.) Karam’s priority has always been his family; even before he learns that he’s going to die, we see him tell his wife and both of his daughters that he loves them. He uses his four extra days to manage the circumstances of his death, rather than to repair any fractured relationships, because the relationships are all already strong.

This is another one of those movies where absolutely everybody is nice. The parents are nice, the sister’s are nice, the human incarnation of Death is nice. Even Yash, who is clearly set up to be the villain, is very nice, apart from one shocking moral lapse. That’s what really works about Shukriya; it’s worth fighting for four more days of this life, but you know it’s going to end anyway.

Bhooty Call: Purani Haveli

With Purani Haveli (1989), the Ramsay brothers attempted to recreate the success of Purana Mandir by making essentially the same movie, only with two monsters, even more potential victims, and a stronger focus on the star-crossed lovers than on actually explaining anything. The results are . . . let’s say mixed.

Wealthy heiress Anita (Amita Nangia) lives with her uncle Kumar (Vijay Arora), his wife Seema (Neelam Mehra), and Seema’s sleazy brother Vikram (Tej Sapru). They are, naturally, slowly but surely embezzling her money, and are scheming to marry Anita to Vikram so that they can just take the money directly. Unfortunately for them, Anita has noticed that Vikram is a nasty little creep, and has given her heart to poor and allegedly hunky photographer Sunil (Deepak Parashar).

Kumar decides to buy a creepy old mansion for reasons which are never explained. While inspecting the place, the seller is crushed by a creepy animated metal statue, while Kumar wanders outside and through an exploding graveyard, only to be killed by the Beast, a monster which looks like it’s half Wolfman, half demonic golliwog.

Meanwhile, Seema and Vikram hire a gang of thugs to chase away Sunil. It doesn’t work, naturally, so Seema resorts to Plan B, and forces Anita to tell Sunil that she’s never loved him and is going to marry Vikram after all. Sunil believes her, because he has apparently never seen a movie before. Fortunately, his assistant Mangu (Satish Shah) and platonic gal-pal Shobha (Shubha) have seen movies before, and when Seema sends Anita, Vikram, and a small group of her friends and his henchman on a trip to the creepy old mansion, they convince Sunil to follow them.

The group settle in for a long stay. Vikram quickly shows his true colors and tries to attack Anita, but Sunil shows up at the last minute and beats him up. Then everybody goes back to the house, and the attempted rape is never mentioned again. That night, Vikram’s buddy Michael gets drunk and wanders the halls alone, only to be thrown out the window by the walking statue. The gang dig a shallow grave in the back yard, drop the body in, and go back to what they’re doing, rather than, say, calling the police or leaving the house.

After Michael’s death, things get kind of creepy. Someone (and I still have no idea who) keeps digging up Michael’s and Kumar’s bodies and leaving them around the house for the women to find. The Beast uses his Freddy Krueger powers to cause bad dreams and disturbing hallucinations. The men laugh off any concerns as silly women being silly, and they all decide to stay in the house for a few more days, despite the fact that somebody died.

At this point in the movie, horror doesn’t really seem to be much of a priority. Instead, Seema drives down to the mansion in order to scheme against Sunil and Anita, while Mangu gets his own lengthy subplot about his long lost identical twin brother, a bandit chief named Gangu. It isn’t until late in the film, after much plotting, romance, and identical bandit hijinks, that Vikram accidentally releases the Beast and scary stuff resumes in earnest.

Sometimes, I’ll watch a movie and spend the rest of the week wondering what happened. That’s not the case here; I know exactly what happened, I just can’t quite figure out why, or how. I’m geeky enough that when I watch this kind of movie, I want to be able to figure out what the rules are, and that’s just not possible here, because there’s not enough exposition. We do find out that the Beast is a Beast because of the curse on the house, but we never find out how the house became cursed in the first place, or where the murderous statue came from. And that’s just one of the nagging questions still bothering me. If the Beast is sealed beneath a crypt behind the house, how did it kill Kumar and the teenagers at the beginning of the movie? Who was moving the bodies around? Why did Kumar want the house in the first place, and why did Seema send Anita there? It makes my head hurt.

However, there are some things I liked about the movie. The big slow lumbering statue was treated as a big slow lumbering statue, able to kill people who are unsuspecting, drunk, or both, but not much of a threat if you’re able to run, and it had kind of a neat design. The romance plotline was predictable but not awful, and led to more songs than the average horror movie. And the comic relief was occasionally sort of funky; Satish Shah certainly seemed to enjoy chewing the scenery as the bandit king with a heart of gold.

If you like Ramsay style horror movies, this isn’t a bad choice. Just don’t expect it to make sense.

Bhooty Call: Mahal

Mahal (1949) has all the trappings of a Bollywood ghost story: an abandoned mansion, a mysterious woman singing at night, and scary stock footage of bats and snakes. It’s really a tragedy rather than a horror movie, though. Just like Hamlet and Oedipus and Othello, Mahal‘s protagonist is a potentially decent guy whose life is consumed and ultimately destroyed by a single overwhelming flaw; in this case, he’s the most gullible man in the world.

On a dark and stormy night, Hari Shankar (Ashok Kumar) visits the mysterious old mansion his father bought at auction. He convinces the kindly old gardener, the mansion’s sole caretaker, to tell the story of the tragic lovers who lived and died in the mansion thirty years ago, then sends said old gardener to tell his friend Shrinath (Kanu Roy) that he’s in town. On foot. At two in the morning. Through a rainstorm. And Shrinath lives four miles away.

Once the gardener leaves, Hari discovers a portrait which looks very much like him. He’s already half convinced that he’s the reincarnation of the doomed lover who built the mansion when he hears a mysterious woman’s voice singing. He follows the voice, and manages to catch a few glimpses of the beautiful woman (Madhubala) singing, but she vanishes every time. Whatever she is, though, she’s not a hallucination, because Shrinath, who arrived just in time, can see her too.

Shrinath convinces Hari to leave the house, but he can’t stay away for long. he returns, and speaks to the woman, who calls herself Kamini. She explains that yes, she’s a ghost, and he is the reincarnation of her lost love. Now they can finally be together, but first Hari must kill himself (which he gleefully agrees to do) in which case they can be united in death, or he can kill the gardener’s daughter, allowing Kamini to take over her body so that they can be united in life. Hari hesitates for a split second, then agrees to do whatever Kamini asks of him.

Before Hari can kill anyone, though, Shrinath returns, accompanied by Hari’s father (M. Kumar). They take Hari away and quietly marry him off to Ranjana (Vijayalaxmi), hoping that he will settle down and forget all this ghost nonsense.

Unfortunately, Hari can’t forget this ghost nonsense. On the wedding night, just as he’s about to lift Ranjana’s bridal veil, he hears a clock and is immediately consumed by thoughts of Kamini. He decides to take his wife to a far away place where he can love her, free of the distractions of his imagined past, and, after an odd interlude in which they watch a tribal woman suspected of adultery undergo a trial by knife, they settle in an old creepy cabin in the mountains which is infested with stock footage bats and snakes and unconvincing crow puppets.

(Trial by knife is just like trial by fire, except that instead of setting you on fire, they throw knives at you. If none of the knives hit you, then you’re innocent. As the basis for a legal system, I can see some flaws.  Also, if she survives the trial, you're legally obligated to kiss her.)

After two years, Hari still hasn’t lifted his wife’s bridal veil, literally or metaphorically. Ranjana is living in a desolate cabin in the middle of nowhere, isolated from nearly all human contact, with a husband who completely ignores her and will not tell her why; it’s hard to blame her for taking desperate action, even though it ends badly for pretty much everyone.

Mahal is considered one of the great classics of Indian cinema, and I can understand why; the cinematography is great, and it features attractive, doomed people making lovely speeches at each other. On the other hand, it’s difficult for me, sitting in my living room in suburban Utah in the year 2011, to really understand Hari, or “Kamini”, who isn’t exactly a ghost and turns out to have a lot more in common with Hari than either of them realize. These are Tragedy People; they make horrible decisions, then speak beautifully about Fate when things go wrong.

And while he is indeed incredibly gullible, that’s really Hari’s tragic flaw. He knows he’s a Tragedy Person – he wants to be a Tragedy Person. As soon as he sees the portrait, he’s instantly consumed by the idea of being the tragic hero haunted by the ghost of his lost love. It’s easier to pine for the wife you lost in your last life than it is to get to know and learn to live with your wife in this one. Being fifteen for your whole life must be exhausting; it’s no wonder he dies young.

When you wish upon a . . . butterfly?

Once Upon a Warrior (2011) is the story of what happens when nine year old Elora Danan and the blind swordsman Zatoichi team up to save the world and rescue Madame Xanadu from Malificent (as played by Lady Gaga) and her army of brainwashed orc cosplayers. It’s not exactly masala (the movie actually sticks to one genre throughout) but it is certainly Influence Soup.

The kingdom of Sangarashtra is being terrorized by the evil ghostly sorceress Irendri (Lakshmi Manchu, assisted by as much scenery as she can chew), who carries a powerful “Black Eye” which can transform ordinary men into her brainwashed warrior slaves. Desperate for relief, the people turn to the Teardrop Cult, a network of religious hucksters who promise spiritual protection from the power of the Black Eye and are worse than useless when it comes to actually protecting anything.


When the children of the village of Agharta fall sick, hapless everyman Druki (Vallabheneni Ramji) is sent to an isolated mountain monastery to retrieve Moksha (Harshitha), a little girl with amazing healing powers. Moksha will need protecting, and Druki, while brave, isn’t really up to the task, so the blind warrior Yodha (Siddharth) is sent along as her bodyguard.

Almost immediately after the trio set out on their journey, Moksha asks Yodha about his past, which leads to a long flashback about Yodha’s love for the Gypsy fortuneteller Priya (Shruti K. Haasan), and the tragic but clearly foreshadowed end to their romance. Nearly everything in this flashback will later turn out to be incredibly important.

And from there . . . well, it’s an epic quest. Moksha and her friends travel toward Agharta. Irendri’s men try to capture them, for nefarious magical reasons. There’s a visit to Irendri’s creepy fortress, Yodha fights a bunch of guys, we find out what happened to Priya, and it all leads to a dramatic confrontation on the night of the lunar eclipse.

Once Upon A Warrior has a number of clear clear influences, and doesn’t make much effort to hide any of them. Despite this, the film has a very consistent tone throughout; it feels like a modern day cinematic fairy tale. Despite the epic quest trappings and the nation in peril, the stakes are mostly personal, and the star-crossed lovers really are at the center of everything. It’s the kind of story you’d expect from one of Disney’s better animated features, in fact; perhaps that’s not too surprising, since this is billed as Disney’s first live-action Indian film.

Once Upon A Warrior even looks like an animated movie brought to life, with rich colors and gorgeous, improbable landscapes. The special effects are literally fantastic; they’re not always convincing, but they are always magical and imaginative.

Once Upon A Warrior does have some flaws. It takes a while to get really started, and the plot is overshadowed by the atmosphere; as fantasy epics go, there isn’t much plot at all, really. Our heroic band consists of Yodha, Moksha, and Druki, and Druki mostly stands around looking surprised.

I don’t know that anything about this movie is really groundbreaking; the film pulls from a number of sources to create a story that feels comfortably familiar. On the other hand, it looks fantastic, and features a delightfully over-the-top villain, so I don’t really mind.