What I say three times is true.

Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla rose to stardom thanks to their performance as star-crossed lovers in Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak,  and they spent much of their early careers playing opposite each other as star-crossed lovers.  Love Love Love (1989) is one of those movies.

Perennial bad guy Gulshan Grover plays Vicky, son of local Don Sudhir Bhai (Raza Murad).  Vicky behaves like the wicked prince in a fairy story; he's tremendously entitled, cruel for cruelty's sake, and he does not think things through.  In theory, Vicky is a college student, and he introduced himself as "The Don of the college," but he spends most of his time going into dance clubs and humiliating everyone who annoys him.  (Grover was thirty four when this move came out, and he looks it.)  naturally, Vicky has a small coterie of sidekicks and hangers on, the most important being his girlfriend Reema (Juhi Chawla) and her brother Mahesh (Anand Balraj).  

Reema is visibly annoyed by Vicky's casual cruelty, but she never does anything about it.  And then one night, as Vicky and the gang are mugging an old man for money to buy a VCR (they can easily afford it, but Vicky gets bored if an activity doesn't involve hurting people) they are interrupted by good Samaritan Amit (Aamir Khan), who studies at the same college.  Vicky is obviously furious, but Reema is delighted, even if she still doesn't do anything about it.

And then . . .  well, it's Eighties Bollywood, so the romance is going to be weird for a while.  Vicky and his goons steal Amit's new bike, ride it around the campus (this time Reema is an active participant) and then destroy it in front of him.  (Reema did not participate in that part.)  Amit bumps into Reema at a disco and forces her to dance with him, which is seriously not cool.  Vicky arrives and makes some threats, and it's all kind of pointless because the actual plot hasn't kicked off yet.

The college principal (Chandrashekhar) selects Amit and Reema to represent he college at a quiz competition in Delhi.  He also insists that they travel by train together, unsupervised, in order to build team spirit.  That gives the young soon-to-be star crossed lovers a chance to get to know one another on equal terms, without either one coming across as a creep.  There's definitely a spark there.

Reema and Amit return victorious to Mumbai, and their classmates pressure Amit to hold a party the tiny house where he lives with his taxi driver father (Dalip Tahil).   Reema promises to come, but she literally cannot get away.  During the next attempted date she has to attend a boring cocktail party with her father (Om Shivpuri) and Vicky's father.  Amit tries to arrange more dates, and she never manages to show up, leaving his friends to darkly mutter that "rich girls can't be trusted."  

Finally Reema manages to sneak away long enough to meet Amit at the Disco Dandiya, and they declare their love for one another.  Amit and Reema make a plan to secretly meet every morning while jogging, And then Reema ruins everything by telling Vicky and her father that she's been meeting Amit, which leads to more threats, more beatings, and Vicky's terrifying father meeting Amit's father to make threats.  Amit is a dutiful son, so he agrees to leave Reema and go away when his father asks him to.

Reema is sad for a while, then she takes the initiative and tracks Amit down, leading to more happy dancing and frolicking.  Sudhir Bhai is forced to elevate his threats - either Reema agrees to marry Vicky, or he will have Amit killed; the fact that he makes this threat as they watch one of his goons try to run Amit over makes it especially convincing, so Reema agrees.

And then Vicky ruins everything, because he does not think things through.  He makes a point of taking Reema with him to deliver a wedding invitation and to invite Amit to attend Reema's birthday party, where the engagement will be formally announced.  The evil plan is to insult Amit so much that he doesn't even think of approaching Reema ever again, and Vicky and his friends are a bit mean, but the Reema publicly sings about her love for Amit to the tune of "It's A Sin" by the Pet Shop Boys, dances with Amit in front of everyone, and ends by kissing him on the lips, which is humiliation stacked on humiliation for Vicky.  The good guys escape, the bad guys are out for blood, and it all leads to a climactic showdown in an unlicensed Disney theme park.

There's a reason why I started by talking about Vicky rather than the actual protagonists.  He's a much bigger presence in the film than the usual unsuitable suitor.  That's an interesting choice, and it would be more effective if Vicky weren't so cartoonishly evil.  He starts chewing the scenery the moment he appears on screen, nearly every line is delivered with a snarl, and because he starts by threatening violence the moment he's thwarted in any way, he really doesn't have much room to escalate.  Gulshan Grover is great at playing scenery chewing villains, but this movie gives him more scenery to chew than usual, and it's a bit of a struggle for him to get through it all.

Aamir and Juhi have a bit more to work with, especially Juhi.  Reema has to walk a careful tightrope at the beginning, because she needs to be at least somewhat complicit in Vicky's bad deeds without becoming totally unlikable.  Reema also has more agency than a lot of the Bollywood heroines of this era, and even gets to join in on the last fight scene.  Amit is a more solid and traditional character, but he gets plenty of chance for heroic speeches and noble self sacrifice.

All that said, this is Eighties Bollywood, and it does showcase some of the flaws of that era.  The incidental music is largely lifted from western movies, with the Star Wars theme playing at key points and a chase scene accompanied by the music from Chariots of Fire.  The movie is set at a college campus where nobody ever goes to class.  The plot goes around and around in circles, especially as the film approaches the climax.  And unfortunately Vicky does end the movie threatening to rape Reema, which is a jarring shift in tone form the rest of the movie, making those scenes grimy and horrible, rather than the fun melodramatic romp it had been up to that point.

On the other hand, the hero's sister makes it through the entire movie without anything terrible happening to her, and Bob Christo, one of my favorite Bollywood henchmen, makes a brief cameo as an assassin named Bob.

There's certainly less police brutality than in Singham.

Long time readers will know that I have a theory about film: any any premise can be turned into a comedy by adding the words "Wackiness ensues" to the description.  In the case of Son of Sardaar (2012), wackiness ensues when a man seeks to escape a murderous blood feud by hiding out in the house of his family's sworn enemies.

Jassi Randhawa (Ajay Devgn) is the titular Son of Sardaar, a freespirited Punjabi man now living a carefree life in London.  The opening musical number and subsequent fight scene serve to establish the important facts about his character in a hurry: he is serious about his culture and faith, he tells terrible jokes, he believes in peace but is very good at beating people up, and he is best friends with Pathan (Salman Khan), who will not be sticking around for the rest of the movie.  

 Jassi receives a letter informing him that his late father left him some land back home in India, which the government would like to buy.  Before Jassi leaves, though, Pathan's father delivers some important exposition: the Randhava family had been involved in a brutal blood feud with the neighboring Sandhus, Jassi's father was killed by the Sandhus, but killed their family head in the process, and the Sandhus will not rest until the Randhavas have been wiped out entirely.  Jassi laughs it off.  It's been twenty five years, and surely the Sandhus have forgotten the whole blood feud business by now.

Meanwhile, in India, a quick scene with the Sandhus establishes the important facts about their family: they have not forgotten the whole blood feud business, current family head Billu (Sanjay Dutt) has vowed not to marry his beloved Pammi (Juhi Chawla) until Jassi has been killed, Billu is terrifyingly good at beating people up, and the family takes the laws of hospitality very seriously.  They won't harm a guest while they are in the house no matter how much they deserve it, but the moment they step out, they are fair game.  Still, they are a nice family apart from the bouts of violence.

On the train to Punjab, Jassi meets Sukh (Sonakshi Sinha), and is immediately smitten.  She is at least somewhat amused by his antics, so there's a chance there.  Naturally, Sukh is actually Billu's (much) younger cousin, but the pair are separated before either of them can figure out the connection.

Jassi gets a ride from Billu's brother Tony (Mukul Dev.)  Tony does figure out Jassi's identity, but by that time Jassi has gone on his way, and all of Tony's repeated murder attempts end in cheap slapstick and an oblivious Jassi wandering off.  Jassi meets Billu and is invited to the family home, and it is only after he is safely inside that Tony manages to tell Billu who Jassi is, and Jassi figures out where he is.

Drama is all about conflict, and there's a clear conflict here.  Billu wants to kill Jassi and fulfill his oath and finally marry Pammi, but he can't as long as Jassi is in the house.  Jassi would like to not be murdered, and would also like to put an end to the feud if at all possible and while he's making a wishlist, marrying Sukh would be pretty great as well, so he needs to stay in the house, whether that means faking an injury or charming the members of the family who don't actively want to kill him yet.  And Pammi and Sukh are both active characters with their own goals that they work toward; granted, in both cases that goal is "Find a way to marry the man I love," but they actively pursue that goal instead of waiting around as a prize to be won.

Except the movie is not a drama, it's a strange genre hybrid, a blood-soaked revenge farce.  The tone is consistent throughout - even the flashback to the murderfest of twenty five years ago has a pretty good sight gag - but it's distracting.  The brain has to reconcile the slapstick comedy and light romance with Sanjay Dutt the lovable goofball with a dozen men with swords camped out to kill our hero the moment he steps outside.

Still, a movie can coast a long way on charm, and this movie has a great cast with charm to spare.  Sonakshi Sinha has spunk, Ajay Devgn manages to be both funny and badass, Sanjay Dutt has Munnabhai-like charm while being considerably more bloodthirsty than he was as Munnabhai, and Juhi Chawla is, well, Juhi Chawla.  And "Don't waste your life on a pointless blood feud, even if you took a vow" is something we all need to be reminded of every now and then.

A role that's so nice, they cast it twice.

 When Bollywood legend Rishi Kapoor died in 2020, shooting for his last film, Sharmaji Namkeen (2022) was still incomplete.  Rather than scrap the movie, the producers considered a number of frankly terrible ideas such as creating a CGI Rishi Kapoor or putting Kapoor's son Ranbir in prosthetics to play the part, but instead veteran character actor Paresh Rawal stepped in to complete the missing scenes.  The end result is a movie with two leading men both playing the same role, and it works better than you might think.

Our hero is Brij Gopal Sharma (Kapoor and Rawal), who has just been forced to take early retirement from the kitchen appliance company where he worked.  Sharma is not cut out for sitting at home and watching TV, so after driving the entire neighborhood crazy with home improvement projects, he spends some time bouncing from hobby to hobby and job interview to job interview.  His only real passion is cooking, but when he suggests opening up a small stall, his older son Rinku (Suhail Nayyar) shuts down the idea immediately; it's not a respectable position for someone of their social class.

However, when his old friend Chadda (Satish Kaushik) asls him to cook for a relative's religious function, Sharma agrees.  he cooks wonderfully, the people are all nice, everything is great . . . until Sharma catches a glimpse of the guests and realizes that he's not cooking for a religious function, he's cooking for a kitty party!  (A kitty party is a mostly Indian tradition, one part social outing and one part savings club, in which a group of (usually) women pool money in a "kitty", and then they take turns every month using the money to host a party for the group.)

Sharma is horrified, leaves immediately, and makes polite excuses whenever the women call him and try to hire him again.  But it was nice to have something to do, and even nicer to be treated with respect.  And he's intrigued by one of the women in the group, the beautiful, sophisticated, and widowed Veena (Juhi Chawla.)  So he goes back again.  And again.  Soon he's a fixture at the kitty parties, but he's still careful to keep his new career secret from his family and friends.

Sharma's not the only one keeping secrets.  Younger son Vincy (Taaruk Raina) has been focused on his dream of dancing, and has failed his college exams.  And Rinku is in a relationship with coworker Urmi (Isha Talwar).  They're practically engaged, and Rinku has already made a large down payment on an apartment, but the corrupt developer seems intent on keeping the money without letting the young couple move in.  Everybody's tired, and everybody's stressed.  And then a family friend finds footage of Sharma dancing at a kitty party on Facebook.

This is a very Rishi Kapoor movie. The man was a versatile actor, and he's put in some strong performances in a variety of roles, but even before he aged out of playing romantic leads his public image has always been cuddly and avuncular.  Sharmaji Namkeen has a charming, cozy ambiance that plays into that image.  There's conflict, but it's mostly conflict between people who love each other, and we know they'll make it work in the end.  The closest the movie gets to social controversy is its portrayal of kitty parties as a space where women can express themselves without worrying about their assigned societal roles.

It takes a little while to get used to the dual lead actors alternating scenes, but it's not as distracting as you might think.  It helps that Paresh Rawal doesn't look very much like Rishi Kapoor and isn't trying to do any sort of Rishi Kapoor impression, he's just  playing to the emotional truth of the character in his own fashion, a bit less cuddly and a bit more exasperated.  It lets Kapoor and Rawal fade into the background and lets Sharma take center stage.

This is not a groundbreaking movie, but it's a fun and comfortable movie, and casting Juhi Chawla as the female romantic lead in a new movie will always get bonus points from me.

Turns out a serpent's tooth is also pretty sharp.

Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, Mansoor Khan's story of star-crossed young lovers, was a huge success, launching Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla into stardom.  Naturally, Bollywood producers set about trying to recreate the magic, and Khan and Chawla were cast in a number of films about young lovers with varying degrees of star-crossedness.  Results were . . . mixed.  Tum Mere Ho (1990), for instance, is notoriously bad.  On the other hand, it's a schmaltzy melodrama with Juhi Chawla, an angry naga, and black magicand I like all those things, so if anybody's going to like the movie, it'll be me.  Let's dig in.

When wealthy Thakur Choudhary (Sudhir Pandey) catches sight of a Naagmani (a magical gem set in a cobra's head) he is consumed by a Tolkeinian desire to possess it, so he kills the snake.  Unfortunately, the snake's mother (Kalpana Iyer) is nearby.  Choudhary pleads for mercy, telling her he was blinded by greed when he casually murdered her son, but for some reason she is not impressed.  She vows revenge, and later bites Choudhary's four year old son, apparently killing the boy.  The parents sadly set the body adrift on the river, while the angry snake watches.

I say that the boy was "apparently killed, because he's pulled from the river by Baba (possibly Ishrat Ali, but the IMDB entry isn't really clear), a kindly snake charmer and black magician.  Baba draws the poison out of the boy's body using his magical powers, then decides to raise him as his on son and apprentice, because, hey, free son!  he names the boy Shiva, and by the time Shiva has grown up to be played by Aamir Khan, he has mastered both his adopted father's crafts.

 

While performing at a village fair, Shiva catches a glimpse of Paro (Juhi Chawla), daughter of the wealthy and powerful Choudhry Charanjit Singh (Ajit Vachani).  Shiva is immediately smitten, and surprisingly, so is Paro!  When they meet later, she asks him to sjhow her his snake-charming technique, and soon they're wandering the hills together, singing about love and occasionally getting caught in the rain.

 

It can't last.  When Paro's father finds out, he hires another black magician (Anirudh Agarwal) to deal with the upstart.  Shiva easily wins the magical duel, so Singh decides on a more direct approacjh; he gathers a band of ruffians and has them beat up Shiva, but before he can shoot the boy, Baba arrives and pleads for his son's life, promising that he won't come around Paro anymore.

 

When Paro finds out about the beating and attempted murder, she's furious and confronts her father, but her mother takes her aside and explains just how starcrossed she actually is.  It's not just that Shiva is a poor traveler and therefore not husband material; Paro's marriage has already been arranged.  In fact, she's already married, and has been since they were small children.  In fact, she's already a widow, since her husband was bitten by a snake and died soon after the wedding.  (And at this point you've probably already figured out how the story will end.) In fact, in a few days Paro will go to her in-laws home to live out the rest of her days in miserable solitude as a widow, because there's no possible way she could ever remarry.  Paro agrees that this is completely logical, and meets Shiva one last time.  She pretends that she never loved him, he lashes out angrily, and stalks off, apparently never to return.  Paro makes the sad journey to her in-laws' home, content that at least Shiva will be safe.

 

Of course, Shiva discovers that she lied and really does love him almost immediately, so he convinces Baba to move the entire band north, ostensibly in search of better snakes, but mostly so that he can stalk Paro.  He hangs around outside her house, playing snake charming music, hoping to draw her out.  It works.  Shiva suggests that maybe Paro shouldn't have to spend her whole life alone and miserable because of a marriage that she didn't consent to and wasn't even told about for years.  Paro is torn. She really does love Shiva, but nothing has really changed, and they still can't be together without leaving everything behind.

And then there's the angry snake lady.  When she discovers that the boy she bit all those years ago is still alive, she tries to finish the job, but Shiva is a powerful magician, so she can't get to him.  Paro, however, is not so well protected . . .

First things first. This movie is a product of the late eighties/early nineties Bollywood film industry, which means that the treatment of women is pretty bad.  Paro in particular is seemingly born to suffer, and she's betrayed and abused at various points in the film by pretty much everybody she loves, and that does include Shiva.  In the end everyone is forgiven because this is late eighties/early nineties Bollywood and the family unit must be preserved at all costs, but that doesn't make it okay.

On the other hand, Paro has a surprising amount of agency for a heroine of the period.  Shiva doesn't rescue her from her dismal life as a widow, he convinces her to rescue herself, and it's not a decision that comes quickly or easily.  Paro makes a choice, and it is definitely her choice.

Juhi does a fine job as the long-suffering Paro.  Snake movies are essentially a subgenre of supernatural melodrama, and they demand a kind of heightened reality in the performances.  Naturalistic acting wouldn't work at all.  Juhi commits, and so does Aamir; they are acting well for the genre of movie that they appear in.

So, does Tum Mere Ho deserve its bad reputation?  Maybe?  I'm pretty sure it's not a good movie.  It's dated, it's often silly, and it's certainly problematic, but I also found it compelling.  It really needs more snakes and a lot less suffering, though.

. . . is an ungrateful stepsibling.

David Dhawan is famous for directing a number of incredibly broad, incredibly formulaic comedies, often starring Govinda or the director's son, Varun Dhawan, and with further comic relief provided by some combination of Shakti Kapoor, Johny Lever, Kader Khan, and/or Paresh Rawal.  The movies are sometimes tasteless, predictably predictable, and irregularly funny, but when you watch a David Dhawan movie, you know what you're getting.  And then there is his first hit, Swarg (1990).  While Govinda and Paresh Rawal both have important roles, this is perhaps the least David Dhawany David Dhawan movie I have ever seen.

 Kumar (Rajesh Khanna) is a wealthy businessman with a large family, including his wife Janki (Madhavi) and much younger stepsiblings Ravi (Dilip Dhawan), Vikram (Raja Bundela), and Jyoti (Juhi Chawla), along with Ravi's wife Naina (Neena Gupta) and maybe Ravi and Naina have a son?  A kid shows up in a few scenes, but nobody ever really talks about him.  When his stepmother was dying, Kumar promised her that he would always take care of her children, and even took a vow that he would never have children of his own, a decision that I am sure will have no negative consequences.

And then there's Krishna (Govinda), the family servant.  Krishna was an orphan, taken in at a young age, and he views Kumar as a father, showing so much devotion that he;'s in danger of overdosing on filial piety.  Krishna is not a very good servant, but he is clever, loyal, and good at punching bad guys, skills which he puts to good use when rescuing Jyoti from a fate worse than death.  (It is nineties Bollywood, after all; you have to threaten the heroine with a fate worse than death at some point.)

 

In any case, it's a big, wonderful, loving family and everybody is so happy that they named the house "Swarg," because it is a heaven on Earth.  And then, Kumar wins the election to become president of the Mill Owners Association.  His predecessor Dhanraj (Paresh Rawal) is not happy, because he's been using the position to fill his own pockets for years, and he knows the scrupulously honest Kumar will not let the matter go.  Dhanraj sets out to ruin Kumar's happy home.

 

And he does!  It turns out that ruining people is surprisingly easy.  With the help of Nagpal (Bharat Kapoor), one of Kumar's employees, he manipulates Kumar into using the mansion as collateral to secure a large loan, a loan which becomes impossible to repay when the factory burns down.

Kumar is ruined overnight, and his stepbrothers reveal themselves to be selfish jerks who refuse to help the man who has supported them for so many years.  (Jyoti is played by Juhi Chawla and so remains virtuous.)  When Krishna has had enough and confronts them over their disloyalty, they frame him for stealing Jyoti's jewelry and he is thrown out of the house.  

 

Krishna travels to Bombay (the name won't officially change for another five years) and after a rough start, he meets a friend named Airport (Satish Kaushik), gets a job as a spot boy on a movie set, and accidentally becomes a rich and successful film star almost overnight.  Now that he has money and power and a loyal sidekick, Krishna returns home, determined to save his family, or at least avenge his fallen master.

Despite the different genre, David Dhawan still doesn't do subtle; this is drama rather than comedy, but it's still incredibly broad.  Dhanraj has two identifiable personality traits: he's evil, and he likes to remind people that he's from Gujurat.  Krishna is virtue personified.  Kumar is bound by his vow, and suffers nobly.  After the first half hour, nobody really has a chance to be funny, which is honestly a bit of a waste since half the cast have strong comedic chops; Juhi Chawla is right there, people!

 

The end result reminds me of a scaled down production of King Lear, swapping some of the play's cosmic nihilism for brightly colored dance numbers, because drama or no drama, Govinda is going to dance.  It's definitely not what I was expecting from David Dhawan.

Legal action!

 Bollywood is better known, but the Telugu film industry produces some of the most innovative and exciting films in India, often kicking off major cinematic trends for the subcontinent; Bollywood is still trying to make its own Baahubali, and many new Bollywood pictures are remakes of Tollywood films.  Tollywood has a reputation for films of epic scale and high quality . . . now.  Vicky Dada (1989) comes from a different time.

Vikram (Nagarjuna) is a young, idealistic law student.  He'd better be idealistic; his mother Srividya (Srividya), a judge, raised him to respect the law and seek justice whenever he can.  Vikram does have a bit of a temper, especially when his girlfriend Shyamlee (the incomparable Juhi Chawla) is threatrened.  But I'm sure this will have no negative consequences.

Shyamlee is called away to tend to her ailing sister in America.  Vikram graduates, and immediately begins work as a prosecutor.  His first case (tried in front of his mother, which is far from the worst conflict of interest in a courtroom scene in this movie) involves Savitri (Radha), who has been accused of prostitution.  Vikram wins easily, because he is good at lawyering, but when he realizes that Savitri was framed as part of a land grab masterminded by corrupt politician Ranganatha Rao (Ranganath), he pays her fine and uses his lawyering skills to stop the land grab.

Thwarted, Rao calls on crimelord Prabhakar (Tiger Prabhakar) for help.  Prabhakar sends his goons, one of them kills a guy, and Vikram vows to bring the killer to justice.  Prabhakhar uses his corrupt influence to threaten the eyewitnesses, and the goon is set free.  Vikram doesn't give up, though.  He and his sister, the plucky aspiring reporter Rekha (Vara Lakshmi), team up to find out more about him.  Unfortunately, Rekha decides to break into Prabhakar's evil lair and film him.  She's caught and kidnapped, but not before she mails a cassette tape to Vikram, revealing what's happened.

Vikram has Prabhakar arrested, and prosecutes the case.  (Again, in front of his mother, which also means that both the prosecutor and judge are related to the victim.  And yet that's still not the worst example of conflict of interest in the movie.)  Prabhakar gets off, thanks to some genuinely ridiculous legal trickery, and because Vikram was provoked into throttling the defense counsel, he's suspended.  Vikram declares that he doesn't want to be a lawyer anymore anyway, and runs off to become a violent (but stylish) vigilante.

Vigilante stuff happens.  Vikram and his dog wage war on Prabhakar's criminal empire, beating up vast quantities of henchmen and picking off the gang's lieutenants one by one, then using his lawyer skills to get off scot-free. Yes, I'm kind of glossing over the vigilante action, but the movie does as well, because surprise!  This is actually a romance!  Shyamlee returns from America and wants to continue their relationship, but Vikram dispenses justice on a freelance basis now, and feels he no longer has anything to offer her, so he pushes her away.  Savitri, meanwhile, has fallen hard for the man who has saved her so many times.  It's a good old fashioned love triangle, with occasional action scenes.

About halfway through Vicky Dada, I realized that it's probably not a very good movie.  The plot doesn't really make sense, the action scenes are enthusiastic but sloppy, the court scenes are enthusiastic but really sloppy, the dance numbers are phantasmagoric, and why does Prabhakhar have a jeep with an infinite number of rockets, anyway?  More seriously, the movie indulges in some of my least favorite eighties Indian movie tropes, particularly the hero's sister meeting a dire end in order to motivate the hero.

And yet, bad movie or not, I was glues to the screen the whole time.  Maybe it's the fantastic cast, who treated the wobbly material with a respect that it may or may not have deserved.  Maybe it's the sheer enthusiasm of the thing.  Maybe I just wanted to see what the hell the dancers would be wearing in the next number.  Whatever the reason, Vicky Dada is possibly bad but definitely watchable.

No, I mean it. Don't stand so close to me.

It's no secret that I love Juhi Chawla.  That's why I decided to watch Andaz (1994.)  Yes, it was directed by David Dhawan, who is known for incredibly broad and sometimes tasteless comedies and directs with all the subtlety and grace of a brick to the head, but it's a Juhi Chawla movie!  How bad could it be?

Ajay Saxena (Anil Kapoor) is a new teacher at the S. T. School, his alma mater, run by a kind, dedicated, and apparently nameless Principal (Kader Khan).  I think he teaches history, but it's hard to tell, because he spends most of the time dealing with the antics of his unruly students.  There are a lot of them, but only two are really important: Jaya (Karisma Kapoor) and Shagun (Shakti Kapoor).  Jaya is brilliant, talented, and an incorrigible prankster, while Shagun is the absolute worst. He actually attended school with Ajay but kept getting held back far past the point of plausibility, and now he is a lazy, surly, deeply annoying adult who expects special treatment from his old classmate and is angry when he doesn't get it.

During a school picnic, Ajay manages to win over his students the old-fashioned way, by beating up a terrorist in front of them.  (There's a whole terrorist subplot, but it's not that interesting and doesn't really become important until the climax.)  However, Shagun was not on the picnic, since Ajay had suspended him for being the worst, so he is not won over.  Shagun takes his revenge by planting fake love notes which are supposedly from Jaya, and when Ajay "returns" them to her, she thinks they are love notes from the teacher.  Before the confusion can be cleared up, rumors are flying all around the school, and even some of the other teachers join in mocking and harassing the unfortunate pair.

Despite being the worst, Shagun eventually confesses, and Ajay and Jaya apologize to one another.  She suggests that, since their reputations are already ruined, they should go ahead and get married.  Ajay is rightly horrified by the idea (and so am I.  What the hell, movie!) but Jaya is persistent.  She leaves the hostel and takes a room next door to his house, and becomes such a nuisance that Ajay leaves home.

He comes back with his new wife, Saraswati (Juhi Chawla, finally!), a local orphan.  He married Saraswati in a hurry, not realizing that she can't speak English, can't sing, can't cook, and can barely read; at the orphanage they taught her to just smile and say yes when her husband asks her something she doesn't understand, and Ajay is apparently bad at asking follow up questions.  Fortunately for her, Jaya is there to teach her everything she needs to know, and the two women quickly become very close.

(As an aside, while she's poorly educated, Saraswati does seem to have a natural talent for the marital arts, since she and Ajay spend an awful lot of time canoodling.  Like a lot of Bollywood movies of the time, the film cuts to a song whenever the characters are about to get frisky, but in Andaz the lyrics are unusually filthy; nothing actually explicit, but there are many references to trains and overheating engines and banging on the door.)

The plot makes it sound like Andaz is a psychological thriller about a man whose life is torn apart by a deranged stalker, but no.  This is a romantic comedy.  Jaya is presented as a wonderful, loving person who's determined to land her man, and as the perfect romantic partner for Ajay, if it weren't for that pesky "under-aged student" thing.  Karisma Kapoor was twenty when this movie came out, but she's very clearly playing younger here, with glasses, pigtails, a breathy little girl voice, and some very short skirts.  It's creepy.

But even setting aside the creep factor, the movie is a slog.  The students are supposed to be charming scamps, but they come across as sadistic jerks.  Every second that Shakti Kapoor is onscreen is excruciating.  The terrorist subplot provides the occasional bit of dramatic relief, an escape from the oppressive comedy, but the action scenes are not that interesting and drag on too long.

And Juhi?  She's fine.  "Uneducated but spunky village belle" is a stock part that she plays really well, but I can see her play that part in better movies than this one.

I was kind of expecting the Spanish Inquisition.

Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla got their big break  in Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, so the producers of Daulat Ki Jung (1992) don't waste much time in establishing the premise of the movie; they assume the audience is already familiar with Khan and Chawla as star-crossed lovers kept apart by their feuding families.  The two houses both alike in dignity are headed by Bhushan Chaudhry (Shafi Inamdar) and Mr. Agarwal (Tiku Talsania.)  The feuding fathers are rival builders, both attempting to conclude a shady real estate deal with Haribhai (Paresh Rawal.)

Their children, Rajesh (Khan) and Asha (Chawla) attend the same college, and they are secretly already in love.  Everything is fine until the young lovers are cast as young lovers in the school play, and Asha's father Agarwal happens to attend the performance.  He is instantly (and correctly) convinced that the pair are really in love, so he hires a goon named Zorro to keep the pair apart.  Zorro fails, because he's an idiot who can't help playing with his suspenders whenever he's on screen.

The next step is to lock Asha in her room, which prompts Rajesh to rescue her.  The two drive off in search of the nearest temple so they can get married, and that is where the plot starts to go off the rails.  They run into a wounded man on a motorcycle (literally), and while taking him to the hospital are surrounded by a motorcycle gang led by Rana (Kiran Kumar.)  The bikers are in search of a treasure map, and since the wounded man has conveniently died,  they are convinced that the young lovers have it.  Asha finds the map, and Rajesh memorizes it (it's established early in the film that he has an eidetic memory) and eats it, forcing the bikers to keep the pair alive if they want to find the treasure.

And the plot goes a little further off the rails when it turns out that there are two criminal gangs, also both alike in dignity, looking for the treasure.  The other gang is led by Mike (Dalip Tahil), and the two gangs are about to start killing each other when they are interrupted by K.K. (Kader Khan), an eccentric assassin who sleeps in a coffin pulled by a donkey.  K.K. invites himself along on the treasure hunt, and by the time the little group stumbles across a tribal village filled with ridiculous stereotypes, the plot has left the tracks behind and is running screaming into the sunset.

I'm not sure what to make of Daulat Ki Jung.  It's definitely a movie, in which events occur and dialogue is spoken.  The early part of the movie is rather charming; Rajesh and Asha are surprisingly level-headed for star-crossed lovers, and the school play makes some amusing references to Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak.  At its best, the rest of the movie is pleasantly unhinged, with Kader Khan in particular infusing a great deal of charisma into a very silly role.  But the tribal stuff is just embarrassing, with ooga booga gibberish dialogue and the threat of human sacrifice, which is thwarted by a combination of Asha dancing and the men exploiting primitive superstition.  I've seen more nuanced portrayals of tribal life in old Tarzan movies.

Tribal nonsense aside, the things that happen are at least interesting, but by the end I was greeting each new plot twist with a hearty "Sure.  Why not."  Still, in the end, this is absolutely a movie that I have seen.

How sharper than a serpent's tooth . . .

Bhagyawan (1994) has an unusually ornate plot, even for the early Nineties.  As the film opens, hard-working factory worker and family man Dhamraj (Pran) returns home from work only to discover that his sister Pushpa (Rubina) is pregnant.  When Dhamraj learns that the father is his boss Hira (Ranjeet), he's furious.  He drags Pushpa to Hira's house and demands that Hira do the honorable thing.  Hira laughs in his face, Pushpa throws herself in front of a bus (spattering her brother with unconvincing blood), and Dhamraj and Hira both swear eternal vengeance on one another.  Unfortunately Hira is a bit better positioned to carry out his vengeance; soon Dhamraj is penniless and out of work.  He's so desperate that he decides to poison himself and his family, but before he can carry out the plan, an adorable orphan steals the poisoned food.  Dhamraj chases the kid down and destroys the food, and in the process discovers a winning lottery ticket.  He decides to adopt the obviously lucky kid, and that's all in the first ten minutes or so of the movie.

Twenty years later, Dhamraj owns a successful chemical business, while the orphan has grown into Amar (Govinda), an incorruptible police officer, devoted son, and fantastic dancer.  Dhamraj's wife Savitri (Asha Parekh) is eager to marry Amar off, but he's not really interested in anyone . . . until he meets Geeta (Juhi Chawla), a quick-witted con artist and part-time Robin Hood who cares for a band of orphans with the help of her partner Jhoney (Johny Lever.)  They meet, they fall in love, they get married, then he brings her home to meet the parents.

Unfortunately, Dhamraj's other children are not as nice.  Widowed daughter-in-law Renu (Aruna Irani) is mostly petty, cynical and greedy in ways which do not impact the plot, but oldest son Vishwas (Kirti Kumar) is embezzling from the family business, spurred on by his equally terrible wife Alka (Sripradha), who has a dark secret of her own.  Youngest son Kishan (Suraj Chaddha) is really just an amiable idiot, but he's in love with Radha (Shobha Singh), and the crazy kids decide to fake a pregnancy in order to convince her father to allow them to marry.  Unfortunately, her father is Hira, and when Hira visits Dhamraj's house in order to arrange the marriage . . . things don't go well.  And Hira is still much better at the vengeance thing.

And from this point on, the movie is basically King Lear.  Amar's forthright nature (and propensity for stupid vows) gets him kicked out of the house, while Hira exploits the other siblings' worst character traits in order to bring ruin to Dhamraj's home.  Fortunately, this is still Bollywood, which is known for its wild swings in tone and genre, which means a happy ending is still a possibility.  (You'd think having a skilled con artist in the family would be useful, but no, most problems are solved by Amar punching people.)

Bhagyawan is very much a product of the early Nineties.  The plot is much more complicated than it needs to be, the tone shifts back and forth with all the vigor of an inflatable tune man in front of a car dealership, and the action scenes are trying desperately to be like a Jackie Chan movie without Jackie Chan.  Still, the movie stars a number of actors that I quite like, and also Govinda.  Pran is particularly well cast, giving the part of embattled patriarch a solemn dignity and a playful spark.  Juhi Chawla is splendid as the cheery con artist, and frankly a bit wasted as the dutiful daughter in law.  And Johny Lever is relatively restrained here; there's some of his trademark mugging for the camera during some of the early con artist scenes, but Juhi is mugging right along with him, and later in the film he's just a loyal and surprisingly helpful friend.  The movie is reasonably entertaining in its own right, but perhaps more interesting as a look into Bollywood's past.

You know, for kids.

I have very eclectic tastes when it comes to Indian cinema, but I have to admit I've got a  soft spot for the Bollywood romantic comedies of the nineties and early oughts. They really don't make them like that any more, but luckily for me, they made a lot of them like that at the time, and I've got a backlog of movies I haven't seen yet. I can scratch Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke (1993) off the list. 

After the death of his sister, Rahul Malhotra (Aamir Khan) has taken charge of both the family garment factory and her three children, Vicky (Shahrokh Barucha), Sunny (Khunal Khemu, who years later went on to co-write and star in the slacker zombie comedy Go Goa Gone), and Muni (Baby Ashrafa).  Rahul is basically a good guy who's trying his best in a difficult situation, and the kids are little hooligans, who keep pelting the servants with eggs.  Clearly Rahul needs help, and he's not going to get it from Maya (Navneet Nishan), an old college friend who clearly would like to be more, but doesn't want to deal with the children.

Across town, Vaijanti Iyer (Juhi Chawla) has her own problems.  Her traditional Brahmin father (K. D. Chandran) is determined to marry her off to someone of her own caste, but the best he's been able to find is an oily dancer (Veeru Krishnan), to whom she takes an instant dislike.  Vaijanti runs away and hides out in a nearby fair.  Meanwhile, Rahul's charges have also crept out of the house to go to the fair.  They meet Vaijanti, and after some hijinks, the theft of a harmonica, and an impromptu musical number, they become fast friends. 

Since Vaijanti has nowhere else to go, the children decide to sneak her into the house, without telling Uncle Rahul.  Now you may think you know where this plot is going, but you are completely correct.  There are humorous misunderstandings galore, followed by valuable life lessons and our young attractive protagonists falling in love and not bothering to say anything.

Meanwhile, cartoonishly evil businessman Bijlani (Dalip Tahil) has placed an order for 100,000 shirts, an order which Rahul's late brother-in-law has failed to deliver because he died.  According to the terms of the contract the brother-in-law signed, if the shirts are not delivered in fifteen days, Bijlani will take possession of the factory and the family home.  (That is some contract.)  Bijlani is willing to be merciful, but only if Rahul agrees to marry Maya, who happens to be Bijlani's daughter.

Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke was an enormous hit when it was released, and I can see why.  There are no  real surprises here, but that's part of the charm.  This is a movie that chooses its formula and then executes it well.  The leads are charming, the villain daintily nibbles on the scenery, the gratuitous comic relief (Mushtaq Khan) is only kind of annoying, and Juhi wears an array of dowdy dresses in a rainbow of pastel colors, as if a closet full of Sunday dresses and a basket of Easter candy were fused together in a transporter accident.  It may sound like I'm damning with faint praise here, but I love this stuff.  It's cinematic comfort food.

Bhooty Call - Om Shanti Om

Unlike most of this month's movies, Om Shanti Om (2007) is not a horror movie in any way, shape or form.  It's a masala flick, a heady mix of comedy, romance, reincarnation revenge melodrama, and enthusiastic celebration of all things Bollywood.  It makes the cut because it also features the rare Reverse Scooby Doo, in which our scrappy heroes fake a haunting in order to scare Old Man Mehra into confessing to a murder.

Om Prakash Makhija (Shahrukh Khan) is a "junior artist", an extra who makes his living through bavkground parts in the glsmourous world of 1970's Bollywood.  He has a loyal best friend, Pappu (Shreyas Talpade), a loving and overdramatic mother (Khiron Kher), and a dream.  One day he will be a big star, live in a big house, and get to meet Shanti (Deepika Padukone), the famous actress that he worships from afar. 

 Om gets the chance to meet Shanti sooner than he expected, when there's a fire on set and he leaps through the flames to rescue her.  She's grateful, and agrees to spend one evening with him.  With Pappu's help, he pulls out all the stops, and arranges a magical evening on an empty set.  Shanti is delighted, and they part as friends.

But Shanti has a secret; she's secretly married to producer Mukesh Mehra (Arjun Rampal).  When Om finds out, he's heartbroken, but lets her go and, after a sad song, throws himself into his acting.

Unfortunately, Mukesh also has a secret: he's engaged to another producer's daughter, and can't have Shanti around to spoil things.  She pleads with him to reconsider, but it goes badly.  Really badly.

Mukesh burns the set down with Shanti inside, then as he leaves sends some goons to make sure she doesn't escape.  Om turns up at just the right time, tries to save her, is beaten by the goons, burned, blown up, and then hit by a car.  he dies.

And thirty years later, Om Kapoor is a big star living in a big house.  Life is great, apart from his severe pyrophobia and the crazy old lady who keeps showing up at his film shoots claiming to be his mother. 

And then Om goes to a film shoot at an abandoned studio that burned down thirty years ago, and meets his father's old friend Mukesh, and the memories of his last life all come flooding back.  He tracks down his previous mother and Pappu, and they come up with a plan.  Om will recruit Mukesh to produce the film he abandoned thirty years ago, then they will use a duplicate Shanti to convince him he's being haunted, driving him to confess to her murder.  And soon enough they find their duplicate Shanti when clumsy, start struck Sandy (also Deepika Padukone) auditions for the lead.

Writer-director Farah Khan clearly loves Bollywood, and this movie is stuffed with all the things she loves about it.  In all my years of watching Bollywood, this is the Bollywoodest bit of Bollywood that I have ever witnessed.  And it is well made.  Khan made her name as a choreographer, and the dance numbers are frequent and lively and shot with a choreographer's eye; the last number recaps the entire plot so far in a splashy Broadway style number which doubles as an exemplar of "I know what you did and I'm gonna get ya" because she's Farah Khan, and she can do that. 

And then there's Shahrukh Khan.  Khan is a gifted actor, but he rarely has a chance to demonstrate that fact; people want to see his carefully crafted persona, and so that is what he delivers.  Fortunately, he's really, really good at delivering his carefully crafted persona, and Om Shanti Om was written to play to his strengths.  SRK deserves some special credit for the celebrity cameo-filled song "Deewangi Deewangi", which requires him to establish distinct relationships with thirty one different celebrities, all in the space of a few seconds each, while dancing.  He manages to communicate a lot through small gestures.

Om Shanti Om is packed with the things I love about late Nineties/early Oughts Bollywood, and manages to cram in most of my favorite actors in the bargain.  It's one Johny Lever cameo short of the full experience.

Community theatre saves lives.

One of the fringe benefits of watching a lot of movies made in a language I do not speak, from a country where I do not live, produced by an industry that I don't really follow, and advertised on TV channels that I do not watch is that often when I sit down to watch a movie, all I have to go on is the Netflix summary and maybe a few familiar names listed in the cast. Even today, I can be surprised. Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (2019) surprised the hell out of me. That said, I'll be spoiling all of the things, so if you want to be surprised too, stop reading, turn on Netflix, watch the movie, then come back. I'll still be here.

Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way first. There's a boy, struggling Delhi playwright Sahil (Rajkummar Rao). There's a girl, small town garment factory heiress Sweety (Sonam Kapoor.) Boy meets girl, girl tells boy his play sucks because he's obviously never been in love, boy helps girl escape from an angry man who turns out to be her brother Babloo (Abhishek Duhan). Boy discovers that girl is from a small town, and decides to produce his next play there, with local talent, assisted only by the theater company's caterer (and wannabe actress) Chatro (Juhi Chawla, who, I believe I have mentioned, is the absolute best.)

And at first, everything happens just as you would expect. Sweety's father, Bablbir (Anil Kapoor, Sonam's actual dad) is strict but loving. He also always wanted to be a chef, but was prevented by his own strict parents, so naturally Sahil meets him while he's cooking and assumes he's the family chef. Rumor has it that Sweety is in love with a Muslim man, and everybody (including Sahil) assumes that man is Sahil. It's not. Drama! Complications! Then Sahil confesses his love, and Sweety tells him the truth: she's not in love with a Muslim man, she's in love with a Muslim woman, Kuhu (Regina Cassandra.)

Sahil quickly gets over himself and resolves to help Sweety. (One of the more subtle Good Things about this movie is that this isn't presented as an act of amazing nobility or anything; Sahil's just being a decent person.) Of course, when all you have is a playwright, every problem looks like a stage, so Sahil comes up with the fairly terrible plan of producing a play about a young Indian woman played by Sweety in love with another woman, played by Kuhu. Sweety's family will be so moved by the play that they'll accept Sweety when she comes out to them. Things fall apart in short order, with Sweety outed ahead of schedule, but she insists on continuing the play anyway, not because she thinks it will help her now, but because it would have been a lifeline to her younger self, something to show her that she's not completely alone.

Ek Ladki is not much of a romance. Sweety and Kuhu are already in an established (if secret) relationship, and the onscreen relationship is incredibly chaste, to boot; there's some hugging and some earnest conversations, but Chatro and Balbir get to display a lot more chemistry. But that doesn't really matter, because Sweety is right; this is not a movie about romance, it's about representation. The emotional climax happens before the happy ending, during the play's performance, as the audience realizes what the play's actually about. Some people stay, some people storm out, but the camera lingers on one young girl's face as she suddenly realizes that she's not alone.

It was a nice surprise.

This wouldn't have been a problem if you'd just listened to your mom and became a wrestler . . .

A brief review of Duplicate: AAAHH THIS MOVIE IS SO DUMB YOU GUYS OH MY GOSH I LOVE IT!!!!!

Ahem. Let me try that again, without shouting.

Shah Rukh Khan plays Babloo, an awkward but good-hearted Punjabi man who dreams of becoming the world's greatest chef, despite his overbearing mother (Farida Jalal, who is the mom in every other movie from the Nineties) pressuring him to take up the family business of wrestling. Step one is to get a job in the local hotel, supervised by the beautiful but snooty Sonia Kapoor (Juhi Chawla), who does not speak English as well as she thinks she does. Babloo wins the job (and Sonia's heart) by doing this:

 

(Oh for the days when I was so young and innocent that I didn't get the eggplant joke.)

Shah Rukh Khan also plays Manu, a vicious gangster who just escaped from prison and is hell-bent on taking revenge on his former partners, with the help of an array of cunning disguises and his sometime girlfriend, bar dancer Lily (Sonali Bendre).

Now, while Shah Rukh is best known for playing lovable goofball romantic heroes, he rose to stardom playing the villain, particularly in Darr (where he played an obsessive stalker targeting Juhi Chawla, and managed to completely overshadow the hero) and Baazigar (where he was hell-bent on taking revenge with the help of an array of cunning disguises.) In other words, this movie is pitting the two halves of Shah Rukh's career against each other, and because the comedy is so broad, at times we've got Shah Rukh Khan as a parody of Shah Rukh Khan doing a bad Shah Rukh Khan impression pitted against Shah Rukh Khan as a parody of etc. etc. etc.

But you don't need to know any of that to enjoy the film. The dumb gags translate a lot better than clever wordplay would, so you just need to be able to put up with unabashed silliness as Shah Rukh chews his way through two heaping servings of scenery, Everybody's Mom Farida Jalal gets to beat people up for once, Juhi lights up the screen with that smile, and Sonali Bendre actually plays things completely straight, giving a somewhat nuanced portrayal of the bad girl with a heart of . . . maybe not gold, but there's definitely some silver in there. Also more fight choreography directly ripped off from John Woo.

Like A Boss

Bollywood is my go to example for it being okay to enjoy problematic things, as long as you keep an eye on why they're problematic. It's a big industry, so examples vary, but gender issues in particular are often glaring. I could write a paper. I'm sure many people have written papers, and they need to write more, since the examples are so numerous.

All of which is a long winded way of saying that I also re-watched Yes Boss. The other movies I've talked about so far both mix their genres; One 2 Ka 4 is Bollywood romance meets John Woo action flick, and Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani is Bollywood romance meets political thriller. Yes Boss, on the other hand, just doubles up on the frothy romance, focusing intently on one love triangle which isn't resolved until the very end of the film. It's all pretty standard stuff, except much more nuanced and layered and I'm honestly not sure how I'm supposed to feel about it.

Aditya Pancholi plays Siddharth, a wealthy (but married) playboy who uses his advertising agency mostly as an excuse to meet models. Juhi Chawla plays Seema, a middle class aspiring model with no money but big dreams, and Shah Rukh Khan plays Rahul, Siddharth's smooth talking personal assistant who alternates between helping his boss juggle his assorted mistresses and placate his wife, and caring for his own mother, who has a serious but unnamed heart condition. Rahul meets Seema, sparks fly, but they're both focused on their respective careers, and as Seema says, "Two unsuccessful people can never build a successful life." So that's that. Until Siddharth meets Seema, decides she's the girl he wants, and orders Rahul to use his usual bag of tricks to make that happen.

So. Boy met girl, boy lost girl, creepy millionaire decides he wants girl, and nice-but-ambitious boy helps him. Siddharth is manipulative as hell, staging a workplace confrontation so that he can be the sensitive boss who respects women and traditional Indian values, and it works! Seema's his girlfriend now! His wife catches him out shopping with Seema, so he lies and says that Seema is married to Rahul, thereby forcing the two nice young people into each other's company with a shared secret, at first to protect the boss, and then to protect Rahul's mother, who has returned from her pilgrimage and has a heart condition that could KILL HER if she gets any nasty surprises. It's all textbook romcom stuff.

The problem is that Siddharth is an utter monster who looms over the happy romcom proceedings like Dracula's taller brother. Take this peppy little musical number:

 

Fun, right? Siddharth has drugged Seema, and Rahul is desperately scrambling to get her home safely. That's probably the film's biggest bit of tonal weirdness, but that tension is always there, even in the happiest moments.

Now, that's not a bad thing; I like a bit of complexity in my schmaltzy romance. But it does raise questions about our hero. On the one hand, the film is very clear that Rahul doesn't know about the shadier stuff Siddharth has been doing, Siddharth is manipulating him at least as much as everybody else, if not more (and even has a scene to gloat about that fact), and Rahul does experience genuine remorse and undergoes a great deal of moral growth. On the other hand, while Siddharth's previous relationships were consensual (as far as we know), they were still based on a potent stew of power imbalance and lies, and Rahul was complicit as hell. I dunno.

At the very least, the movie has its heart in the right place. At the end, our hero rushes to confront the villain because it's the right thing to do, not because he expects to get the girl. (Of course he gets the girl, but he's not expecting it.) And Mom does not die, instead directly telling the audience that it's not Seema's fault she was lied to and manipulated, so don't be a sexist jerk.

Two Short Reviews

I've been treating myself to a sort of Shahrukh Khan-Juhi Chawla minimarathon. Movies:

One 2 Ka 4. Shahrukh Khan is Chow Yun-Fat in Neil Simon's The Star-Spangled Girl!

Basically nothing in this movie makes sense. SRK is Arun, a tough inner city cop. After his partner Javed dies, Arun is left to raise his orphaned children, and winds up asking Geeta, a spirited simple village girl he literally just met on the street a few days ago, to move in and help with the kids. Geeta is immediately smitten, Arun is notably less so, but their romantic comedy is complicated by Arun's feud with a local drug lord, the mystery of Javed's death, and the financial pressures of suddenly supporting four kids, a freelance housekeeper, and his old college roommate. There's a big twist, which makes even less sense, a lengthy series of gunfights which all seem to feature jumping sideways with both guns blazing, and a happy ending which really isn't earned at all, but despite all that the movie does a great job of blending the mid-nineties Bollywood romantic comedy aesthetic with John Woo-styled gunplay and crime drama.

Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani.

There's a lot in this movie which just hasn't aged well. SRK's character starts off as a philandering creep who refuses to take no for an answer (granted, the question is "Will you tell me your phone number?" rather than anything worse, but it does not bode well) and has a small house in the country which is filled with photos of scantily clad women, which is played as offbeat and charming rather than a massive red flag, and the less said about the "Let's dress up like Chinese stereotypes in order to fool the gangsters" scene, the better.

That said, once the heroic reporters and their plucky gangster sidekick break into the TV station in order to broadcast the TRUTH and the popular, peaceful uprising that follows? Solid gold. At its best, the movie is a chilling look at what happens when the media sides with a political party, and a stirring invocation of the power of truth. I'm not even Indian but I still feel a surge of patriotic pride when the people begin their march on the prison. It's so good that I'm willing to forgive the clumsy romantic banter at the very end.

But the Chinese scene is terrible, and everybody involved should take a part of every day to feel bad about it.

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.