All You Need Is Cash

 

 The Rutles: All You Need is Cash (1978) is a documentary chronicling the rise and fall of the Prefab Four, Liverpool's favorite sons, the Rutles.  Any resemblance to a real0world supergroup from the 1960s is entirely intentional.  I think the real message here is that it's easier to tell a coherent story about the rise and fall of the Beatles when they aren't real.

 

Eric Idle plays . . . well, Eric Idle plays a lot of parts in this, but he plays the Narrator, a documentarian chronicling the early days of the band.  Band members include Dirk McQuickly (Idle), Ron Nasty (Neil Innes), Stig O'Hara (Ricky Fataar), and Barry Wom (John Halsey), whose real name is of course Barrington Womble.  It is quickly obvious who is supposed to be who; Dirk is Paul, Nasty is John, Stig ("The Quiet One") is George, and Barry ("The Noisy One") is Ringo.  The boys meet in Liverpool, form a band, and after sharpening their act in Hamburg, they are discovered by music entrepreneur Leggy Mountbatten (Terence Bayler.)  The band becomes a huge hit, the idols of millions, and soon they are being chased around Britain and America by hordes of screaming girls.

All of which sounds very straightforward, and it is.  There are absurd moments in this section of the movie; Fifth Rutle Leppo Sitoncliff (Ollie Halsall) is last seen in Der Rat Keller in Hamburg, climbing into a small trunk with a smaller German woman.  But things get much weirder when the Rutles start making their own movies.  "A Hard Day's Rut" is just A Hard Day's Night with a silly title, "Ouch!" manages to be even more problematic than Help!, and "The Tragical History Tour" is . . . from the clip we see, the experience of watching "The Tragical History Tour" is almost exactly the same as watching The Magical Mystery Tour.  Some things are beyond parody. And, the little we see of "Yellow Submarine Sandwich" is more surreal and considerably less coherent than Yellow Submarine.

 The band begins to fall apart, gradually and then all at once.  The group[ establishes an organization called Rutle Corps, an apparently charitable organization which immediately loses enormous amounts of money, despite (or perhaps because of) the efforts of brutal promoter Ron Decline (John Belushi).  Stig is drawn to Arthur Sultan, the Surrey Mystic (Henry Woolf).  And Dirk and Nasty both get married.  Dirk falls for French actress Martini (Bianca Jagger), who is barely a parody of Linda McCartney at all.   Nasty is captivated by German conceptual artist Chastity (Gwen Taylor), who is strongly implied to be the daughter of Adolf Hitler, but at least nobody but Mick Jagger (Mick Jagger) blames her for breaking up the band.  (Apparently Yoko Ono found the character hilarious, so I won't quibble.)

All You Need is Cash is packed with celebrity cameos, particularly Saturday Night Live alumni; it's always nice to see Gilda rRdner.  It's the cameo by actual factual George Harrison as an interviewer asking questions about Stig being attacked by the Hell's Angels in the basement that is the real get, though, putting the mockumentary one Beatle ahead of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

 This is a comedy.  It's full of surreal humor and whimsical asides, which is fitting, considering Idle's career and the movies the Beatles made themselves.  It's also surprisingly more coherent than the history of the Beatles.  Reality doesn't have to be realistic, but little tweaks like having the death rumors be centered on Stig/George rather than Paul make a lot more sense.

 

Meet the Beat Alls.

 The Powerpuff Girls was a popular show on Cartoon Network about a trio of super-powered children, Blossom (Cathy Cavadi), Buttercup (E. G. Daily) and Bubbles (Tara Strong).  The trio were created by the kindly Professor Utonium (Tom Kane) and charged with protecting the city of Townsville.  (But not the town of Cityville; that's somewhere else.)  But we're not looking at the entire series, we're looking at one episode, which places the villains front and center.  So let's "Meet the Beat Alls."

 

 Mojo Jojo (Roger L. Jackson) is an angry simian, frustrated by his repeated failure to defeat the Powerpuff Girls.  He's not the only one; fashion-forward eldritch horror Him (also Tom Kane), bratty "Little Orphan Annie" knock-off Princess (Jennifer Hale), and strong but not silent Fuzzy Lumpkin (Jim Cummings) all want to defeat the Girls as well, and they all pick the same night to attack Professor Utonium's house.  The villains argue, but when the girls fly out to tell them to be quiet they attack, and by working together they manage to . . . win?  So a new supervillain group is formed.

The Beat Alls set out on a crime spree, and they just keep winning; the four of them combined are all too much for the Powerpuff Girls to handle, and the girls finally stop fighting and let them keep at it.  The Townsville police are also helpless, and it looks like nothing can stop the Beat Alls.

 

And then she appears.  Moko Jono, a chimpanzee performance criminal.  Mojo is immediately smitten, and forces the group to participate in Moko's "conceptual crimes," leading to tension in the group and an eventual bitter breakup.

 

The entire episode is a solid wall of Beatles-related puns, quotes, and sight gags, and it is delightful.   

 

And then there's the Moko Jono thing.  For the record, Yoko Ono is not responsible for breaking up the Beatles.  The Fab Four were grown men, evolving in wildly different directions creatively, and they did not need a femme fatale to give them a push.  I suppose it's fitting that a cartoon should riff on the most cartoonish version of the end of the band, but but on the other hand, the Beat Alls aren't actually the Beatles, and the criminal band breaking up is not such a bad thing.  Also Moko Jono isn't what she seems, and is there mostly to set up a shaggy dog joke with a great punchline that I'm not going to spoil. 

 

This is a very silly episode of a silly show. But there's a real affection for the band there, mixed in with all the ribbing.

 

Bhooty Call: Tooth Pari

 The premise of Tooth Pari: When Love Bites (2023) sounds like the opening to a terrible joke: a vampire with a broken tooth falls in love with a dentist with a fear of blood.  However, while the series is billed as a horror-comedy, and it is indeed quite funny at times, it takes its world and especially its central relationship completely seriously.  That makes all the difference.

Kolkata is divided into two different worlds.  Humans live in Upar, or "Above," and go about their ordinary lives in an entirely ordinary way.  They don't know about Neeche, or "Below," an underground complex that is home to a clan of thirty vampires, led by Ora (Anish Ralikar), but watched over by AD (Adil Hussain), a human who cares for the vampires' needs and enforces the rules as part of an ancient agreement between the clan and his family.

The rules are simple.  Vampires don't go to Upar.  If they do, they don't drink blood, they don't kill anyone, and they definitely don't convert any new vampires.  In return, the vampires can enjoy all the comforts of Neeche, and they are provided with blood from the local blood bank and protection form the Cutmundus, a secret society of elderly but dangerous vampire hunters led by the powerful witch Luna Luka (Revathi).

The youngest member of the clan, Rumi (Tanya Maniktala), feel suffocated by all the rules.  She makes frequent, secret trips to Upar with the help of two of her elders, classical dancer Meera (Tillotama Shome) and former revolutionary and current namedropper David (Saswata Chatterjee).  Rumi is careful; she targets lonely single men and men trying to cheat on their wives, bites gently, takes a little blood and brings back a few vials of the fresh stuff for her friends down below.  She also hypnotizes them so all they remember is a failed romantic encounter.  What's the harm?

And then Rumi bites the wrong neck, drinking a little too deeply and leaving her tooth behind.  Fortunately, there's a dentist nearby who works late hours.  Bikram Roy (Shantanu Maheshwari) is not a great dentist, thanks to the aforementioned fear of blood, but it is the family business, so he does his best, though he'd rather be cooking for his secret YouTube channel, "The Anonymous Chef."  Rumi meets Roy, they get along well, and since he needs her original tooth to make repairs, they keep meeting.  part of the attraction is blood, admittedly; during their first meeting he accidentally cut his finger and a drop fell into her open mouth, accidentally revealing that Roy is a virgin and his blood tastes amazing.  But it's not just the special blood.  Rumi has had a hard life, and Doc Roy is a genuinely kind person, so she can't help but be drawn to him.  Surely this innocent flirtation won't trigger a chain of events that threatens to reveal the existence of Neeche and set Kolkata on fire, right?

And then there's Sub-Inspector Kartik Pal (Sikander Kher), and his father Biren (Anjan Dutt).  Biren was also a policeman but now suffers from Alzheimers and won't stop talking about the vampires he fought on one terrible night decades ago.  Biren's reputation has stalled Kartik's career, so he drinks a lot and is assigned all the worst cases, including a man who claims to have been bitten by a "beautiful ghost" at a party.  While investigating that case, Kartik meets a beautiful girl named Rumi, and steps on some sort of animal's tooth, cutting his foot badly.

The love story plays out in fairly typical Bollywood fashion; Roy and Rumi grow closer, learning to trust and rely on one another, but she's keeping a big secret and he finds out about it from the wrong person, and he doesn't take it well.  Thanks in part to his overbearing parents, Roy is so insecure that he can't really accept that Rumi loves him for him, so when he finds out that she's secretly a bloodsucking creature of the night, he assumes that she's only after his blood, and goes too far in his efforts to confirm his suspicions.

Meanwhile, AD has realized that someone is visiting Upar and wants to crack down, Luna has reunited the Cutmundus and kills a vampire in Roy's office, and Kartik is limping around the fringes, getting closer and closer to proving his suspicion that Roy is an evil vampire who has ensnared innocent Rumi with his spooky vampire powers.

 It's a lot of plot spread over eight episodes, and the series takes its time, wrapping things up in the last episode only to introduce a handful of new and surprising plot threads out of nowhere, clearly setting up a second season.  Still, the leads are charming, Luna is an engaging villain, and the series always made me care enough to watch the next episode.

Bahubali: The Clone Wars.

Bahubali: The Lost Legends (2017-) is an animated series set in the Bahubali universe.  The series acts as a prequel to the movies, detailing the adventures of the young Amarendra Bahubali (Viraj Adhav) and his obviously evil brother Bhallaldeva (Manoj Pandey) as they compete and cooperate in an attempt to prove themselves worthy of the throne of the kingdom of Mahishmati.  Other important characters include unflappable Queeen Mother Sivagami (Manini Mishra), her treacherous husband Bijjaladeva (Mukesh pandey), and the throne's incorruptible retainer Kattappa (Samay Thakkar).  The series has original characters as well, most notably Pradhan Guru (Vinod Kulkarni), who is obviously up to something, but I haven't seen enough of the series to know what that is.   

Amazon has only two episodes of Lost Legends available for streaming.  In the first episode, Riot in Mahishtami, when food shortages and systemic prejudice lead to the death of a government official, Bahubali is charged with dispensing justice while still preserving the city's fragile peace.  because Bahubali represents an ideal king, he does this by listening to what people have to say, and in the end he manages to uphold the letter of the law while still striving to make amends for a historic injustice.  

The second episode, The Blood Moon, is a bit more action oriented; Bahubali opens an ancient urn, and when a local family disappears, the people assume that demons released by the prince are responsible.  Naturally, Bahubali investigates, and discovers that the truth is much more Scooby Doo.  This episode is notable for a much more nuanced depiction of tribal peoples than in the actual Bahubali movies.  

Bahubali is not the only Indian movie franchise to get a cartoon spinoff, but it's it's much more straightlaced than some of the others.  While Little Singham is wooing mermaids and fighting ancient sorcerers at the bottom of the sea, Bahubali is . . . . doing the same sort of things that he does in the movies.  The scale is much smaller, though.  The Bahubali movies are epics, with massive and deeply improbable battles, stupid vows, gorgeous musical numbers, and queens who SHOUT ALL THE TIME!!!!  Cartoon Sivagami is remarkably restrained, and there are a few minor skirmishes and one murder attempt but nobody enters the city via catapult.

That's not a bad thing, though.  The quieter tone and slower pace means that the characters have a chance to be fleshed out a bit more - instead of characters telling each other that Bahubali is an ideal king, he gets to show his kingliness on a regular basis.  It's not a necessary tie in by any means, but it does expand the universe and fill out the characters.

I'd like to be under the sea.

As I write this, Sooryavanshi, the latest installment of Rohit Shetty's "Police Universe", is breaking all sorts of box office records in India.  It's not available anywhere near me yet, so instead I'm going to take a look at an earlier installment of the "Police Universe."  Little Singham: Samundar Ka Sikandar (2021) recounts the time when Singham, the unstoppable supercop played by Ajay Devgn, traveled to an undersea kingdom, rescued a mermaid princess, and fought a giant squid.  It's weird that he never mentions this stuff in the movies.

Of course, this isn't exactly Singham as played by Devgn; it's Little Singham, because apparently when he was a child Singham was already a police officer who fought demons and mutant animal hybrids.  (Frankly, the gangsters and terrorists he deals with as an adult are a bit of a step down.)  Why is Little Singham already a cop?  He just is, okay?  Apparently he maintains a secret identity, though it doesn't come up in this movie at all.  We do get to meet young Singham's annoying sidekicks, though: Chikki, who is a monkey, and Lattu, who is not a monkey.

Singham and a good portion of his supporting cast are on a cruise ship near Hawaii when the ship strikes a rock and begins to sink.  Little Singham springs into action and saves all of the passengers and crew, but the ship sinks to the bottom of the ocean and bounces off of a mysterious domed undersea city.

Meanwhile, under the sea, the monstrous Jalgohra, nephew of King Sagadeer, and Haivaan, aquatic villain with a magic staff that can create undersea storms, decide to join forces and conquer both the undersea world and the world above.  The shipwreck gives them a chance to try and capture Princess Laharika, who is sometimes a mermaid and sometimes a whale.  The whales of the ocean send out a distress call which Singham can understand for some reason, so he and Chikki and Lattu put on their advanced wetsuits and dive to the rescue.

Our heroes save the princess and she takes them into the undersea city, where outsiders are strictly forbidden.  She casts a quick spell transforming them into hybrid sea creatures, but it only lasts about five minutes or so and then they are discovered, captured, and brought before the king.  And that's when Jalgohra and Haaiwan strike and reveal their evil plan: they're going to release the monstrous octopus Vikraal, which will devastate the underseas kingdom and allow the villains to conquer under and above the waves.  After a quick fight in which Singham nearly defeats them despite his hands being tied, the villains kidnap the king, and Singham and friends set out on an epic quest to find the magic pearl and trident they must use to save the day.  

Well, I say epic; the movie is less than an hour long, so there's only so much adventuring they can fit in.  The plot moves at an incredible pace, and there's no time for inconsequential things like "character development" or "explaining why these people are in Hawaii in the first place." 

To be fair, I am very far from the target audience for this movie, and the children it is intended for have probably seen some of the many, many episodes of the Little Singham TV show rather than relying on what they know from the Ajay Devgn movies.  And not always knowing what is going on doesn't prevent me from appreciating the sensational character find of 2021, "Guard Who Looks and Sounds Like Kermit."

Bhooty Call: Shaitaan Haveli

At this point "a film crew working on a horror movie stumbles across an actual, supernatural horror" is not a new or original premise, and Shaitaan Haveli (2018) doesn't pretend otherwise.  There is a twist, though: the movie within the TV series is a schlocky, exploitative gorefest inspired by the eighties output of the famous Ramsay brothers, and so is the actual horror they uncover.

B-movie director Hariman Singh (Singh Bhupesh) and his trusty cameraman Gangu (Kanchan Pagare) are in trouble.  Hariman's last film, an attempt at a legitimate family drama (but sexy!), was a massive flop, and he owes money to violent and short-tempered gangster Ponty (Adi Irani), and the only way to pay himm back is to make a horror movie on an incredibly low budget and pray for a hit.  Unfortunately, part of the deal is that the hero will be played by Ponty's musclebound and muscle-headed son Monty (Hemant Koumar).  

Hariman also casts Monty's English girlfriend Julia (Pippa Hughes), but an Indian audience expects an Indian leading lady, so he recruits troubled TV actress Prarthana (Neha Chauhan) as the main love interest.  Struggling actor Rahul (series creator Varun Thakur) is cast as the hero's friend.  And faded actor Mukesh (Zahid Ali), who played the lead in Hariman's early hits, is cast as Dracula.  And Hariman has found a great deal on a ruined haveli to use as a filming location; it's cheap because it's supposed to be haunted.

The shoot is an absolute disaster.  Monty is not just arrogant, lazy, and easily distracted, he's also a terrible actor.  Prarthana, meanwhile, is a terrible human being, and she immediately latches on to Monty as the apparent Most Important Person in the area, practically shoving Julia out of the way as she does so.  Rahul is a great actor, but Monty insists on stealing all his lines and speeches.

And then there's Mukesh.  Mukesh is increasingly frustrated because Hariman refuses to give him any lines, only letting him growl and laugh evilly.  Mukesh is just starting to realize that he's never going to be the leading man again, and that's when the haveli's housekeeper Mahua (Shweta Singh) reveals that she is secretly an evil witch, and she offers to restore Mukesh's youth if he will help to secure five sacrifices in order to bring back her master, evil Tantric Chandaal (Surender Thakur).  Mukesh eagerly agrees, but he's not very good at it, so it takes a while before the supporting actors start dying.

Shaitaan Haveli is a love letter to eighties Bollywood horror in all its tawdry glory, but it's also a very silly show.  Chandaal and Mahua try, bless their monstrous hearts, but they're every bit as neurotic as the film crew, and it's hard to recline in dark satanic majesty when you're also squabbling about centuries-old relationship issues.

There is one exception to Shaitaan Haveli's devotion to the tropes of Ramsay horror.  This series has an awful lot of zombies in it, and while they were called out of their graves through the power of Chandaal's magical gemstone, they're obviously Hollywood zombies, complete with a bite that causes rapid zombification.  That particular species of walking dead just wasn't a thing in the Indian horrorsphere of the eighties, but if it had been a trend, the Ramsays would have happily exploited it.

Chhota Bheem and the Highly Successful Marketing

Chhota Bheem is a successful Indian cartoon franchise.  There's certainly an awful lot of it; the original series has run for twelve seasons, with 624 episodes, along with forty three movies and five different spin off series.  Bheem is a brave and heroic boy with superhuman strength, which he uses to protect his home kingdom of Dholakpur as well as travel the world having adventures.  In his time, Bheem has traveled the world, met aliens, seen dinosaurs, learned kung fu, gained super powers, and befriended Krishna, Ganesh, and Hanuman.  And then there are the Vikings, as seen in Chhota Bheem the Crown of Valhalla (2013).

 

After an unrelated amazing adventure, Bheem is sailing home to Dholakpur, along with ship's captain and token adult Samudra Sen, plucky platonic gal pal Chutki, tiny sidekick Raju, huge and somewhat-reformed bully Kalia, annoying twins Dholu and Bholu, and talking monkey Jaggu.  The ship is caught in a terrible storm, and they emerge in the legendary Black Sea of Valhalla, where they are attacked by Vikings!  Who are also pirates!  (Okay, all Vikings are at least a bit piratical, but these Vikings sail in big ships armed with cannons and wear the skull and crossbones on their Viking helmets.  Historical accuracy is not a priority here.)

 

The leader of the Vikings is a big, bearded brute with an eyepatch and two ravens which perch on his shoulders, so naturally he is named Valkyrie.  Valkyrie is determined to become king of Valhalla, and for some reason he believes that attacking ransom ships is going to help with this.  Bheem's ship is quickly overwhelmed, even after Bheem eats a laddu for extra strength (Bheem operates under Popeye rules) and starts throwing cannonballs back at the pirate Vikings.  Just when all seems lost, Bheem and his friends are saved by a huge wave, and find themselves on an island ruled by Viking Prince Fainir.

And then there is exposition.  Fainir's father was the King of Valhalla, and used the power of the Crown of Valhalla and the nation's incredible shipbuilding abilities to . . . well, mostly sail around and be good.  However, the King's brother Valkyrie wants the throne and magical crown, and murders his brother while at sea.  The crown is lost, and Valkyrie and his men are cursed to burst into flames if they ever set foot on land (through the power of "It just happens, okay?") and they devote themselves to a blockade, trapping the good Vikings on their home islands and blowing up passing ships for fun.

Bheem is a hero, and so he cannot let this stand.  Bheem and his friends set out to find the Crown, along the way meeting wise old Raghonark, teaming up with the brave Viking Vanir, who is totally not a spy for Valkyrie, and engaging in sword fights with ghosts.  As you do.

After watching Chhota Bheem, I have to question the accuracy of their historical research.  I also have to question the existence of their historical research.  The animation is not great, with continuity errors popping up within the space of a single scene, and at one point Valkyrie's eyepatch vanishes with no explanation.   And the plot is enthusiastic nonsense.  Still, I have a hard time judging the show when I am so far from being the target audience.  I'm not planning to watch anymore Chhota Bheem, but it's not for me, and the kids the show was made for seem to like it a lot.

Your plastic pal who's fun to be with!

Goa, 2031.  On a dark and rainy night, a self driving taxi swerves to run over a man, an action which clearly violates the First Law of Robotics.  The investigation will lead a cynical cop and an idealistic robot rights activist into the dark underbelly of this neon future, where they must deal with a shady robotics corporation and its missing CEO, an anti-technology cult leader who doesn't wear clothing, an immersive virtual reality video game for disaffected robots, and at the center of it all, an AI which was created to save the world but decided to go into stand up comedy instead.  OK Computer (2021)  is a cyber-noir detective story mixed with absurdist comedy, like Blade Runner as told by Douglas Adams.

 

The detective in question is Saajan Kundu (Vijay Varma), and while he might seem like the only sane man in a collection of misfits, he's just as quirky and damaged as everybody else.  Saajan has lived in his car since the Covid-19 pandemic, and he has an instinctive distrust of machines and a superstitious fixation on a large sea turtle.  Saajan is ably assisted by the earnest and awkward Monalisa Paul (Kani Kusruti), a police detective whose mother belongs to an anti-technology cult, and he's forced to team up with robot rights activist Laxmi Suri (Radhika Apte.)  Saajan and Laxmi seem to have a past, but they parted on bad terms after he killed a submarine.

The suspects are an equally motley crew.  Mysterious billionaire CNX is missing, his interests represented by a small army of lawyers, a pair of computerized shoes, and a holographic bear.  Cult leader Pushpak (Jackie Shroff) is by turns whimsical, philosophical,  and sinister, but is always naked. 

 

And then there's Ajeeb, the prime suspect.  Ajeeb is an artificial intelligence designed to solve all the world's problems.  It was given a physical form and became a beloved celebrity, but after a crisis of confidence it quit to pursue comedy, and the backlash was so severe that Ajeeb was forced into hiding.  The show is quite open about being influenced by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Ajeeb is sort of the Anti-Marvin; there it is, brain the size of a (metaphorical) planet, and everybody knows and expects incredible results. Ajeeb deals with the pressure by projecting a sunny disposition which may or may not conceal a murderous dark side.

 

I'm not sure if OK Computer counts as a dark comedy, but it's definitely a sad comedy.  These are people who have seen absurd and terrible things, and it has marked them. And while Pushpak is a big naked idiot, but he does explain that this isn't the future people wanted.  "They were promised salvation.  Flying cars.  Smart cities.  Cheap medicine, longevity.  Freedom.  Privacy.  Unity.  But what did we get instead?  Private date theft.  Fear, discrimination.  Destruction of the environment.  Stale memes.  24 hour surveillance."  And if the dark future sounds like our dark present, well . . . 

 

OK Computer doesn't pretend to offer solutions to the world's problems.   It's just a reminder that something needs to change.