I *think* everybody learned a valuable lesson?

 Pandurangadu (2008) is a devotional film, a genre which I always find interesting but really hard to review, since in the end these movies are an expression of faith, and that's hard to critique.  Fortunately for me Pandurangadu is an expression of faith with a wild shift in tone and an ending which is theologically sound but narratively unsatisfying, so I've got something to talk about.

Pundarika Ranganadhudu ,known as Ranga (Balakrishna), is a devoted follower of Krishna . . . in a very limited sense.  Krishna is his role model, but not in a spiritual sense; he's much more interested in Krishna's youthful pranks and flirtatious relationships with the gopis.  Ranga is so devoted to chasing women that he runs away form home when his parents ask him to get married, and as the movie opens he's only just returned.  His father asks him to swear never to cause his family to weep again, and Ranga does so.  It's a vow that he will break almost immediately.

In a nearby village, Lakshmi (Sneha) is a genuine and sincere devotee of Krishna, so much so that when the Krishna idol in her village suddenly and miraculously turns red-hot, she is able to cure it by applying dust from her feet.  her faith is so inspiring that the wives of Krishna (Balakrishna in a double role) as their husband to find a good spouse for Lakshmi, and he assures them that he has chosen one: Ranga.

And at this point in the movie, the scenes in heaven are lighthearted and fun.  The wives of Krishna act as audience surrogates and a kind of Greek chorus, with the trickster sage Narada (L. B. Sriram) providing sarcastic commentary.  This is one of the few movies in which Narada isn't responsible for the ensuing complications.

Krishna appears to Lakshmi in a dream, telling her that she is destined to marry Ranga.  She sends her father over to make the arrangements, but they are reluctant because they've met Ranga, and they fully expect him to refuse and/or mess things up completely.  So Lakshmi goes herself, and immediately charms everybody.

Everybody except Ranga, that is.  He's currently besotted with the dancer Amrutha (Tabu),  and he has absolutely no intention of settling down.  Lakshmi sits in front of the house, vowing not to eat or drink until Ranga agrees to marry her, but it doesn't work.  Finally, Krishna takes action, inspiring Amrutha to ask Ranga to marry the girl.  Ranga agrees, but he keeps sneaking off to spend time with Amrutha rather than consummating his marriage.  It's all predictable devotional movie stuff - Will Lakshmi be able to win over her husband through her unwavering devotion?  Of course she will, especially after Krishna disguises himself as Amrutha to give Ranga a shove in the right direction.

So, the happy couple are properly united, the family is thrilled, and Amrutha is taking a long look at what her life has become.  And then things get a little weird.  Amrutha's mother lures Ranga  to her house, claiming that Amrutha is dying and wants to see him one last time.  When he arrives, she gives him an incredibly complicated poison which makes him hypersensitive to sound for three days, and trick him into signing over his own house.  Ranga returns home during a noisy religious ceremony, and rather than explain anything he yells at his family, threatens to hit is wife, and causes everyone to leave in disgust, then Amrutha's mother arrives to throw him out of the house as well.

So, the family's scattered.  Lakshmi returns to her home village, hoping to enter the shrine and look at Krishna's idol one last time before she dies; unfortunately, the shrine's priests are still mad about the "dust from her feet" thing, and refuse to let her enter, so she slowly starves just outside the shrine.  Ranga becomes more of a jerk than ever before, makes a pass at three river goddesses, threatens to kick a holy man, and winds up paralyzed, an affliction that will only be cured by properly making amends with his parents.  And Krishna's wives are still acting as audience surrogates, practically begging Krishna to get things back on track.

And he tries.  He absolutely tries his best, appearing personally on Earth in order to convince Ranga to ask for the right boon, which will fix everything.  Unfortunately Ranga has learned his lesson too well, so he ends the movie with spiritual salvation, leaving several unresolved plot points behind him.  Yes, eternity is more important than getting your house back, but your family needs a place to live, Ranga! 

The tone of Pandurangadu is all over the place.  Ranga's early misadventures are downright bawdy, then the film switches back and forth between love story and soap opera, finally diving headlong into homily, which is where this kind of movie usually starts.  It's an entertaining ride, but watch out for that sudden stop.

        

No, you can't buy a vowel.

 In the Yama Cinematic Universe, the god Chitragupta is usually cast as Yama's comic sidekick, but he's an important religious figure in his own right, responsible for recording the good and bad deeds each person performs in life, and then judging them accordingly.  In Thank God (2022), Chitragupta takes center stage, but this time, he's cool.

Ayaan Kapoor (Siddharth Malhotra) was once a successful real estate agent who became briefly rich by dabbling in black money, then lost it all during the demonetisation of 2016.  Now, he's struggling to sell his own house. Fortunately, his wife Ruhi (Rakul Preet Singh) is a successful police officer, but Ayaan is so consumed by his losses and stressed over the sale of the house that he's neglecting Ruhi, their daughter Pihu (Kirara Khanna) and his mother (Seema Pahwa).  His relationship with his sister (Urmilla Kanetkar Kathore) is also a bit tense; she's been pouring all her energy and money into rebuilding the family home, because she blames herself for the fire which destroyed it when she and Aayan were children.

After another failed attempt to sell the house (it turns out that locking the potential buyers' son in the bathroom is a bad idea) Ayaan is driving away while bickering with Ruhi on the phone (another bad idea) when he has to swerve to avoid a motorcycle and instead hits another car.  And just like that, he's in Heaven, greeted by Yamdoot (Mahesh Balraj) and a mysterious figure calling himself CG (Ajay Devgn).

CG explains the situation: Ayaan is in critical condition, caught between life and death.  he has to compete in CG's game show and demonstrate that he has overcome his weaknesses; if he succeeds at a challenge, he earns white balls, and if he fails he gets black ones.  Earn more white and he can return to his life, but if he fails, he'll be immediately consigned to Hell.

And the game goers about as well as you'd expect.  Ayaan continues to demonstrate that he has absolutely not overcome his weaknesses, and CG is playing a deeper game than he lets on; all of the tests start to fit together, revealing the harm caused by Ayaan's selfish actions.  It all leads to one final test, one chance for Ayaan to redeem himself, and because he doesn't notice the test when offered, he fails.

Which isn't the end of the movie, obviously; this is a feel good family comedy with a message, and while a happy ending isn't guaranteed, it's pretty likely.  It's a redemption story, A Christmas Carol without the Christmas, Going Postal without the golems.  It's the story of one man learning how connected everything is, and that his actions have consequences for other people.

Thank God is probably not a very good movie, honestly.  It's predictable, the humor is hit and miss, the tone is wildly inconsistent, and the medical science in the climax is complete nonsense even by Bollywood standards.  Still, Devgn is consistently entertaining, and Malhotra manages to be likeable despite playing a complete jerk.  It's earnestly bad in the same way as many Bollywood comedies of the Nineties, so if you liked them, there's a decent chance you'll like this.

A heavenly spinoff.

 The death god Yama does not appear in Old Monk (2022), but it still feels an awful lot like a Yama movie.  This time, however, the action centers on the heavenly sage narada.  To quote myself from another review, "Narada is a legendary sage who appears in a number of Hindu texts, including both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.  In the movies, though, he acts as the local divine trickster; if you have a serious problem, you should get Narada to solve it, since it's probably his fault anyway."  Cinematic Narada usually acts a s a foil to Yama or Indra, inadvertently causing chaos which embarrasses the gods but winds up teaching a valuable moral lesson.  This time, though, he winds up ticking off the wrong god.

Krishna (Sunil Raoh) is enjoying a pleasant afternoon in Heaven, watching a cricket match, when Narada (MG Srinivas) drops by to pay him a visit.  Ten minutes later Krishna's chief wife Rukmini (Meghashree) is about to leave him, because Krishna forgot her birthday while Narada made a big show of remembering.  A furious Krishna curses the celestial sage, banishing him to Earth until he can win the heart of a woman and convince her family to agree to a love marriage.

Narada is reborn as Appanna, the HR manager for an IT firm.  Appanna is not popular with his fellow employees, because he hates love and does everything he can to prevent workplace relationships by keeping men and women separate; he doesn't even allow pictures of married gods, so only bachelor deities like Hanuman and Ganesha can be displayed.  

Appanna explains his motivations in a flashback: his earthly father Narayan (S. Narayan) believes that all marriages should be arranged, and so e has spent years sabotaging every one of his son's attempted relationships.  (It's not just Narayan; there have been many unfortunate coincidences which are probably the work of Krishna.)  As a result, Appanna has decided that if he can't be happy, he doesn't see why anybody else should have a good time.  In fact, that's the reason he became an HR manager in the first place.

Two employees in love complain to their new boss (Sihi Kahi Chandru), and he vows to put a stop to Appanna's antics and get them married, or else he will . . . shave off his mustache!  This proves to be a mistake, because while Appanna is human now, he's still a trickster, and soon the wedding is off, along with the mustache.

Appanna and his sidekick Ranveer Singh (Sujay Shastri) visit a very specialized retirement home designed to reunite old flames, and it's there that he meets and immediately falls for Abhigna (Aditi Prabhudeva).  (She's not a resident, she's running the place.) After a rocky start, he manages to win her heart and make friends with all the residents, and everything is going so well that Abhigna invites him to meet her father, who turns out to be his former boss, sans mustache.  

Up in Heaven, Krishna and his one eyed sidekick (I think he might be Time, but he's definitely played by Satish Chandra) decide it's time to introduce the villain.  Shashank (Sudev Nair) is Abhigna's arranged fiance, Appanna's new boss, the son of a powerful and corrupt politician, and he has been holding a grudge against Appanna since college, when one of Appanna's pranks ended up costing him his girlfriend.  Shashank fires Appanna and then invites him to his wedding to Abhigna.  

Since he comes from a political family, Shashank is running for office.  Since he's mad and doesn't have anything else to do with his time, Appanna decides to run against him, and they both make stupid macho vows about Abhigna's hand in marriage while challenging one another, rather than asking her what she thinks.  Shashank comes form a political dynasty that does not fight fair, but Appanna is the earthly incarnation of a celestial trickster; he doesn't fight fair either.

For most of the movie, Appanna is Appanna rather than Narada.  He claims in a voice over to remember every detail of his heavenly existence, but it has no actual impact on the plot.  Even the curse is pretty quickly forgotten, and Krishna and Time(?) are more like Statler and Waldorf than active antagonists.  Still, Appanna is like the cinematic Narada in one very important way: nearly everything that goes wrong is his fault, spinning out of a scheme or scam or trick gone bad.  Old Monk might be structured like a Yama movie, but when you replace the jolly god of death with an ancient sage who can't resist meddling, the end result is rather different.

Couldn't get away.

At first glance, Looop Lapeta (2022) might look like your average movie about a woman stuck in a time loop as she desperately runs through the streets, trying to raise a small fortune in order to save the life of her hopeless boyfriend.  It look s that way on a second glance, too.  The third glance is when things start getting weird.

Savi (Taapsee Pannu) is a former track star whose career was ended due to a bad fall during a race.  She's tempted to end it all, but her life is saved by Satya (Tahir Raj Bhasin), and the pair quickly fall into a relationship.  The good news is that Satya has all the enthusiasm, charm, and loyalty of a big floofy puppy.  Unfortunaterly, he also has all of the brains and common sense of the same big floofy puppy; Satya is a slacker and compulsive gambler who works for violent restaurateur and drug kingpin Victor (Dibyendu Bhattacharya).  Satya is really, really into the relationship with Savi, while she's just tired of running and ready to settle down.

It's Savi's birthday, so Satya asks Victor for an advance on his salary so that he can buy her a nice present.  Victor isntead offers to let him work for it; all Satya has top do is deliver a package to a particular address, then bring a bag of money back within eighty minutes, which is just long enough for Victor's turkey to cook.  (Honestly, the eighty minute turkey is the most unbelievable thing about the movie.)  Satya is, as mentioned, a compulsive gambler who is not very smart, so he decides to gamble with the money, return the original amount to Victor, and keep the profits for himself.  Within eighty minutes.  Shockingly, it does not go well.

Savi is trying to wrap her mind around a positive pregnancy test when she gets a panicked phone call from Satya.  He explains the situation, and she vows to find the money to save him.  First she tries to get the money from her estranged father and former coach Atul (KC Shankar), but there's too much bitterness there, especially since she has never accepted Yash (Varun Pande), the man her father started dating after her mother died.  

Savi keeps trying, in the process crossing paths with Jacob (Sameer Kevin Roy), a cabdriver who is heartbroken that his beloved Julia (Shreya Dhanwanthary) is marrying another man.  Meanwhile, Satya decides to rob the jewelry store owned by Malesh (Rajendra Chawla), only to be interrupted by Malesh's incompetent sons, who are also trying to rob the place.  In the confusion, Satya is shot and killed in front of Savi.

Savi remembers Satya telling the story of Savitri, who matched wits with the death god Yama in order to bring back her husband Satyavan.  (And yes, our leads are named Savi and Satya.  Subtle allusions are for cowards.)  

And then the day starts again, because this is a remake of Run, Lola, Run, giving Savi another chance to get it right.  All she manages to do is get Satya killed by a different person.  She remembers more of the story, and then she's back at the beginning of the loop, ready to try again and this time try to make all the right choices.

A good remake, Bollywood or otherwise, should bring something new to the story.  Otherwise, why bother?  Looop Lapeta shifts the cultural context of the original film, but it also shifts the genre; it's not just a thriller, it's also a quirky romantic comedy with gangsters and time loops.  It's shiny and fun and manages to feel new, even when telling a story that I've heard before.

Yamagain.

Yama movies tend to be pretty predictable.  There are a few basic plots which get recycled and rewritten over and over again.  Yama has to visit Earth and eat ice cream.  Yama has to deal with a man who died by mistake.  Yama gets involved in politics.  When you decide to watch a Yama movie like Adisaya Piravi (1990), you have a pretty good idea of what you're getting.  Usually.

Kalaiyan (Rajnikanth) is a talented freelance tough guy living in a poor neighborhood in Madras.  He uses his ill-gotten gains to support the people in his neighborhood, most notably his mother (S. N. Parvathy) and his sidekick and alleged martial arts instructor who doesn't seem to have a character name but is played by a little person actor named King Kong.  (A clip from this movie of King Kong dancing went viral in 2006, so you may have already seen part of this movie.)

After Kalayain disrupts a shipment of illegal liquor belonging to corrupt businessman Murukesh (Nagesh), Murukesh decides he'd rather have Kalayain working for him, rather than againts him, so he invites the young tough to his mansion for an "audition," by which I mean send waves of goons after him to see how long he lasts.  This is a bad idea on multiple levels, since Kalaiyan easily dispatches every goon sent his way, and in the process manages to win the heart of Murikesh's Bruce Lee obsessed daughter Sumathi (Sheeba Akashdeep.)  

When he's not wooing Sumathi Kalaiyan also finds time to foil the plans of Murukesh's business partner (Jaiganesh), who had planned to demolish Kalayain's neighborhood, and put a stop to the scheme of Jaiganesh's son (Betha Sudhakar) to force himself on Sumathi.  The angry rich guys try sending waves of goons after Kalayain, and when that doesn't work they conspire to run him over with a truck.

However, this is a Yama movie, so death is not the end.  Kalaiyan arrives in the afterlife and meets Vichitragupta (Cho Ramaswamy), assistant to Chitragupta (V. K. Ramaswamy), who is in turen the sidekick and assistant to Yama (Vinu Chakravarthy).  Kalayain isn't supposed to be dead yet, so after some arguing, Yama agrees to send him back in the body of soon to be deceased villager Balu (also Rajnikanth).

Balu is actually quite wealthy, but his father's will left him in the care of his uncle Chinnasamy (Senthamarai), who has beaten him into submission, leaving him to play Cinderella in his own home, his only comfort being his equally mistreated mother and his sweetheart Gauri (Kanaka.)  Balu is about to inherit, and the will is ironclad, so Chinnasamy poisons him.  And that's when Kalayain steps in.

Kalayain doesn't retain his memory when he becomes Balu, but he does retain his courage and fighting skills, so he quickly takes charge of the household and puts his wicked relatives in their proper place.  And everything is great, until Murukesh shows up in the village to visit his old friend Chinnasamy.  Balu suddenly remembers everything, and he sets off for Madras to set his other life in order.  Now Kalayain/Balu has to avenge two murders while balancing two mothers and two love interests, all while foiling one united team of rich evil jerks.

I've seen movies that are conceptually much weirder than Adisaya Piravi, and I am no stranger to bad editing or outrageous costumes.  But there's something about the combination of jumpy editing and sloppy fight choreography and some truly atrocious subtitles that gives the whole thing a deeply surreal quality.  It's not the weirdest movie I've seen, but it may be the most accidentally weird movie I've seen.

This is a Yama fanblog now. Time I admitted it.

I've joked before about the Yama Cinematic Universe, but Yamaho Yama (2012) takes the joke one step further; an early scene involves a brief flashback to the events of Yamadonga.  The rest of the movie doesn't really follow through, of course.  There's no real connection between the two films, apart from Yama and Chitragupta.  Still, Cinematic Universe or not, this is one of Yama's nest outings in terms of character development.

This time, Yama (Srihari) is introduced in an action scene, attempting to collect the soul of a very powerful and evil undead CGI ascetic.  It's a puzzle fight of the sort that Hercules used to get into; Yama has the full use of his divine powers (including heat vision, apparently), but he has to use the right power in the right way to stop his undead opponent from continually coming back to life. Once that's sorted, Yama heads back to Yamalok and sings a song about how he's really great, and also he treats all humans equally in the end, no matter who they are.  This will be important later.

Meanwhile, Yama's wife (Sithara) has a problem.  All of the other goddesses have been teasing her because Yama has no mortal worshipers.  Yama gently explains that he's the god of death, and so the living want to keep him as far away as possible.  She's not convinced, but they are interrupted by the sound of a young boy on Earth offering prayers to Yama.  Suddenly he has a devotee after all.

The boy grows into Balu (Sairam Shankar), who is also introduced with an action scene, wrestling a bad CGI leopard in order to save a little girl, and then performing a dance number with the leopard in order to convince it to save itself and go back to the jungle.  (This will not be important later.)

After the leopard wrestling, Balu's grandmother (Rama Prabha) insists on shipping him off to America - not actual America, of course.  This is Filmi America, where the Statue of Liberty is in California, Las Vegas is a few minutes away, the city is a mix of beaches and shopping malls, and every important character speaks fluent Telugu.  Balu is a charming scoundrel, so he's soon living (platonically) with the beautiful, rich, and clearly smitten Nisha (Sanjjanaa Galrani.)  And when I say clearly smitten, I mean an hour after meeting Balu she sings him a song about the various ways she would like him to touch her body.  It's about as subtle as an overly literal simile.  

Balu spends his days scamming the good citizens of Filmi America.  He briefly bonds with bright, beautiful and charitable medical student Swapna (Parvati Melton) over his devotion to Yama, but when she finds out that he's a conman, she's disgusted, and declares that any god should be ashamed to have a worshiper like him.  That's enough to start the other goddesses teasing Mrs. Yama again, so Yama must take action.  It's time to go . . . to America!

Yama and Chitragupta (M. S. Narayana) go to America.  Wackiness ensues; there are fish-out-of-water jokes, and Yama briefly dresses up as Batman.  More importantly, Yama discovers that Balu is indeed a scoundrel, but he has a good heart and is absolutely sincere in his Yama-worship.  Yama decides that the best way to reform Balu's character is to marry him off to a good woman, so he arranges for the God of Love to make Balu fall for Swapna.  (The business with the Love God is kind of pointless, honestly, because Balu already had a thing for Swapna.  Nisha never really stood a chance.)

After some work, Balu finally manages to charm Swapna.  The problem is that Swapna has an admirer back in India.  Jinda is a bloodthirsty thug who is methodically killing all the men in Swapna's village in order to eliminate the competition.  Swapna returns to India in order to stop the bloodshed.  Balu follows her, because he's the hero and that's what the hero does.  Balu issues a bold challenge to Jinda, but he is destined to die, and Yama cannot help him since he is bound to treat all humans equally, as was clearly established in his first song.  (See, I told you it would be important.)

The special effects in Yamaho Yama are not great.  The jokes are pleasantly dumb.  The performances are really broad.  But the character of Yama himself is pretty interesting.  As always, Yama is bold, boisterous, and clever rather than smart.  However, unlike other Yama movies, he's never treated as an antagonist.  He's always rooting for Balu, and forms a genuine bond with his lone devotee, but cannot and will not let that keep him from his duty.  In other words, Yama has an actual character arc for once, rather than just moving the plot along.  It's a refreshing change.

Yama: Endgame

After a month spent exploring the Yama Cinematic Universe, I am impressed with just how versatile a character Yama is; he can fit easily into a political sketch comedy, or a sincere exploration of the fragility of family ties, or, as in Yamadonga (2007), a bombastic romantic action-comedy.

Raja (Jr NTR) and Mahi (Priyamani) met briefly as children, and while she was impressed enough to give him Chekhov's Locket, their lives developed in very different directions.  Mahi grew up to live the life of a fairy tale princess - specifically Cinderella.  While she is the heir to the family fortune, her greedy relatives force her to toil as a household servant.  Worse, they are planning to marry her off to her loathsome cousin so that they can seize control of the family fortune.  Mahi suffers in silence, dreaming of the day when her handsome prince will carry her away on a winged horse.

Raja, however, is no prince.  He's a thief and a conman and (because this is a South Indian Mass movie) fantastically skilled at beating people up.  While Raja and his partner Sathi (Ali) are very good at taking other people's money, their fence, the lovely Dhanalakshmi (Mamta Mohandas) is even better at taking theirs, so the pair are hoping for one big score.

They get their chance when Raja is hired to recover a lost dress (it's complicated.)  Naturally, Raja succeeds, inadvertently rescuing Mahi from a gang of kidnappers in a spectacular action sequence involving a giant hamster ball.  Unfortunately, the happy client drops dead just before he can sign the check, leaving Raja even deeper in debt.  An angry and drunk Raja curses Yama, swearing vengeance for the poorly timed grim reaping.

Unfortunately, at that very moment, Yama (Mohan Babu) is showing the other gods just how much the people on Earth fear and respect him.  (The trickster sage Narada (Naresh) suggested the celestial show and tell, meaning once again everything is Narada's fault.)  Yama is so angry and humiliated that he orders Chitragupta (Brahmanandam) to alter Raja's entry in the Bhavishyavaani, changing his date of death from "in seventy five years" to "in ten days."

Back on Earth, angry drunk Raja throws Mahi out of the house.  In the morning, though, he watches the news and discovers that she is a missing heiress, so he finds her (not hard since she's right outside the front door), charms her, and makes arrangements to ransom her back to her family.  However, Raja is betrayed and murdered before he can collect the ransom, meaning he's sent straight to Yamalok.  And then things get complicated.

After finding out where he is, Raja gets to work.  He tricks Chitragupota into handing over Yama's magic noose, his "Life Extractor" as the subtitles call it, and because there's no pesky "if he be worthy" clause, he is granted the power of Yama.  Original Yama also has the powers of Yama, of course, so there is a problem.  Narada pops up long enough to suggest settling the dispute with an election, and the two Yamas agree. Classic Yama has experience and a loyal populace on his side, but New Yama grew up on Earth, so he is armed with the power of dirty politics and a lot of empty promises.

Yamadonga is about three hours long, which means that I have only scratched the surface of the plot, and it jumps genres more than once.  Whenever the complicated plot starts to drag, though, the movie gives you a big elaborate action scene or an even bigger dance number.  And because the movie is so long it can act as a sort of "Yama's Greatest Hits" compilation, prominently featuring the book of destiny, gods descending to Earth, a mortal causing trouble in Yamalok, an election in the afterlife, a mortal soul on parole, and a scheme lifted directly from Bugs Bunny.  The only thing that's missing is ice cream.  Maybe in the sequel.

Insert Tolstoy quote here.

Ramchandra Purushottam Joshi (2013) was based on a stage play, and it shows; the movie is almost Aristotelian in its tight focus on a the events happening in a single house, to a particular family, over the course of eight hours, and also in its penchant for characters explaining interesting things that are happening just off stage.  naturally, the movie opens with a lengthy special effects sequence, making heavy use of computer animation that is so imaginative and so dated that it really deserves a soundtrack by Thomas Dolby.

Once again, we're visiting a shiny, modernized, technologically advanced Yamalok.  This time, Chitragupta is still around and doing interesting stuff off-screen, but the old Yama has retired.  The new guy (and the imdb is not great with Marathi cinema, so I am not sure who plays him, or most of the other characters) is slick, smart and ambitious.  He's got a grand scheme: give some of the better behaved souls in his care an early release, allowing them to sped a day on Earth visiting their loved ones and telling them about how great Yamalok is now before ascending to heaven.

The proof of concept soul selected is Ramchandra Purushottam Joshi (Dilip Prabhavalkar), a scrupulously honest retired civil servant.  Ramchandra is offered the chance to go back to earth for eight hours, on the anniversary of his death, and he is thrilled to have the chance to see his family again.  He's so excited that he wastes they first hour telling his "minder," the dour green psychopomp Ugrakesh all about his doting wife Janki (Suhas Joshi), responsible elder son Nishikant, only daughter Sandhya, and straight-laced younger son Ninad.

But a lot can change in a year.  When Ramchandra finally enters the house, he discovers that Ninad is now an angry drunk, Sandhya is nowhere to be seen, Nishikant is plotting with his in-laws to sell off the ancestral home, and Janki refuses to accept his death and spends all day locked in her room talking to an imaginary husband.  And Ramchandra is powerless to help, because no one can see or hear him . . . until Sandhya makes it home.

There's a moment late in the film when Ramchandra notices that the trees in the garden are dying, and explains to Ugrakesh that no one has been putting in the work to maintain them.   It's an incredibly obvious metaphor, but an effective one.  This is a story about how quickly a family can fall apart, and how hard it is to put it back together, but it succeeds by focusing on this particular family being unhappy in its own way. 

Yamalok can wait.

Jagga Jiunda E (2018) features a shiny, updated afterlife.  Chitragupta, the judge of the dead, has retired and been replaced by Chitr Singh (Gurpreet Ghuggi), the book of destiny has been uploaded to a shiny new computer system, souls are ferried on shiny spacefaring elevators rather than the traditional buffalo, and Yama himself is wearing a cool white suit and is played by Jackie Shroff.  This is a Yamalok where they make Baahubali jokes.

It's also a Yamalok where they make mistakes.  Yama's assistants collected the soul of Jagga (Daljeet Kalsi), a kind, generous, loyal man who loves his mother, when they were supposed to take Daljeet (also Daljeet Kalsi). a spectacularly corrupt and brutal police officer who is cruel to his mother.  Unfortunately, Jagga has already been cremated, so they cannot simply send him back.

Instead, they place Jagga's soul in Daljeet's body.  Jagga is a good man, so he immediately uses his new life to start making things better, first by being kind to Daljeet's mother (Sunita Dhir), then by cleaning up the local police force and clashing with Daljeet's old partner-in-crime Vikram (Harp Farmer), son of the local MLA.  (And I'm not sure who plays the MLA, but he does a fantastic Amrish Puri impression.)  Along the way he finds time to woo the lovely Harleen (Kainaat Arora), who is technically his subordinate but let's not worry about that right now.  Meanwhile, a ghost called Billu Comrade (Sardar Sohi) keeps trying to talk Jagga into completing the unfinished business of the local restless spirits.

"Good man takes over the life of a bad man" is not the most original premise, even with the heavenly clerical error, but it's a fun premise, with a lot of comedic and dramatic potential.  That's why I was so disappointed when the movie suddenly shifted genres to become a brutal revenge melodrama, especially when a minor female character was brutally attacked and murdered just to make sure Jagga is properly motivated.  As revenge melodramas go, it's competently executed, but I want my supernatural comedy back.

The father-in-law from Hell.

Narada is a legendary sage who appears in a number of Hindu texts, including both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.  In the movies, though, he acts as the local divine trickster; if you have a serious problem, you should get Narada to solve it, since it's probably his fault anyway.  Yamudiki Mogudu (2012)?  Definitely Narada's fault.

Due to a celestial mixup, Naresh (Allari Naresh) is born a month early and without a destiny, which means that he is immortal and has power equal to the gods.  Indra and the other gods ask Yama (Sayaji Shinde) to deal with the situation, but Yama doesn't want to, so instead Narada is chosen to deal with the unexpected immortal and also humble the god of death.  (Which is just as well, because it is Narada's fault.)

Years pass.  Naresh grows into a charming loafer and terrible student.  Worse, he's also an aspiring actor!  Naresh is cast as Ram in a play about Sita's Swayamvaram ceremony, and just as he's about to go onstage, Narada makes his move.  He convinces the husband of the actress playing Sita to drag her home, then talks Naresh into calling out for a replacement; thanks to Naresh's subconscious godly powers, the replacement Sita is Yamaja (Richi Panai), the daughter of Yama.  And since apparently they don't have religious drama in Yamalok, Yamaja believes that they actually are now married, and starts following Naresh around and calling him "husband."

Naresh tries to get Yamaja to go away, but eventually brings her home disguised as the family's new maid.  And after a brief period of adjustment, she wins the family over, and suddenly everything is going really well.  Most importantly, Naresh's brother gets a promotion at the bank where he works and manages to get the infamous gangster Royyala Naidu (Tanikella Bharani) sent to prison, an action that I'm sure will have no negative consequences.

Meanwhile, Yama is worried about his missing daughter, so he allows his son Yamaganda (Master Bharath) to go to earth to search for her, as long as Chitragupta (Krishna Bhagavaan) agrees to accompany the boy.  Yamaganda isn't the brightest spark in the pyre, so before he can find his sister, there's a lot of slapstick and confusion and a great deal of ice cream.

Yamana won't leave her husband, so Yama is forced to do things the old fashioned way, by traveling to Earth himself and forcibly abducting her.  Thinking quickly, Naresh grabs the tail of Yama's divine buffalo, and rides it up to the heavens, where, with a little help from Narada, he can match wits with the Lord of Death to win back his love.  Unfortunately, Yama does not play fair, and while Naresh is immortal, his family is not.  And there's the matter of the gangster with a grudge.

Despite the supernatural setting and the meddling trickster sage, Yamudiki Mogudu is basically an old fashioned romantic comedy in the DDLJ mode, with the hero living among his future in-laws and slowly winning them over.  That means that Yama is playing a different stock part than usual; he's the stern father-in-law, the relationship End Boss who must be convinced before the hero and heroine can be happy.  This Yama is still a bit of a stentorian buffoon, but he has to be more competent and cunning in order to be a suitable antagonist.  And he has to be hostile and scary and still believably change his mind at the end.  Movie Yama is a more flexible character than you might expect.  And we're not done yet.

It's a jolly holiday with death.

Yama, god of death, is a stock comic figure in Indian cinema.  He's a stout, jolly fellow with distinctive headgear and spectacular facial hair, and he lives in a magical realm with his helpers and a large buffalo.  He's like Santa Claus bringing the gift of passage to the next life to . . . everybody, really.  And that is why we have Yamaleela (1994).

As the movie opens Yama (Kaikala Satyanarayana) and his assistant Chitragupta (Bramhanandam) are hanging out in the afterlife doing vaudeville bits, but on Earth, Suraj (Ali) is having a much harder time.  He's a carefree scamp who owes money to a lot of people, but while leading his debtors on a Benny Hillesque chase through town doesn't bother him, this time he's also made his mother (Manju Bhargavi) cry.  When the family servant reveals that the family is actually royalty, reduced to Jane Austen poverty because of debt, Suraj vows to make enough money to buy back the family castle.  (Said castle is surprisingly affordable; the specific figure given is one crore rupees, which works out to about 130,000 dollars.  But Suraj is poor enough that it's still an impossible task.)

While trying to earn the needed money, Suraj runs afoul of the local organized crime syndicate.  Syndicate may be a bit too generous, actually; there are two gangs in town.  The "bat batch" are all men who use hockey sticks as weapons and are led by the cartoonishly evil Thota Ramudu (Tanikella Bharani.)  The "chain batch" are young, attractive women who use bicycle chains as weapons and are led by Lilly (Indraja), who isn't as violent as Thota Ramudu but is a terrible, terrible person.  Suraj instantly falls in love with Lilly, and tries to earn money from Thota Ramudu, but he is doubly disappointed and winds up standing in the rain all night only to collapse in the morning.

And that's when his luck changes.  Chitragupta drops the Bhavishyavaani, a book which records the future of every human being, and it falls right on Suraj.  When he opens the book he sees lottery numbers.  The next day, he takes his lottery winnings to the race track, and soon he's rich enough to buy the castle, with enough left over to live in luxury and toss the occasional huge stack of money at nearby gangsters.

Meanwhile, Yama and Chitragupta have been stripped of their divine powers and sent to Earth to retrieve the book.  They have thirty days to find it before they are exiled to Earth forever, and it will not be an easy task, especially since Yama keeps getting distracted by the pleasures of Earthly life, by which I mean ice cream.  And because Yama doesn't have the book, he can't be sure when anyone is supposed to die, so he refuses to take any souls.  That's good news for Suraj, who has the book and therefore knows that his mother is definitely going to die very soon, unless he can find a way to save her.

So, can Suraj save his mother?  Does Yama restore the balance of life and death to the universe?  Will Lilly become at least slightly less terrible?  You already know the  answers.  This is not a deep or complicated movie; it's a fluffy and comfortable and very silly movie about death.