He does whatever a spyder can.

Traditionally, Bollywood and Bollywood-adjacent films haven't been shy about taking stories from all over and reshaping them for their own purposes.  That's not a bad thing - the Indianification process always adds something to the final product, creating something new and often wonderful.  I have seen things.  An adaptation of The Time Machine that leaves out the morlocks.  The Hound of the Baskervilles without hound or super-detective.  An arc on a children's superhero series lifted from the 1982 film version of Cat People.  Even a near shot-for-shot remake of The Professional with no creepy May-December subtext!  And Spyder (2017) is a Batman movie with no Batman.

Our hero is Shiva (Mahesh Babu), who is not an orphan, not a billionaire, and never ever dresses up as a bat. He's a low-ranking officer in the Intelligence Bureau, assigned to a wiretapping unit, but he has developed software which enable shim to tap into and filter through every phone and computer system in the city, enabling him to stop crimes before they happen, rescue kidnapped children, prevent suicides, and generally fight evil wherever he can.  Because this is a movie, we are supposed to pretend that this is a good thing rather than a horrifying invasion of privacy and subversion of due process; Shiva is generally a good guy, but this is technology that could easily be used for evil - "used for evil" is pretty much the default, even.  And while he doesn't wear a cape, he does have his own theme song!

 

(Fun fact - the theme song includes a line about how he's so cool he doesn't need his own theme song.  Sure, Jan.)

Shiva is also involved in one of the weirdest romantic subplots that I have ever seen.  Shalini (Rakul Preet Singh) is a gifted medical student who accidentally watched four hours of porn and now finds she can't concentrate on her studies.  Her plan, as she explains to a college friend, is to find a cute guy and "try that" so she can clear her head and get back to work. Because Shalini uses the word "help" during the phone conversation, Shiva gets an alert, listens in, and proceeds to stalk her for nearly a month, and when she angrily confronts him , he tells her he's there to help her with her concentration problem, and that is that!  It's never made clear exactly what Shiva's intentions are; he doesn't make any speeches about trying to protect her honor or anything, but while they describe themselves as "friends with benefits," nobody ever gets any "benefits."  And then not five minutes later they sing a song about how they're in love forever.  

 

(Also sexy mimes.)

Shiva is hunting a serial killer, Bhairav (Bharath) and through a combination of genuinely clever detective work, dumb luck, and horrifying violations of privacy and due process, he quickly discovers the villain's origin story; Bhairav was born in a cemetery during a funeral, and can only feel joy when he hears other people weeping.  As a child he started killing people in order to cause more funerals, and after the villagers burned down his family home he hid and kept killing people until the village was abandoned.  While he doesn't have a cool name, Bhairav is basically a supervillain; he's got the origin story, a goofy looking zipper mask that he wears once and then immediately discards, and a lair of sorts at the amusement park where his brother works as a security guard.  And like the modern Joker, his superpower is murder; he can kill minor characters pretty much with impunity, but has much less success with major characters who are not named Jason Todd.  

Bhairav is so good at murder, in fact, that the film slowly transitions from "street-level vigilante movie" to "improbable disaster movie" without realizing it.  And while even giant runaway boulders can be defeated through the power of illegal wiretapping, Shiva can't save people from the hospital attack Bhairav has planned until he figures out which hospital is being attacked, and a captive Bhairav isn't talking . . .

Spyder requires a bit more suspension of disbelief than the average Batman movie does, but there are some benefits.  While Shiva and Shalini have an incredibly weird relationship, they are an engaging couple, and the film just treats Shalini as a girl with a very healthy sex-drive rather than trying to shame her.  The action scenes are sufficiently big and improbable.   The songs are fun, and provide the opportunity to watch a costume designer slowly lose her grip on reality.  Just be prepared for strange. 

Baahubali 2: The Wrath of Kattapa

Baahubali: The Beginning ends with . . . well, not a cliffhanger, per se.  An unanswered question.  Why would Kattapa kill Baahubali?  Why would a devoted servant, who has dedicated his entire life to fulfilling his ancestors' vow to serve the royal family at all costs and obey every order despite his own conscience and feelings kill Baahubali?  It's not actually a very hard question, but Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (2017) still answers the heck out of it.

We begin where the last movie left off, with an extended flashback narrated by Kattapa.  Bercause of his brave deeds in battle, and specifically because of the care he showed for his subjects, Baahubali has been named as the future king of Mahishmati.  The people are thrilled, but Baahubali's adopted brother Bhallaledeva and adopted father Bijjaladeva are less enthusiastic.  Before they can begin any proper evil scheming, though, Baahubali and Kattapa leave to tour the kingdom and learn about what the people want and need.

And it's while on this tour that Baahubali meets actual warrior princess Devasena and falls in love.  He decides to pretend to be an unemployed simpleton in need of work rather than reveal his true royal identity and woo Devasena on equal terms, because shut up, that's why.  (Kattapa actually asks him why he's doing this, and Baahubali replies with a weird speech about how Kattapa doesn't understand love.  Neither do I, I guess.)

The deception gives Bhallaladeva his opportunity, though.  Upon hearing that his brother is wooing the princess in disguise, he goes to his mother Sivagami and asks for the princess openly.  Sivagami sends Devasena a condescending letter congratulating her on the match while not specifying which prince she is to be engaged to, and Devasena sends back an insulting reply, prompting Sivagami to demand that Baahubali take the princess captive, since he's in the neighborhood and all.  When he receives the message, Baahubali has just defeated a horde of bandits and revealed his true identity, so Devasena is willing to play along after he swears to protect her honor and dignity.

And that's where things start to get complicated.  Baahubali is forced to choose between his love and the throne, and he chooses love.  Worse, he also tells Sivagami that she is wrong.  Bhalla takes the throne, but the people continue to love Baahubali more.  Bhalla removes baahubali from his position as commander-in-chief, but the people continue to love Baahubali more.  Baahubali is exiled from the palace (the new commander-in-chief was using his position to grope women at the palace gates, including Devasena, so she severed his fingers and when confronted Baahubali decapitated him) and the people rejoice, because that means Baahubali will be living among them.

Clearly, the situation requires advanced evil scheming, so Bhalla fakes an assassination plot against himself, driving Sivagami to give Kattapa the fateful order, and the question is finally answered.  Baahubali is betrayed, Sivagami is killed just after declaring that Baahubali's son will be the next king, and Devasena is chained up in the courtyard and busies herself building Bhalla's funeral pyre.

And after hearing all this, Baahubali's son Shiva raises an army to take the throne and avenge his parents, because really, what choice does he have?

Like the previous film, Baahubali 2 draws heavily from the Hindu epic tradition, and in particular the Mahabharata.  Things are obviously much more black and white in the movies, of course.  For instance, Bhallaladeva's epic counterpart Duryodhan is an excellent king, while Bhallaladeva is not.

Still, both stories rely on everybody making ill-conceived declarations and stupid vows when they don't have all the facts.  That's Baahubali's secret super power - he recognizes that while keeping your word is important, it is a warrior's duty to stand up for justice.  Unfortunately, he's caught between people who can't get past their own personal honor and people with no honor who are willing to exploit the honor of others.

Of course, the movie isn't just a demonstration of Krishna's advice to Arjun, there's also the spectacle to consider.  The first Baahubali movie was big, and the conclusion is bigger.  Bigger fights, more ridiculous battle tactics, a bigger romance, and not one but two shouty queens.  Baahubali 2 doesn't just go over the top, it sails over it in a flying ship which might be real and might just be the backdrop to a particularly good dance number.  It's epic in more ways than one.

When I'm feeling blue, I like to think about the time that the London News Review accused me of being Andy Kaufman.  It's a weird claim to internet fame, but I'll take it.

Bhooty Call - Pari

Two movies called "Pari" were released last year, one in India and one in Pakistan, and after the first five minutes of Pari (2018) I realized that I was watching the wrong movie.  This wasn't the blockbuster horror film starring Anushka Sharma as a mysterious woman who may be a supernatural being, it was the other one.

Pari begins like a lot of ghost movies begin - a young family, in this case Shehram (Junaid Akhtar), his wife Mehwish (Azekah Daniel), and their young daughter Pari (Khushi Maheen), move into a new house deep in the woods.  Shehram works, leaving Mehwish and Pari alone in the big creepy house all day, and spooky things begin to happen . . . eventually.  the first half of the movie is much more concerned with Shehram and Mehwish having solemn conversations about the move and carefully avoiding the topic of their struggling marriage. 

Things do finally start to get spooky, though.  Dead birds litter the ground around a nearby tree.  The rocking chair moves by itself.  Somet unseen force snaps the foosball table in half.  There's a ghostly blue boy that only Pari can see who sits in the top bunk of her bed  and drinks her milk.  And a homeless man (Saleem Mairaj) sits outside the property, stares at the family, and proclaims that Pari is the devil and needs to be thrown out of the house.

Spoiler: homeless guy is right.  Pari terrifies an elderly professor (Qavi Khan) who visits the family in time for her (deeply depressing) birthday party, and the professor conveniently drops dead right after asking Mehwish who Pari's real father is.  Mehwish does not answer, which means that while the supernatural spookiness is escalating, we also get a lot more solemn conversations in which husband and wife studiously avoid actually saying anything.

What I am saying is, this movie is slow and very, very serious.  It's like the Pakistani remake of  the Omen, directed by Ingmar Bergman.  The actors do their best, but with all the padding they really don't have much to work with.  I will say that the movie was shot in Ayubia national park, and the occasional glimpses we see of the forest are impressive.  Most of the time, though, you can't see the forest for the plodding.

Bhooty Call - Arundhati

Arundhati (2009) features one of those large and happy extended families that were so common in the Indian movies of the Nineties.  They're rich, but it hasn't spoiled them, and even the servants are considered part of the family.  Everybody loves each other, everybody's happy, everybody's kind, and everybody's bound and determined to care for and protect Arundhati (Anushka Shetty), a literal princess and the only girl born into the family for generations.  Unfortunately, all these noble virtues get many of them killed.

On the eve of her engagement to Rahul (Arjan Bajwa), Arundhati returns to her ancestral home in Gadwal, only to find that her warm and wonderful loving family are keeping one of the servants chained up in the back yard.  Apparently while delivering wedding invitations his car was forced off the road, forcing him to seek shelter in the family's ruined castle, and something happened to drive him mad.  The plan is to bring him to Anwar (Sayaji Shinde), the local fakir, to drive out any evil spirits, but Arundhati is a modern skeptical girl, and is not impressed by Anwar's rather brutal exorcism technique, so they drag the poor fellow home again.

That night, Arundhati gets a call from rahul, asking her to meet him at the creepy ruined fort.  She doesn't know she's in a horror movie yet, and so she accepts.  And, well, she finds out that she's in a horror movie.  In the ruined dance studio stands a makeshift mausoleum, with a creepy voice demanding that she let him out.  Arundhati responds like an angry queen, loudly proclaiming that she will never let  him out, and it looks like she's about to pick a fight right then and there when Anwar arrives, drags her away, and demonstrates that yes, ghosts absolutely do exist.

And it is obviously time for some backstory.  Eighty years ago, Arundhati's great grandmother Arundhati (Divya Nagesh) was a child princess, already renowned for her martial skills, courage, and wisdom.  her older sister (I cannot find the actor's name - not cool, IMDB!) is married to Pasupathi (Sonu Sood), who is the kind of decadent aristocrat that would make Lord Byron blush.

Pasupathi has absolutely no self control.  He's such a monster that he rapes and murders Arundhati's blind dance teacher (Leena Sidhu) in the palace, but when Arundhati goes to her father and demansd that Pasupathi be exiled, she is refused.  her father explains that as long as her sister alive and married to the blackguard, he's safe.  The sister overhears and takes matters into her own hands, killing herself.  At which point Arundhati orders that Pasupathi be beaten to death and then dragged out of town by his own horse.

Unfortunately, Pasupathi isn't quite dead.  He's saved by a band of Aghori who teach him dark magic, and seven years later he returns for revenge.  By this time, Arundhati has grown into Aushka Shetty, and she manages to defeat the unstoppable sorcerer using only a pair of scarves and the techniques she learned from her blind dance teacher, and also a pair of swords and a chandelier. Because of Pasupathis's magic, though, it's too dangerous to just kill him; instead, they build a mausoleum around him, entombing him alive without even a drop of Amontillado. 

Meanwhile, the mad servant escapes and frees the ghost.  And Pasupathi - well, he doesn't so much haunt the modern Arundhati as stalk her.  Fortunately, the previous Arundhati has planned for this, sacrificing her life to create a weapon (made of her own spine!) that can kill the ghost once and for all.  Unfortunately, the ghost knows about the weapon, and it's willing to kill everybody Arundhati loves in order to keep her from it.

In a lot of ways this movie is a throwback to the old Ramsay Brothers horror flicks; there's a lot of blood, and when Pasupathi's a round the camera gets a bit male gazey.  It's the Arundhatis that keep things fresh.  The Twenties version is an awesome, indomitable warrior queen with awesome fighting skills, while the modern version does not have awesome skills, but is still willing to walk through Hell in order to protect the people she loves.  Once again Shetty puts in two distinct and memorable performances. 

And I will confess, it's nice, every now and then, to see a ghost who can be defeated with a spinesword and a Glasgow kiss, rather than having to complete his unfulfilled desires.  (Especially since the unfulfilled desires are so horrible.)

Bhooty Call - Bhaagamathie

Bhaagamathie (2018) seems like two movies in one.  The first movie is a political thriller.  In order to frame honest politician Eshwar Prasad (Jayaram), a cabal of crooked politicians arrange for his former assistant Chanchala (Anushka Shetty), now in jail for murdering her fiance Shakti (Unni Mukundan), to be transferred to a ruined castle where she can be interrogated by CBI officer Vaishnavi Natarajan (Asha Sarath) and local police officer Sampath (Murli Sharma), who also happens to be Shakti's brother and really shouldn't be involved in the case at all.  When she's not being interrogated, Chanchala is free to roam the creepy castle totally alone; the police seem to be hoping to Yellow Wallpaper a confession out of her.

At night, though, the movie changes.  The castle isn't entirely empty . . . Chanchala and a small group of comic-relief policemen are terrorized by an escalating series of supernatural events.  Strange sounds, mysterious books, a crazy old man who somehow managed to wander through security long enough to make sinister predictions, and then Chanchala is attacked by an invisible assailant.  Before too long, she's speaking in an unknown language and calling herself Bhaagmathie, Queen and rightful ruler of the palace, and swearing vengeance on her long-dead general Chandrasenan.  This complicates the ongoing interrogation.

Between the Baahubali movies, Arundhati, and Rudhramadevi, Anushka Shetty has developed quite a talent for playing angry queens.  But while the character of Bhaagamathie is spooky bombastic fun, and I will never get tired of Shetty promising to rain horrible vengeance on her enemies, her performance as Chanchala is far more interesting.  At different times, she's brave, terrified, loyal desperate, and ultimately not what she seems.  Almost nobody in the movie is quite what they seem.  The movie itself isn't quite what it seems, either.  Despite the presence of the angry ghost, it's as much film noir as it is horror, and the real monsters are very human.

Too much toon, and not enough loony.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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