What if, and I know this is crazy, she falls in love with a prince?

I have to admit I'm a little mystified by Khoobsurat (2014).  It's a romantic comedy with a very old fashioned story and a plot that is entirely predictable, and yet it still manages to be not at all what I was expecting.

Sonam Kapoor plays Mili Chakravarty, a gifted physical therapist and free spirit, a woman who pointedly does not have a boyfriend because (as a brief flashback demonstrates) none of the men she meets can handle her extreme level of quirkiness.  As the film opens, she's working for the Kolkata Knight Riders, but as the season ends she takes a job in the royal household of Shekhar Singh Rathore (Amir Raza Hussain.)

Shekhar is wheelchair bound, and stubbornly refuses to cooperate with any sort of physical therapy; he's already driven forty doctors away.  His wife Nirmala (Ratna Pathak Shah) has taken over management of the household, and she does so with strict rules and chilly efficiency.  Vikram (Fawad Khan), the obligatory handsome but stuffy prince, manages the business and maintains an entirely proper engagement to the lovely Kiara (Aditi Rao Hydari).  And younger sister Divya (Simran Jahani) is preparing to attend Oxford but secretly dreams of becoming an actress.  The family are living in the shadow of a family tragedy which they all refuse to discuss, which means they are in desperate need of a quirky free spirit to break them out of their individual shells and teach them to live again, and that is exactly what they get.

There's not much point in elaborating on the plot, because it is remorselessly by-the-numbers.  It's the execution that's different; the film keeps flirting with Bollywood tropes, but is never quite ready to commit.  They set up multiple dance numbers which promptly don't happen.  (To be fair, there is one dance number in the movie, and another during the closing credits.)  Mili is kidnapped by five local thugs, and Vikram rescues her by . . . bringing the ransom money and shaming one of the thugs into going away.

Instead, we get conversations.  Lots of conversations, and some of the dialogue is very sharp indeed.  We also get occasional snatches of the characters' thoughts, which are completely unnecessary because the actors are good at acting and can convey thoughts and emotions with a glance or a raised eyebrow.  There is no need to tell when the movie is doing such a good job of showing.

So, Khoobsurat is not what I expected.  And that's fine; not every movie has to be masala, after all.  There's room in the world for a sweet, quirky romance that manages to stick to one genre for the entire movie. It's a well made movie aimed squarely at people who are not me.

Reasons why I am excited by this trailer:

1) Farida Jalal!
2) Saif Ali playing a role appropriate to his actual age!
3) Tabu as the apparent love interest, rather than someone 10-20 years younger than Saif Ali!
4)  Farida Jalal!

I don't know if the movie will be any good, but I'll definitely check it out.

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.

The sound of silence

Pushpaka Vimana (1987) isn't exactly a silent movie; there's sound, and sometimes that sound is important, but there isn't any dialogue.  Kamal Haasan plays an unemployed (and unnamed) educated young man who goes through life in the big city without much money.  Really, it's a series of incidents; he looks for a job, meets a pretty girl (Amala Akkineni) while window shopping, and struggles to get a turn in the communal bathroom.  It feels like a socially conscious episode of Mr. Bean, at least until the assassin shows up.

I should back up.  One night the young man (and I'm just going to call him Kamal from now on) stumbles across an unconscious drunken millionaire (Sameer Khakhar) who happens to have a key for room 3039 of the ultra fancy Hotel Pushpak.  And in a moment of madness, Kamal kidnaps him, ties him up and leaves him in his own dingy flat, then takes the key and goes to stay at the fancy hotel for a few days.

Suddenly Kamal has (somebody else's) money, a nice place to live, and a chance to see the girl from the shop again, since she's also staying at the hotel with her magician father (K. S. Ramesh) and doting and overprotective mother (Farida Jalal).  And he has a new problem, since someone has hired an assassin (Tinnu Anand) to kill the man in room 3039.

I know I joked about Mr. Bean earlier, but if Mr. Bean were to be menaced by a hired assassin, this would be the guy.  He's fussy, clumsy, and absolutely determined to make "killed with a knife made of ice" happen.  He's so determined, in fact, that he keeps an insulated thermos with an ice dagger with him at all times, even though he'd be better off just hitting Kamal with the thermos.

And once the assassin shows up, Kamal . . . continues to stumble from incident to incident, subjected to some combination of slapstick, pathos, and/or cringe comedy.  Valuable life lessons are occasionally learned, and the end result is interesting, sometimes compelling, but blooming hard to review.

Phir Bhi Dil Hai Bangistani

While most of the action in Bangistan (2015) takes place in Poland, the film begins in the fictional island nation of Bangistan, a land torn apart by violent conflict between the chilly and Muslim north and the warm and Hindu south and oh my goodness, you guys, I think there may be a hidden meaning here.  The two foremost religious leaders of Bangistan, the Shankaracharya (Shivkumar Subramanium) and the Imam (veteran Bollywood white guy Tom Alter) want to end the fighting, so they plan to make a joint statement at the International Peace Conference in Krakow.

This does not suit ambitious terrorist leader Abbaji (Kimud Mishra), who recruits hapless telemarketer Hafeez (Riteish Deshmukh) to disguise himself as a Hindu extremist and bomb the conference. Corrupt politician Guruji (also Kimud Mishra) is also not pleased, so he recruits struggling actor Praveen (Pulkit Samrat) to disguise himself as a Muslim and, well, bomb the conference.  Both young men are devout and devoted to their respective leaders, so after a pair of religious instruction training montages, they don their respective disguises and make their respective ways to Poland.

Once in Poland, the two coincidentally find themselves staying in the same boarding house, and they slowly become friends while immersing themselves in their assumed expatriate communities.  Of course, they're also preparing the bombs for their respective terror attacks, and both falling for apparently-Christian-but-actually-agnostic-which-is-a-minor-plot-point barmaid Rosie (Jaqueline Fernandez).  So as the appointed hour draws near, both would-be terrorists are feeling very conflicted.

This is not a subtle movie; there is a very definite message, and various characters clearly articulate that message over and over just in case there's someone in the audience who hasn't quite grasped it yet.  However, it's also a good message, and looking at the world today, I think it bears a little repetition.

This is also a really weird movie.  From the fictional island nation to Abbaji's men meeting at a chain restaurant called FcDonalds to the Russian arms dealer/potato farmer to Darth Vader being one of the religious leaders attending the conference, everything is . . . odd.  Bangistan is billed as a black comedy, but it's more surreal than funny.  The movie feels like a fairy tale, or better yet a fable, a feeling which is enhanced by a rich color palette which makes careful use of orange and green.

Bangistan was a box office disaster, making just over eight hundred thousand dollars worldwide, so I am fairly confident that this is one of the many movies that nobody likes but me.  But I do genuinely like it - it's got a timely message and an extra helping of weird.

Blarg.

I have been blessed with a jolly Christmas cold.  Reviews will resume when I'm good and ready.

And then, for no good reason, an item number.

I am famously* okay with formulaic movies, as long as the formula is well executed, and Arjun Patiala (2019) does not just execute the formula well, it embraces the formula, celebrates the formula, and helpfully points out the bits of formula you might have missed.  Instead of footnotes, we have a framing story/occasional Greek chorus, in which an ambitious writer narrates the plot of his script to his potential producer (Pankaj Tripathi.)  He promises that the script is a "hero centered" movie for men, featuring violence, action, male bonding, romance, and space for a gratuitous Sunny Leone cameo.  The full package, in other words.

The script is about Arjun Patalia (Diljit Dolsanjh) an honest cop who won his posting in a judo competition.  he quickly assembles a supporting cast, most notably including Onida Singh (Varun Sharma) the station's loyal and gleefully corrupt Chief Constable.  And after a brief flirtation with beauty parlor owner baby (Sunny Leone in a gratuitous cameo) he falls hard for spunky reporter Ritu Randhawa (Kirti Sanon.)  And, as an Indian protagonist, Arjun also has parents; a dotty father (Ritesh Shah) and doting mother (Nirmal Rishi, who doesn't get to wave a shotgun around this time.)

But what about the action?  Arjun's superior (and childhood idol) Amarjeet Singh Gill (Ronit Roy) has a dream: a crime-free district.  And Arjun has a crazy and ethically dubious plan: convince Ritu to give him a briefing  on the local criminals, then use that information to manipulate them into killing each other.  (The crime wave is presented like a tournament in a fighting game, with brackets and onscreen scores and quite a bit of cartoonish violence.)  Everything would be great, except that Ritu is beginning to suspect something, and someone is clearly pulling the strings.

Everything proceeds pretty much according to the formula, with the framing story used to provide commentary and some of the better jokes.  Some of the later plot twists are explained in "deleted scenes," and there's a literal checklist of songs.  But while the metacommentary is fun, in the end Arjun Patalia is a pretty formulaic action-comedy.  And I'm really okay with that.

(*I am not actually famous for anything.)