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Something to savor.

Daawat-e-Ishq (2014) has a title which translates roughly as "Feast of Love," and that's what it sets out to deliver, a scrumptious little cinematic morsel of romance, seasoned with just a pinch of social commentary.  Of course, it's really hard to get this kind of recipe just right, and you have to try it to see if it works.

Gulrez "Gullu" Qadir (Parineeti Chopra) is tired.  Her father Abdul (Anupam Kher) has been searching for a suitable groom for her, but all of the grooms' families have asked for dowry, and more dowry than they can afford.  Gullu works at a shoe store at the mall, and Abdul is an honest court clerk, so they literally can't afford a good match.  Gullu is not shy about speaking her mind, so the families never come around twice.

Then Gullu meets Amjad (Karan Wahl), and suddenly things are looking up.  He's handsome, charming, speaks excellent English, and has a good job lined up in Kalamazoo.  Better yet, he likes Gullu for Gullu.  After dating for a month, they decide to talk to their respective parents, and when the families get together Amjad's parents make it clear that they do not want dowry . . . . They just want Help."  Financial help, far more than the Qadirs could afford.  Gullu is furious and heartbroken and she makes her feelings very clear.

 And then Gullu has an idea, inspired by a recent high profile court case.  She will assume a false identity, go to another city, and place an ad on a matrimonial website.  Then she'll pick the family that asks for the biggest dowry, arrange a quick (and easily annulled) marriage, and threaten to charge them under Article 498-A, which prohibits asking for or accepting dowry, unless they agree to pay up.  It take s awhile, but she manages to convince Abdul to join in the scheme, and father and daughter are off to Lucknow.

And that's where they run into trouble.  In this case, trouble is named Taru (Aditya Roy Kapur.) Taru own a restaurant in town, and his very proud and traditional parents ask for a large dowry, which makes him the designated target.  Abdul insists that the wedding will be small and held in two days. Taru asks for three, because he wants to spend some time getting to know his future bride, and Gullu agrees against her better judgement.

The problem is that Taru is really great.  he's handsome with a sort of swaggering charm, yes, but he's also honest, he's kind to her father, he feeds orphans at the restaurant, and he just  wants an honest connection, a wife who will love him, even if it's only just a little.  At the end of the three days Taru takes Gullu aside and gives her a suitcase full of money, enough to cover the asked for dowry; he doesn't want to be bought, but he also doesn't want to hurt his father.  

Gullu is stuck. She does love him, more than a little, but she's been lying, and she doesn't think she can be forgiven, so she carries through with the plan, fake-marrying Taru, absconding on the wedding night, then blackmailing the family through a police intermediary the next day.  Then it's back to Hyderabad and a lifetime of regret.  She can't even enjoy food anymore because nobody cooks it as well as Taru.

Meanwhile, Taru is searching for the woman who betrayed him, and finds a clue which sends him to Hyderabad.  Will he find her?  Will he forgive her?  Obviously, because this is a romantic comedy first and foremost.  And it seems a bit easy, since Gullu did a genuinely terrible thing, no matter how sympathetic her motivation was.  On the other hand, Bollywood movies are filled with male con artists who are forgiven just as easily, so turnabout is fair play.  

The dowry system is an ongoing problem in parts of India, and while Daawat-e-Ishq takes a firm stance on the issue (dowry is bad) dowry is a plot point here, a means to bring Gullu and Taru together and then drive them apart.  This is a movie about love, and a movie about food, and while it's not remotely realistic it is delectable.  It's too sweet to be regular moviegoing fare, but it makes a lovely treat.

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.

        

I refuse to call this one "Taming of the Shruti."

Ardab Mutiyaran (2019) is a movie that feels like it was created around a main character, with everything else hastily assembled afterwards.  And sometimes that's enough.  Sometimes one strong performance is enough to make a movie.  Sometimes, not so much.

Vicky Ahuja (Ninja) works in the collections department for a small finance company.  Really, he is the collections department, and he's pretty bad at it; he hasn't collected anything yet, much to the disgust of Shruti (Mehreen Pirzada), who is the head of the loan department, the perpetual employee of the month, and the boss's daughter.  

After failing to collect yet another debt, Vicky spots Babbu Bains (Sonam Bajwa) berating a group of catcallers on the street, using a baseball bat to emphasize her point.  That same day Babbu comes into the finance company to apply for a job.  Shruti isn't impressed and criticizes her lack of education.  Babbu gives as good as she gets, but as she's leaving Vicky offers her a job in collections.  

It turns out that Babbu is really good at collections.  She's clever, headstrong, fearless, and still charming, and soon the collections department is doing so well that suddenly Vicky and Babbu are the employees of the month.  Shruti is so0 annoyed that she sends Babbu to collect a car belonging to the Bansal family, excellent clients who always pay their bills promptly.  Babbu does her job, collects the car, and when she's forced to apologize for taking a car that was fully paid for, she meets the youngest (and handsomest) Bansal brother, Rinku (Ajay Sarkaria.)  

Babbu and Rinku quickly fall in love, and soon they're talking about marriage.  There's a problem, though; Rinku and his brothers live together in a joint family, and while his brothers are enthusiastic about a new member of the household, his shallow and fashion obsessed sisters in law will take some convincing, especially after they realize that Babbu is the woman who got into an argument with them earlier about parking.  The young couple make it through the wedding, but after that it's war between the ladies.

Meanwhile, Vicky's father (B. N. Sharma) is looking for a bride for his son, and he wants it to be an arranged marriage; Ahuja Senior married for love, and he has been waiting on his wife (Upasana Singh) hand and foot ever since. He explains the situation to his spiritual leader (Diliwar Sidhu), and the mother of an eligible girl suggests a match.  The match is fixed without consulting the young people at all,which is a problem because the bride in question is Shruti.  Shruti and Vicky can't stand one another, but both parents are so insistent that they agree, though they are secretly planning to annul the marriage after forty five days.

So, two couples, and two sets of problems.  Obviously Vicky and Shruti aren't going to get divorced, so they're going to have to fall in love and restore harmony in the Ahuja household, and Babbu needs to overcome her cruel sisters in law.

 And so she does.  That's the problem with the movie - Babbu is great, but she's such a strong personality that she can't be intimidated easily, and her sisters in law have absolutely no leverage.  There is the requisite separation, but it's resolved pretty quickly, and Babbu makes a speech to reunite the family.  There's some sadness in the middle of the conflict, but no real suspense.  Babbu's got this.

As for Vicky and Shruti?  Babbu's got that, too. Yeah, Vicky and Shruti warm up to one another pretty quickly when in close proximity, and he eventually wins her love by doing the dishes, but he is so conflict averse that he's never going to tell her how he feels, and so Shruti has no idea how he feels and is going to end the marriage because she thinks that's what Vicky wants.  Luckily Babbu is there to fix everything.

I do like Babbu as a character, and Sonam Bajwa gives a great performance, completely running away with the movie.  That's the problem. She needs to be surrounded by stronger characters, and she's just not.  There's no challenge. 

                                                                        

A circus with bite.

 Vampire Circus (1972) is a movie that delivers on its promises: there is a circus, and there are multiple vampires.  However, if the title makes you think that this will be a lighthearted campy romp, think again; these vampires are specifically targeting children, and this movie gets dark.

Children have been vanishing from the village of Stetl, and village schoolmaster Albert Muller (Laurence Payne) is horrified to discover why.  His own wife Anna (Domini Blythe) has been luring the children through the woods and into the nearby castle, where Count Mitterhouse (Robert Tayman) feeds on them.  There's no real explanation given for why Anna is doing this; she just seems to be really into Count Mitterhouse, so much so that she spends most of her screentime naked.

Muller is a poor teacher from a poor village, so he has limited options, but you don't have to be rich and powerful to lead an angry mob, so Muller leads an angry mob to the castle.  There's a fight, many men die, but in the end Muller manages to stake the vampire, though not before he has a chance to curse the villagers, swearing that their children will die to bring him back from the grave.  The other villagers want to punish Anna for being an enthusiastic accessory to child murder, but Muller asks them to let her go.  This is a mistake; she runs back into the castle, where the Count revives just long enough to send her to his cousin Emil (Anthony Higgins) at the Circus of Night.

Fifteen years later, Stetl is in the grips of a mysterious plague.  People are dying in droves, and the neighboring communities have placed armed men at roadblocks surrounding the village, threatening to shoot anyone who tries to pass.  The influential men of the village gather to debate the cause of the plague and what can be done about it.  Some think it's the work of Count Mitterhouse and his curse, while others, particularly recently arrived Doctor Kersh (Richard Owens) believe it's a disease, and what the town needs is medicine.  And surprisingly, given that this is a vampire movie, we eventually learn that Kersh is right.  It's just a disease which responds to conventional treatment.  Of course, at that point in the movie, Stetl has other things to worry about.

Kersh breaks through the barricade with the help of his teenage son Anton (John Moulder-Brown.)  Anton asks his father to find Muller's daughter Dora (Lynne Fredrick) in the capital and urge her to stay where she is and not try to return to Stetl, because Anton is the only person in the movie with any sense.

Meanwhile the village has visitors!  The Night Circus has arrived, lead by a mysterious and apparently Romani woman (Adrienne Coeri.)  The villagers call her by a different name, but I am just going to call her Anna, because she is in fact Anna.  (It's possible that no one recognizes her with clothes on, but perhaps the fact that she's played by a different actress now has more to do with it.)  It's a small circus, but it hits most of the bases, with animals, a clown (Skip Martin), a strongman (David Prowse), and twin acrobats Helga (Lalla Ward) and Heinrich (Robin Sachs).  They are creepy as hell, but it's not like the quarantined villagers have anything better to do, so every night the show is packed.

And then things start to happen.  Dora shows up in the village, much to Anton's dismay; he loves her, but he would really rather she was somewhere less doomed.  The mayor's daughter Rosa (Christina Paul) is captivated by the show's black panther, particularly when the panther turns into Emil.  The mayor himself (Thorley Walters) collapses after a terrifying vision in the hall of mirrors.  And children start to vanish, because this is in fact a vampire circus.

We are not dealing with the cream of the vampire crop here - Mitterhouse may be a Count with his own castle, but he's also a doofus with bad hair who hangs out in his basement waiting for his girlfriend to bring him children.  Emil has the cool "turn into a panther" power, but he spends half the time lounging in his cage and the other half looking like he's late for Godspell rehearsals.  And Helga and Heinrich . . . well, they're pretty great actually, but they are evil henchmen and spend their time henching evilly.

On the other hand, the villagers are just villagers, without a Dutch vampire hunting scholar or cowboy to be seen.  Anton is brave and sensible and the closest thing the movie has to a hero, but he's just a kid and there's only so much he can do. In the end it's vampires versus villagers, and while most of the village is wiped out by the end of the movie, all of the vampires are destroyed.  Angry mob wins on a technicality.

Pride and Punchability

 Khiladi 786 (2012) is the most recent installment in the long-running Khiladi series of films, but all the movies really have in common is Akshay Kumar in the lead role and "Khiladi" in the title, so there's no need to watch the other 785 first.  

Kumar plays Bahattar Singh, who is introduced as a heroic Punjabi police officer who intercepts goods being smuggled in food trucks, and is honest, incorruptible, fearless, and so good at fighting that the laws of physics are merely polite suggestions.  Except he's not really a police officer; Bahattar and his family are criminals who hijack the trucks, let the police arrest the smugglers, and then split the proceeds with their corrupt police pals.  Business is good, but the family's reputation is bad enough that no Indian family will let their daughter marry Bahattar.  His grandmother, mother and sister-in-law are African, Canadian, and Chinese, respectively, but he's hoping to find a traditional Indian bride.

Meanwhile, marriage broker Champaklal Desai (Manoj Joshi) and his son Mansukh (Himesh Reshammiya) are celebrating another successful match made.  The bride's father insisted on an arranged marriage rather than a love marriage for his daughter, but Champaklal actually arranged for the daughter to marry her long-time boyfriend, and they're only pretending not to know each other.  As Champaklal explains to his son, a little fibbing is okay if it leads to a marriage.  Mansukh repeats his father's words to a potential client, while standing next to a live microphone, at the actual wedding.  Suddenly the wedding is of and a furious Champaklal throws Mansukh out of the house for ruining yet another marriage.

Mansukh and his friend Jeevanlal (Sanjay Mishra) are drinking and lamenting this turn of events when Jeevanlal tosses a bottle away and it crashes through the windshield of Indu (Asin), who was driving through the street at breakneck speed in order to scare away a potential groom.  Indu is the sister of powerful gangster TTT (Mithun Chakraborty) so Mansukh and Jeevanlal are quickly surrounded by armed men, but when TTT finds out that Mansukh is a marriage broker, he's happy to forgive everything, as long as Mansukh can find Indu a groom from a  good family within ten days.

Fortunately, Mansukh met what he assumed was a heroic policeman while visiting Punjab for a wedding, and he knows that Bahattar is looking for a bride.  He heads to Punjab to arrange the match, and when asked tells Bahattar's family that Indu comes form a family of police officers.  Both families are criminals, but they both believe that the other family are police, and so wackiness ensues.

Indu, meanwhile, does not want to marry Bahattar because she already has a boyfriend, hapless Azad (Rahul Singh), who is in prison and constantly on the verge of being released before he screws it up again.  She uses all her tricks to frighten Bahattar away, but he's a card-carrying action hero, so he can take it.  He's also a decent and kind person and Azad is not, so she's a little conflicted, suddenly.

Khiladi 786 is the Khiladiest of all the Khiladi movies.  It's got an engaging farcical premise wrapped around the romantic storyline.  It's got Johny Lever. It has absolutely ridiculous action scenes; Bahattar is outright superhuman for no apparent reason, and other characters comment on it.  It has back up dancers in astonishingly skimpy outfits and an R. D. Burman themed nightclub.  And unfortunately it has Akshay Kumar wearing dark makeup to play his own long lost brother, which is really not cool.

And ultimately, it's nonsense piled on top of further nonsense.  Literally nobody wants to marry the handsome, rich action hero who only steals from criminals and has a notoriously good heart?  Can't TTT just hire a marriage broker rather than literally finding one on the street?  And why does Azad, who has been a low level criminal loser throughout the entire movie, suddenly have a small army of goons working for him just in time for the climax?  Doesn't matter.  Back to the farce and punching.

Everyday I read the book.

One of the supporting characters in 18 Pages (2022) accuses heroine Nandini (Anupama Pareswaran) of essentially being a 90's Indian romantic comedy heroine, and it's a fair cop.  That applies to the whole movie, really, because it has all the hallmarks of that era: attractive leads, huge emotions, a completely bonkers plot, and a wild shift in genre.  All that's really missing is Johny Lever.

But we need to start with Siddhu (Nikhil Siddhartha.)  Siddhu is a software designer who is passionate about everything.  He dotes on his girlfriend to the point where it interferes with work, forcing his sassy platonic galpal Bhagi (Sarayu Roy) to cover for him.  he's broken ties with his parents since his grandfather went missing.   And when he learns that his girlfriend has been cheating on him, he does a Devdas speedrun, going from lovestruck hero to bitter alcoholic in the space of a day.

Bhagi suggests that he burns the mementos of his girlfriend so that he can have closure and get back to work.  He does, but he uses a page from a book he found by the side of the road as kindling, and starts reading as it burns.  The book turns out to be the diary of a girl named Nandini, and Siddhu is immediately hooked and starts reading the rest of the book (without lighting it on fire.)

Nandini is a whimsical free spirit, wise beyond her years, and you can tell because she doesn't have a cell phone, refuses to sue any sort of social media, and records her life in a diary rather than taking pictures.  She has an aphorism for every occasion, and she's quick to help everyone she meets.  Nandini is in Hyderabad in order to deliver an envelope for her grandfather, and because of the aforementioned "no cell phones" rule, that means she needs to spend days wandering the streets, touching lives and sharing life lessons.

Siddhu is drawn into the diary immediately, though he seems to be taking time reading it, which means he gets worked up about plot twists when, as Bhagi keeps reminding him, he is reading a book and he can just look at the next page to find out what actually happened.  However, Siddhu also takes Nandini's philosophies to heart, putting away his cell phone and paying attention to the world around him, which is how he discovers his missing grandfather.

Meanwhile in the past, Nandini's search has taken a dark turn.  She accepts a ride form a stranger who offers to take her to the man she's supposed to deliver the envelope to, but it's a trap. She's nearly kidnapped, but is saved by an orphan boy she befriended earlier and the handsome doctor (Dinesh Tej) he asked for help.  It looks like Nandini and Doctor Sandeep might start a relationship and Siddhu is devastated, especially when he realizes that Sandeep is his married new neighbor, but when he meets Sandeep's wife she keeps talking about her phone, and Siddhu realizes that she can't be Nandini.

He turns the page.  Nandini lets Sandeep down gently, explaining that love shouldn't have a reason, and she resumes her search.  Finally the man she's searching for makes contact.  She meets him in the park and then . . . nothing.  The diary ends there.  Siddhu is devastated again, but Bhagi points out that the diary has Nandini's address in it.  he goes to her home village and learns that she died in a car accident shortly after the last entry.  Rather than wasting time being devastated yet again, Siddhu devotes himself to fulfilling all of Nandini's dreams and goals, which means buying presents for the orphans at the nearby orphanage she used to volunteer at, punching a welder, putting her roommate through school, returning money she borrowed from a bus conductor, and so on.

Siddhu isn't exactly happy. but he's content.  And yet, as he goes around helping people, he starts finding clues that maybe the accident wasn't really an accident, and that Nandini might be alive after all.  Suddenly the movie is a mystery, and Siddhu untangles a mystery which ties all of the seemingly unrelated plot threads together, leading to the movie's first sensible decision.

18 Pages is completely ridiculous, largely due to Siddhu's habit of overreacting to absolutely everything.  He also doesn't seem to grasp the concept of books, demanding that Baghi help him rescue Nadini even though, as Baghi points out, the kidnap attempt was over a year ago, and all he can really do is turn the page.  On the other hand, he does get better, and following Nandini's path inspires him to fix what's broken in his own relationships as well.

And honestly, "completely ridiculous" is not a bad thing for a movie to be.  18 Pages operates on the same kind of heightened reality as RRR or Bahubali, but instead of elaborate action scenes, the movie gives us the world's most elaborate meet cute.