Evil Vampire Jumanji

The board game Ludo is a "cross and circle" game, one of the many variants of the ancient Indian game of Pachisi; probably the most common variant in the US is Parcheesi, published by Hasbro.  Versions of the game appear in the Mahabharata and the video for ABBA's song "The Name of the Game", as well as the 2015 Bengali horror movie Ludo, directed by auteur Qaushiq Mukherjee.  (Also the 2020 ensemble black comedy Ludo, but that's a movie for another time.)  

The basic plot of Ludo is incredibly straightforward.  College students Ria (Subholina Sen), Pele (Soumendra Bhattacharya), Payal (Ananya Biswas), and Babai (Ranodeep Bose) all want to have sex.  They each live at home with their respective families, so they try to get a hotel, but it isn't easy.  They're stopped by police, who demand a hefty bribe and steal Ria's food, then they're refused by several hotels in a row because they can't produce a marriage certificate to show that any of them are married.  

The last hotel they try doesn't turn them away, but the man at the desk is oddly unresponsive, and when the power cuts out they go upstairs only to discover that the hotel is full of kinky vampires.  The students flee, go to a club and freak out for a while, but then it's back to the matter at hand, finding a place to have sex.

Finally, one of them has an idea.  They sneak into a nearby shopping mall and hide out until closing.  When everyone has gone they spend some time racing around the mall, drinking, smoking, bullying one another, and generally acting like doomed teens in a slasher movie.  When one of the couples finally decides to get down to business, they're interrupted by a pair of elderly vagrants (Rituparna Sen and Joyraj Bhattacharya).  

After some initial hostility everyone calms down.  The old man wanders off, Ria goes to look for a bathroom, and the old woman takes out an ancient cloth gameboard which seems to hypnotize the others.  They play for a while, and then the old woman suddenly and messily eats Babai, literally tearing the young man apart.  Everyone (including Ria, who returned just in time) freaks out.

This is not a bad setup for a horror movie; Ludo is a game in which players make their way around an enclosed board, trying to reach a safe space and avoid getting taken out by the other players, and the characters are now trapped in an enclosed space with plenty of room to run (as demonstrated by the earlier race scene), pursued by relentless supernatural cannibals.  That's not what happens, though.

Ria, Payal and Pele all pile into an elevator, which seems to go haywire.  Pele becomes convinced that his friend dies because of the sinful women, and tries to attack them, but the door opens and the ladies escape, leaving him to be picked off easily by the old man.  Ria and Payal reach the basement, they're menaced by the old woman, who is not considerably younger and covered in blood, and then they fall into another hypnotic trance and sit down beside her as she narrates her backstory in her best Gollum voice.

That backstory takes up the entire last half of the movie, and it could have been handled with a five minute scene.  Two siblings discover the cursed game board their family has kept contained for generations, they have sex, their father curses them, and now they are cursed immortal cannibals who can never die.  Sometimes they are starving and lamenting their fate, sometimes they are playing board games with random people, an evil shaman (Tillotame Shone) shows up to try and steal the board and then vanishes abruptly, and then it's more lamenting and more board games.  

There are elements of a good movie here.  The characters are unpleasant, but the actors are good, and there are two separate interesting premises which are dropped almost immediately.  But the pacing kills it.  the first half of the movie is incredibly compressed, so we don't really get to know anything about these people apart from he fact that they really want to have sex, and once the killing starts everyone immediately shuffles into the basement for exposition.  There's no time to build tension.

The last half of the movie is just tedious.  I am not inclined to feel sorry for the cannibal couple, who went from stealing a game to eating people in almost no time, and there are few things as dull as watching other people play board games to the death.  It's an excellent example of how sometimes telling actually is better than showing - they played the game for centuries.  I get that.  I don't need to spend centuries watching them do it.

There are nice touches throughout Ludo; the reveal mid-exposition that Ria and Payal have started playing the game again without realizing it is very well done, for instance.  But then the movie makes me angry again with a sequel-hunting mid credits scene about the evil shaman plotting to unleash the evil board game upon the world by commercially releasing a game that has already been available in stores for generations.

It's frustrating.  Technically well-made, but I think the ABBA video has a better narrative.

Lootere

 Lootere (1993) was one of three movies starring Juhi Chawla and Sunny Deol that came out in 1993.  The most famous of these movies was Darr, the movie in which Sunny Deol was so comprehensively out-charismad by plucky newcomer Shah Rukh Khan that audiences cheered for the bad guy and Khan and Chawla went on to star in a long series of romantic comedies together.  Shah Rukh isn't in Lootere, though, so let's see how Deol fares this time.

Things start on a grim note, with police officer Karan (Deol) having a nightmare about a woman named Anjali (Chawla) being thrown off a cliff by a gang of thugs.  Karan is working in a secluded rural area now, but Bombay's police commissioner (Subbiraj) drops by to deliver useful exposition, though only after "testing" Karan by faking a  bloody attack on the police station.  In short, Karan was supposed to be protecting Anjali from a crimelord named Chengez Lala (the usually cuddly Anupam Kher, playing very much against type.)  He failed, and Lala used his influence to have Karan transferred away from the city, but that's over now; Karan is going back to Bombay.

The commissioner encourages Karan to pursue his revenge rather than waste time doing actual police work, and offers the full resources of the department, but all Karan wants is his friend and former partner Ali (Chunkey Pandey.)  Ali has quit the force and is now running some sort of illegal bar, but Karan gives an inspiring speech and the partners are ready to begin their quest.  Step one: an extended flashback.

As the flashback begins, Lala has murdered a police officer at a party he was throwing, attended by some of Bombay's most respectable citizens, and the only person present who really reacts is bar singer Anjali.  She places a call to the police, offering to act as an eye witness, and Karan and Ali are assigned to bring her to the station.  They do, after rescuing her from the middle of a musical number and escaping via horse drawn carriage for some inexplicable reason.  That works about as well as you would expect, especially when the bad guys have cars and motorcycles, but Karan is very, very good at punching people, and they reach the station safely.

Anjali is terrified and wants to recant.  Karan convinces her to stand firm by bringing in the officer's widow and son and telling Anjali to explain to them why she won't testify.  She's placed in a safehouse, but Lala's men kill everyone there except Anjali, hoping to intimidate her into staying silent rather than solving their problem then and there.  

The city isn't safe, so Karan takes her to a secluded cabin in the mountains.  They have twenty four days until the trial, and so the attractive and spirited woman and the brave, pushy and kind of annoying man get to know each other, argue, and inevitably fall in love.

Lala has his men searching the city to find the woman that he should have killed when he had the chance.  Well, most of them.  His henchman Sikander (Naseeruddin Shah), at once the coolest, most effective, and most loyal of his men, appears at the party and then vanishes from the movie entirely.  He may be offscreen canoodling with Lala's sister Devyani (Pooja Bedi.)  

Meanwhile, up on the mountain, Karan asks Anjali to marry him.  She accepts, and he calls Ali at the police station to give him the happy news and invite him to be a witness.  he also tells Ali exactly where and when they'll be, which is a mistake, since there is a mole at the police station who was listening in on the phone conversation and immediately called Lala, blurting out the address before Ali could stop him.  So Lala's men show up, Anjali is tossed off the cliff, Karan is brutally beaten by henchmen who attack him all at once rather than one at a time, and the flashback ends.

Back in the present, Karan is planning his revenge, since that's the only thing he has left to live for.  At least until he and Ali drive past a temple and he sees Anjali, very much alive.  he gives chase, only to be interrupted by Sikander.  Karan knows she's alive, and Ali is willing to support his friend no matter what, and so they set out to gather information by means of a wacky scheme involving Ali dressing up as a German woman.  This isn't funny, and it's a seismic shift in tone, but at least it doesn't last long.

Anjali is indeed alive.  She survived the fall, and Lala decided to keep her alive rather than finally killing the woman who could put him in prison because . . . I don't know.  Some nonsense about death being too merciful.  Instead he hands her over to Sikander, encouraging his henchman to do whatever he wants with her.  but while Sikander is a killer and a drunk and a thug, he's not a rapist, so what he wants to do is keep Anjali safe, even thrashing some of his fellow goons who try to take advantage of her.  Anjali slowly grows to trust Sikander, and he begins to change for the better through her influence.  But he can't let her go, and he does not want Karan to take away the only person who treats him as a human being rather than an instrument of violence.

Like a lot of early Juhi Chawla characters, it is Anjali's role in life to suffer nobly; this movie came out in 1993, before Bollywood discovered that Juhi Chawla is really funny.  Despite that, Anjali is the real hero here; she's anything but fearless, but even when terrified out of her mind she stands her ground.  Karan does all the punching, but basically every victory in the movie is thanks to Anjali's courage.  It's really rare to see a female character of the era display so much agency, let alone drive the entire plot.

Karan can't help but be a little overshadowed.  There's just not much to the part; he's a pretty typical action hero of the era.  He's brave, prone to violence and solemn speeches, and he somehow manages to woo the heroine by annoying her, but there's nothing surprising about him.  Sunny Deol does his best, but he doesn't have much to work with.

And then there's acclaimed actor Naseeruddin Shah, who injects tremendous depth into the role of Henchman Number One.  Sikander is deeply flawed but very complex, and he has an actual character arc, which is more than the film's hero gets.  Sorry, Sunny.

Wrestling with love.

 Sword and sandals movies, also known as the peplum genre, were big in Italian cinema in the early Sixties.  It's a very simple formula:  cast a well muscled and macho actor as a legendary figure form history or mythology, throw in a bevy of beautiful women, add a scheming villain and some monsters to fight, and watch the magic happen.  Despite the mythical setting, the budget can be kept quite low, because the real draw is the hero performing feats of strength, and key plot elements can be recycled from movie to movie, so it's easy to crank out a number of pepla in short order.  There's no way that Bollywood would let a trend like this pass them by, especially when hunky wrestler/actor Dara Singh is right there.  Which is why we have Samson (1964).

The movie jumps straight into the action.  Samson (Dara Singh) is a very strong man who lives in the forest, but he has made his way to Hasnapur, a city of sort of Amazons in order to rescue a goat, which was taken from the forest by one of the women.  Men are forbidden in the city, with a couple of notable exceptions, but that doesn't stop Samson; he knocks down the city gates, defeats a giant (played by Singh's old wrestling rival King Kong) and meets with Rashid (B. M. Vyas), the city's vizier and high priest of the god Mukkadas.  Rashid hands over the goat and Samson leaves.

This angers Sheba (Mumtaaz), queen of the city, so she rides out into the forest to take the goat back.  She loses control of her chariot, but Samson is there to rescue her, and when faced with this large, handsome and kind man she feels an immediate attraction, which will not do at all.  After sending some decidedly mixed signals, she yells at Samson and leaves.

Sheba is angry because love is forbidden in the city, by order of Mukkadas.  That's why the city is almost entirely inhabited by women, and if any woman should fall in love the city will burn down.  Which doesn't stop Laila (Ameeta), Sheba's chief handmaiden.  Laila has been secretly meeting with the young, handsome and roguish Salook (Feroz Khan), and that means love songs in secluded palace gardens.  (Mukkadas doesn't seem to have considered the possibility of women falling in love with women.)

Of course it's all a scam.  Rashid is secretly an evil sorcerer and master of a sect of orange-robed cultists, and he fakes the miracles of Mukkadas using three powerful spirits, Aag (who produced fire), Paani (water) and Hawa (wind.)  Rashid plans to take open control of the city, but first he wants to find and kill the missing Prince Salook, Sheba's older brother, who was smuggled out of the palace as a small child.  He has his cultists searching the area for a man who bears the city's decidedly medieval coat of arms on his back, which is either a really large and elaborate birthmark or somebody tattooed a baby.

Meanwhile Sheba is confused by her strange feelings for Samson.  Laila carefully explains that these feelings are love, and that love is actually quite nice, but Sheba knows that love is forbidden so she resolves to end the problem by killing Samson, and sets out in the rain, bow in hand, to do just that.

Before she can fire her bow, Sheba is attacked by stock footage of a tiger, and Samson rescues her with the power of wrestling.  Sheba faints repeatedly, and suddenly it's raining, so Samson takes her to his own cabin and places her in his bed.  There's a moment when he's clearly considering kissing her, but Samson isn't a creep and so he goes outside and chops wood in the cold rain instead.  Sheba was secretly awake during the almost kiss, and Samson proving himself a decent dude is enough to win her over completely, or at least enough for her to stop trying to murder him.

The, trouble.  Someone overhears Laila and Salook singing love songs.  he escapes, she;s captured, and while the law says that women are not to be punished there's an exception when they refuse to give up their canoodling partner, so despite Sheba's protestations Rashid sentences Laila to be fed to what the subtitles refer to as "The Scary Beast."  Salook shows up to take her place as Scary Beast kibble, then Samson shows up to help defeat the beast.  Salook is saved, the ladies are delighted, the city celebrates, and Rashid must come up with a new plan.

He tries using a genie as an assassin, but Samson just wrestles it to death.  The next step is poison, specifically a potion made from the venom of twenty one different snakes, a brew so toxic that just touching it will be enough to kill a man.  He invites Samson and Salook to a banquet in their honor, and has Sheba offer them "sacred Mukkadas water" to drink.  Samson insists on trying it first, and he changes color for a moment, but he's so strong that the poison doesn't kill him, it only makes him angry.  He blames Sheba, and stalks off back to the forest with Salook in tow.

Fortunately, the rift between Samson and Sheba doesn't last long, because Dara Singh and Mumtaz are genuinely adorable together, with a sparkling chemistry that you don't generally get in a peplum movie.  Once the good guys are united and Rashid has seized complete control of the city, it's time to settle matters Samson style, which means walls will fall and pillars will topple.

 

I do not know if this movie is supposed to be set in ancient Judea, ancient India, or some imaginary kingdom; Hasnapur is a real place in India, but I can't find any refernece to scary beasts and Amazons.  Despite the setting and the snazzy haircut, though, Samson is recognizably Samson.  He's strong, and his strength comes from his faith in the one God he follows.  On the other hand, he's a whole lot nicer than the Biblical Samson and makes a much better boyfriend.

For the most part Samson is very similar to a traditional peplum film.  The songs are an obvious difference, but I think the plot is also a bit more direct; it helps that the "haughty Amazon queen" is the primary love interest rather than the secondary antagonist, which both simplifies the cast and removes any need for Samson to lose his memory and spend a soporific idyll in her clutches.

On the other hand, like a lot of peplum, the movie is padded.  In this case, it's padded with wrestling.  So much wrestling.  Samson wrestles King Kong for no apparent reason.  Samson wrestles a tiger.  Samson wrestles a genie.  Four of the evil cultists turn out to be wrestlers, leading to even more wrestling.   

In the end Samson is a fun movie, in the same way that the Hercules movies I used to watch on cable TV as a kid were fun, with the palpable chemistry between Singh and Mumtaz as an added bonus.  I'm going to have to track down Singh's Hercules as well.

A lot of Singhs, but very little Disco.

Critics hated Disco Singh (2014) , but it was a huge hit with audiences, breaking box office records for a Punjabi movie.  and it' easy to see why.  It's not a deep movie, it's certainly not a subtle movie, but it tries very hard to be an entertaining movie.

Don Bhupinder Singh (Manoj Pahwa) is having a rough week.  Sure, he's rich and powerful, with plenty of guns and a fancy car and a band of dubiously competent henchmen, but he was given his position as the city's crimelord by his father-in-law, and his wife Pammi (Upasana Singh) won't let him forget it for a second.  It's gotten so bad that even the people he's murdering keep calling him henpecked.  However, Bhupinder is distracted by his crush on supermodel Sweety (Surveen Chawla), and he has a plan to meet her at last.  A friend's son is getting married, and he arranges an invitation for Sweety.  She attends, he gets to meet her, and everything is great.

Unfortunately, someone took a picture of Bhupinder and Sweety together, and the photo is published in the newspaper.  Pammi is livid when she sees the picture, and Bhupinder has to think fast.  Fortunately, there's someone else in the photo, wedding band leader Lattu Singh (Diljit Dosanjh), professionally known as "Disco Singh."  He tells Pammi that Lattu is Sweety's boyfriend, and it's a simple matter to kidnap both Lattu and Sweety and force them to pretend to be a couple, at least until the detective Pammi hired (Chandan Prabhakar) accepts the story and gives up.

Sweety is furious; she only met Bhupinder once, and she has no intention of becoming his girlfriend, let alone dating a random musician in order to protect a nonexistent relationship.  On the other hand, it's literally a dream come true for Lattu.  He's been a devoted fan of Sweety's for years, and he's just happy to be near her.

Bhupinder tends to micromanage his hostages.  At first he insists that Lattu and Sweety stay four feet apart at all times, and Lattu carries a tape measure just to be sure.  That's not enough to fool the detective, so Bhupinder changes the rules; lattu and Sweety have to hold hands and smile at each other.  That's still not good enough, so Bhupinder insists on a public kiss, though it has to be a chaste one.

And it's the kiss that changes the relationship.  or rather, the lack of a kiss.  Lattu may be a disturbingly devoted fan, but he's also a good guy, and he's not going to force a kiss on a woman who isn't willing.  He brings her to his office so they can pretend to kiss behind closed doors, and after the obligatory misunderstanding she realizes that Lattu may be really annoying, but he's also a decent person.  She starts warming up to him, and they begin to grow closer.

However, Sweety isn't Lattu's only potential love interest.  He keeps saving Priya (Apoorva Arora) from the same gang of thugs, and while Sweety is slowly warming up to him, Priya is immediately smitten, so much so that she starts seeking out the thugs and asking them to harass her.  

And then the detective is finally convinced that the relationship between Lattu and Sweety is real.  He tells Pammi, and the game is over.  Lattu is free to go, as long as he never goes near Sweety again.  Of course Lattu isn't going to give up on his dream that easily, but he's missing some vitally important information

The plot of Disco Singh is similar to 1997's Yes Boss, starring Juhi Chawla and Shah Rukh Khan, but it's really a remake of the 2009 farce Do Knot Disturb, which was written and directed by my nemesis, David Dhawan.  This is a broad farce, in other words, so rather than an examination of societal double standards surrounding relationships you get Twenty One (B. N. Sharma) and Twenty Two (Karamjit Anmol), two incompetent henchmen who keep forgetting the dead body in the trunk of their car.  Twenty One and Twenty Two wear identical white suits, but they're easy to tell apart because Twenty One is the camp one.)  

Farce can be okay, though, and while Twenty One and Twenty Two aren't funny, the running gag involving another of Bhupinder's thugs (Deedar Gill) repeatedly getting shot in the backside wore me down through repetition.

As for the leads, Diljit Dosanjh and Surveen Chawla are both affable and charming.  I don't buy their relationship for a minute, but I'm not sure that matters.

I Dated a Robot!

Genre in Bollywood tends to be kind of fluid.  That's the old-fashioned masala formula; start with romance, add a heaping helping of family drama, mix in action and broad comedy to taste, and add a little spice with a sexy item number or two.  Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya (2024) takes that genre mixing a step further.  It's not the first movie to mix Bollywood romance with science fiction, but it does commit to the genre blend instead of just applying sci-fi trappings to a typical romance.

Aryan Agnihotri (Shahid is a robotics engineer working in a near-future Mumbai.  He's handsome, charming, very skilled, and very, very single, which is a problem for his very traditional family, and especially his mother Sharmila (Anubha Fatehpuria).  They really want him to get married and start producing grandbabies, but Aryan is picky.  he's waiting for the perfect woman, and no one really understands apart from his cool grandpa Jai (Dharmendra).

Aryan accepts an invitation from E-Robotics CEO Urmila Shukla (Dimple Kapadia) to visit the corporate headquarters in California and see the big secret project she's been working on, and he cheerfully accepts, both because it's a chance to get away from his family's nagging and because Urmila is his aunt; they've always been close and it's a chance to spend some time together while working on cool robotics stuff.

Shortly after Aryan arrives, Urmila is called away to Belgium, leaving Aryan alone with nothing to do.  Fortunately her assistant Sifra (Kriti Sanon) is there to take care of him, and Sifra is . . . perfect.  She's beautiful, brilliant, highly efficient, and a fantastic cook.  She claims to speak every language, though Aryan has to teach her slang terms.  And she's clearly into him, flirting up a storm.  Aryan flirts back, and they spend the night together.

In accordance with the rules of comedy, Urmila returns the next morning as Aryan is preparing beans on toast.  Aryan tries to distract her or at least keep her out of his bedroom but Urmila marches in and discovered Sifra on Aryan's bed, unresponsive and not breathing.  Aryan wants to call a doctor, but Urmila calmly plugs Sifra back in and Aryan finally realizes that he slept with a robot.

Aryan might be freaking out, but Urmila is oddly calm.  In fact she's thrilled; she reveals that she arranged to be called away as a test, to see if Sifra could pass as a human, and it was a great success.  Aryan is less thrilled as he realizes that the woman he fell for was programmed to be his perfect woman.  Sifra is still efficient and attentive, but it's hard to be around her, so Aryan goes home early and tells his mother that he's ready for an arranged marriage.

The prospective bride is nice, but she's not perfect, and while Aryan goes through the motions for a while, he winds up sneaking away from the engagement ceremony.  Aryan is sad and lonely for a while, and then he has a genuinely terrible idea, the kind of idea that makes the plan in Chori Chori Chupke Chupke seem sensible and well planned out.  Aryan calls Urmila and convinces her to ship Sifra to India, to see if she can fool a traditional Indian family; it's market testing!  And then he calls his mother and introduces her to his new fiance, Sifra, then brings her around to meet the family.

What follows is the kind of comedic business that was common in Bollywood romances around the turn of the century.  One member of the romantic pair has a secret, and they try to protect that secret while still becoming a part of their new family.  There are inevitable misunderstandings and a little bit of slapstick, but it's all in good fun with a sci-fi twist, right?

Well, no, because the movie actually realizes that this is a terrible idea.  Sifra is Aryan's perfect woman because she was programmed to be Aryan's perfect woman, but she isn't human.  She doesn't have emotions, doesn't seem to have free will, and interprets instructions in the most literal way possible.  and since she's really a computer in pretty lady casing, she's vulnerable to the things that computers are vulnerable to, like viruses and power surges.  It has to end in disaster, though it will be a relatively family friendly disaster, because this is a comedy.

Sifra isn't human, but she still emerges as a complex and interesting character; she's eager to please, but because Urmila didn't program her with anything resembling Asimov's Laws, she's quickly entangled in a web of conflicting instructions and tries to integrate them into herself.  Aryan, on the other hand, is a much more flat character.  He manipulates everyone because he's kind of a selfish jerk, and he stays kind of a selfish jerk throughout the film.  He does learn the film's intended lesson, that it's better to risk being involved with a real and flawed person than to be consumed by an apparently perfect but ultimately fictional ideal (Don't Date Robots!) but the early scenes set up a valuable life lesson about how you treat the people around you, and Aryan never manages to learn it.

Despite the flaws, though, Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Ulijha Jiya is a fascinating experiment with genre.  It doesn't just mix Bollywood masala romance with science fiction, it also turns that romance into a cautionary tale.  

Maximum drama.

Story time.  Chori Chori Chupke Chupke (2001) was supposed to premier in December of 2000, but the release was delayed for several months when financier Bharat Shah and producer Nazim Rizvi were arrested for funneling money from organized crime, and particularly the infamous crime lord Chotta Shakeel, into the Bollywood film industry.  The trial lasted for over a year, and a number of Bollywood luminaries such as Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan were scheduled to testify for the prosecution, but they all recanted their testimony after a barrage of threats.

All except one, that is.  Rising star Preity Zinta, then best known for her dimple and bubbly persona, testified about the extortion threats she received during filming, and stood by her testimony in the face of continued threats, even though she had to go into hiding for a few months afterwords.  The press dubbed Zinta "The Only Man in Bollywood"; she hates the nickname because it implies that courage is an exclusively masculine trait, but it is certainly punchy.

But while the real world drama is interesting, we're really here for the movie.

The Malhotra family is one of the happy, loving extended families that popped up all the time in films around the turn of the century.  Wealthy patriarch Kailashnath (Amrish Puri) has retired, leaving business matter sin the hands of his son Ranjit (Dalip Tahil), while daughter in law Asha (Farida Jalal) manages the household and Pappu (Johny Lever), orphaned son of Kailishnath's old partner, provides comic relief.  Kailashnath has one dream: he wants a great grandson, and he's expecting grandson Raj (Salman Khan) to get married and provide one right away.

Raj does not want to get married, at least until he goes to a friend's wedding and meets Priya (Rani Mukherji), who completely takes over the celebration as only a character played by Rani Mukherji can, complete with a banging musical number.  Raj is smitten, and after some humorous misunderstandings, Raj and Priya are married, Priya joins the happy and loving extended family, and she's soon carrying the Malhotra heir.

And then tragedy strikes.  There's an accident, and Priya suffers a miscarriage.  the family (and especially Kailashnath) all try to comfort her by telling her that she'll be pregnant again soon.  What they don't know, but Raja and Priya do, is that the accident has rendered her infertile.  The promised Malhotra heir is not coming, but the family keeps pressuring them anyway, and the family doctor (Prem Chopra) is convinced that Kailashnath will have a heart attack if he finds out the truth.

Raj sensibly suggests that they go overseas and adopt a child, but Priya knows that Kailashnath is hoping for a great grandson that looks like Raj; it has to be Raj's child.  She reads an article about surrogacy, but the family is so well known that any attempt at artificial insemination would be discovered.  Priya has a simple (and terrible) plan: find a woman who will join them in Switzerland for a year and make a baby with Raj the old fashioned way.

Raj is in charge of finding a volunteer, and he's terrible at it.  His luck changes on a business trip, when he accidentally picks up a sex worker who hears his story and suggests a local bar dancer named Madhubala (Preity Zinta).  Madhubala is brash and spunky, and when she first appears on screen she's wearing a pink cowboy hat which is helpfully labelled "Sexy."

And then the movie becomes Pretty Woman for a while.  Madhubala, now "Madhu," learns how to dress and talk in order to pass in high society, and she forms a cautious friendship with Raj, especially after he comes to her aid when a snooty store manager throws her out.  Raj remains a perfect gentleman, though; Priya hasn't approved of Madhu yet, and he's been reluctant to cheat on his wife all along, no matter how baby hungry everyone else is.

Priya does approve, and the trio set off for romantic Switzerland.  After some careful maneuvering by Priya Raj and Madhu manage to complete their mission, and the three settle into a happy domestic life together, but there's trouble ahead.  Raj and Priya continue to treat Madhu with respect and value her as a person, and Madhu is starting to lose her professional detachment.  Before the situation can develop into a full-blown Archie-style love triangle Raj's family show up unannounced, and after the expected sitcom shenanigans they start treating Madhu with respect and valuing her as a person as well.  Everyone is happy but there are multiple shoes waiting to drop, and it is all going to end in tears.

First things first.  The plot is silly.  Surrogacy is a good idea in the Malhotra's situation, but Priya insists on going about it in the most emotionally complicated way possible.  They don't discuss anything with the rest of the family, ostensibly because of Kailashnath's allegedly weak heart, but mostly in order to create maximum opportunities for melodrama.  

On the other hand, it's a great cast, and they commit to the bit.  Rani Mukherji is always great, and the relationship between Priya and Madhu is complicated but feels real and valuable.  

However, as good as the cast is, everything rides on Preity Zinta's shoulders.  It has to, because Madhubala is the only character with an actual emotional arc, and everyone's happy ending depends on her choices.  I am happy to report that Preity Zinta rises to the challenge; she's the hero of the movie in more ways than one.

Devil and the details.

 Devil: The British Secret Agent (2023) is a period action drama that revolves around the struggle for Indian independence and features hugely improbable fight scenes, so comparisons with RRR are pretty much inevitable.  That's not entirely fair, since Devil features an extended Agatha Christie homage rather than RRR's celebration of masculine friendship, but there are definite similarities.  Still, Devil manages to be more violent, more nationalistic, and even less historically accurate than the previous film.

The year is 1945, and the British secret service is focused almost entirely on apprehending Indian revolutionary Subhas Chandra Bose and his Azad Hind Fauj (or INA), because it's not like the British had anything else going on to keep them occupied in 1945.  Bose is expected to return to India at any moment, and the British want to catch him, but they are continually thwarted by the mysterious Trivarna, Bose's right hand man and head of security.  The British effort is being led by Bracken (Mark Bennington), a mustache twirling villain who always finds time to be gratuitously cruel even when he's on the job.

Meanwhile, Vijaya (Ammu Abhirami), daughter of a zamindar (Nithin Mehta), has been brutally murdered.  The local police chief (Srikanth Iyengar) makes a few wild accusations as he meets the various potential suspects, but winds up arresting the zamindar himself.  That's not good enough for Bracken, though, and he dispatches his top agent to take charge of the investigation.

Enter Devil (Nandamuri Kalyan Ram), the titular British secret agent.  Devil is introduced during an unrelated action scene, single-handedly taking out an entire pirate crew, though only after they've killed nearly everyone else on the ship.  Once he's on dry land Devil and his assistant/comic relief Sastry (Satya) take charge and prove the zamindar's innocence almost immediately.  Devil has questions for neighbor Patwari (Ajay) and femme fatale Rosy (Elnaaz Norouzi), but he's also drawn to Nyshadha (Samyuktha), the zamindar's niece and a devoted patriot who can't imagine why Devil would work for the British.

Devil's there for a reason, though, because it's all the same case.  Nyshadha is the telegraph operator for the INA, and she received an important coded message for Trivarna which was stolen on the night of the murder.  Nyshadha doesn't know who Trivarna is, but the trail leads to Indian National Congress member Manimekala (Malvika Nair), who preaches nonviolent resistance by day and practices armed revolution by night.

Devil discovers a copy of the stolen codes, and the secret service decode half of it.  Bracken decides that Nyshadha is no longer useful, so he arranges for her to be kidnapped and hopefully murdered by bandits, because he is transparently evil.  Devil has other ideas, rescuing her in dramatic fashion and winning her heart in the process.  He tells his superiors that they still need Nyahadha, because Bose won't land until he gets the all clear signal, and only Nyahadha knows how to get the message to Trivarna.

Devil's shifting loyalties are further complicated by the discovery that there's a mole in the secret service and a mole in the INA, and they may or may not be the same mole.  (They're not.)  It's a tricky situation, but fortunately Devil is clever, charming, and unbelievably skilled at violence.

Taken on its own terms, Devil is a fine action movie.  the plot is complicated but hangs together well enough to drive the action, and there's a lot of action.  It's all gleefully improbable; when discussing just how many men to send after Devil one character flatly states that numbers don't matter, and Devil proves them right during the climax by taking down an entire company of two hundred soldiers equipped with guns and cannons.  

The mystery plotline isn't as successful; it's the focus of the first half of the movie but is quickly overwhelmed by the action/spy plotline, and the solution to the mystery is almost an afterthought.  But the mystery is really only there to introduce Nyshadha and to give Devil a chance to show that he's smart.  It's certainly atmospheric, and I will happily forgive the anachronistic flappers in the big musical number.

On the other hand, this isn't just an action movie it's a Subhas Chandra Bose hagiography.  Bose never actually appears in the movie, but characters talk about him all the time, treating him a s a sort of Indian nationalist King Arthur, always on the verge of a glorious return which in the real world never actually happened.  Everyone calls Bose Netaji, even the nefarious British, and there's only a fleeting mention of the Axis powers he's collaborating with; Bose is the true threat to Britain's control of India.  This is mythology, not history.