She kills a lot more people than Munna Bhai does.

 James Bond (2015) is also known as Lady Gangster, and that's a much better title; the movie does feature a lady gangster, but has a notable lack of suave British superspies, or really any spies, super or not.

The lady gangster in question is Pooja (Sakshi Chaudhary), professionally known as "Bullet", and she is the reigning Don of Dubai. Bullet has a gang of loyal henchman,but she controls her empire of unspecified crime through her John Wooesque action skills, shooting and punching her rivals as well as throwing the occasional CGI shuriken.

Bullet has a sympathetic backstory told via  a brief animated flashback: her father was a gangster, and after her parents split over the whole mafia thing, he brought young Pooja to Dubai with him,raising her to be the instrument of his vengeance on the gangsters who crossed him.  Now she has reunited with her terminally ill mother (Prabha) and she's playing the part of the dutiful and not at all criminal daughter, determined to fulfill every one of her mother's wishes.  And because this is an Indian movie,that means getting married, so Bullet has a marriage broker look for an eligible man to play the part of her husband for as long as her mother lasts.

Meanwhile, Nani (Allari Naresh), or "Johnny" according to the subtitles, is an eligible young bachelor looking for love. The problem is that Nani is a coward, and when women find that out they don't really find him attractive.  One day at the temple Nani catches a glimpse of Pooja and immediately falls in love.  When a friend spots her picture in the marriage broker's office, Nani rushes down to express his interest, agreeing to all of her conditions without actually reading them.

Pooja accepts what she thinks is a fake marriage, and Nani accepts what he thinks is a real marriage.  They don't really talk about it beforehand, so Nani is very disappointed on the wedding night when she pushes him away, but he is a decent person so he's willing to give her space until she feels she's ready.

Standard romantic comedy rules apply here, so these two mismatched souls are bound to fall in love eventually, and sure enough Pooja starts warming to her new husband, especially since her mother is now so happy that she's on the road to recovery, and hints that what she really wants is a grandchild. However, one of Bullet's rivals from Dubai (Ashish Vidyarthi) has tracked her to Hyderabad, which means that between romantic comedy scenes she kills an awful lot of people. And Nani accidentally spots his wife during one of these scenes and realizes that his wife is in fact a lady gangster, so while Pooja is falling for him, he's plotting to escape.  Which is complicated when Nani's family shows up for an extended visit.

This is a very silly movie, but it's silly in predictable ways.  Of course Nani is going to learn that some things are worth fighting for and overcome his fears, and of course Pooja will learn that her awkward but kind husband is exactly what she needed all along.  It's decently entertaining along the way,  though; the action scenes were clearly filmed on a budget,but many of them are creative and fun,particularly the sequence where rival gangsters attack while the couple are shopping for clothes, and Pooja quietly deals with them while trying to hide the carnage from Nani.

 

When I first started watching Bollywood,Indian movies were not widely available on streaming services,meaning that I had to find DVDs, and sometimes that meant buying DVDs in bulk for less than a dollar each.  That was always risky; sometimes the movies weren't subtitled, sometimes they were sleazy revenge melodramas or incomprehensible slapstick comedies.  Sometimes they were great, and sometimes they were silly but reasonably entertaining low budget movies that I never would have discovered if I hadn't taken a risk. Lady Gangster is a dollar DVD movie.

All that's missing is a bag of diamonds.

Despite its release date, Love Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega (2001) is a pretty typical early Nineties Bollywood farce, with an overbearing father-in-law, alleged heroes engaged in a morally dubious scheme, a briefcase full of cash getting passed around, and a happy ending that solves nothing.  Well, mostly typical.

Prakash (Saif Ali Khan) is a charming and ambitious man who hopes to marry into money,and he's set his sights on Sapna (Sonali Bendre), an aspiring artist with a wealthy father and a short attention span. And it works!  The couple are quickly married, but Prakash discovers that while he's found a comfortable life, he doesn't have the respect of his father in law Rajiv (Dalip Tahil), who gives him a large office to sit in all day but refuses to let him have any responsibility,and berates him at every turn.  Prakash decides to start his own business, but he'll need money for that, and Rajiv isn't going to give him any.

Meanwhile, roommates Rahul (Fardeen Khan) and Harry (Aftab Shivdasani) have their own problems. Rahul is looking for a job without success, so  he hasn't  paid the rent in six months. This is especially awkward because he's in love with the landlord's daughter, Anjali (Twinkle Khanna).  Harry, meanwhile, just wants to have fun with as many ladies as possible, and he's borrowed money from the feared gangster Aslam Bhai (Johnny Lever)

Rahul finally has a chance to land a job, he'll have to pay a sizable bribe in order to seal the deal. Meanwhile, Anjali's father (Tanikella Bharani) has arranged a marriage for her in a month; he's willing to reconsider, but only if Rahul is employed, so they now have a deadline. And Harry has an idea - they can do some crimes to get money!  Not big crimes, just a little bit of mugging in the parking lot of a five star hotel.

Harry and Rahul attempt to mug, and Prakash is one of their first targets.  Despite dressing well, though, he doesn't really have much money. What he does have is an idea - the se skilled and totally trustworthy criminals can kidnap Sapna for a few hours, and demand a large ransom. Prakash will split the money with them, Rajiv is rich enough that he won't miss the money, and everybody will be happy!

And then wackiness ensues.  Sapna turns out to be surprisingly capable of defending herself, but Rahul and harry finally manage to kidnap her, only to realize that their tiny apartment is no place to keep a hostage, while Anjali is starting to suspect that something is up. It's a bit like "The Ransom of Red Chief" mixed with a dash of Fargo without the body count.  This is a silly movie.

Aslam Bhai has an extended subplot about being scammed by a fake movie producer named Aaj Kapoor (Snehal Dabi) who exploits his dreams of Bollywood stardom, and it is also silly, but silly in an unexpected way.  For a long time Johnny Lever was  Bollywood's reigning King of Comic Relief, a reputation he earned through incredibly broad acting and mugging for the camera, but he plays Aslam Bhai almost completely straight; it's arguably a more serious performance than the leads put in. 

Johnny Lever is interesting, Saif Ali Khan is reliably good, Sonali Bendre and Twinkle Khanna are charming but don't have much to do, and Fardeen Khan and Aftab Shivdasani are also in the movie.

Lanka is burning.

 Singham Again (2024) is the latest installment in Rohit Shetty's Cop Universe,and while it does feature all of the maverick supercops who play by their own rules and get results, as well as establishing some new result getting rule-breakers, it's still not The Avengers.  It does include even more avenging than previous installments, though, and significantly more avenging than any of the Avengers movies did.

At the end of Sooryavanshi, supercop Bajirao Singham (Ajay Devgn) swore to bring terrorist mastermind Omar Hafeez (Jackie Shroff) to justice. Then, apparently, he took a job in Kashmir and eventually lucked into an encounter with Hafeez, arresting him after a surprisingly mundane fight scene. (The laws of physics usually bend in the vicinity of Singham, but this was a scene that could really happen.)  After the failure of his previous schemes, Hafeez moved into drug smuggling, bringing drugs into India from Sri Lanka, and using the profits to finance terrorist activities.  Singham is appointed to lead Shiva Squad, a new organization drawn from police departments across India, to combat this threat.

Two years later, Singham's wife Avni (Kareena Kapoor) is producing and hosting a nine day production of Ramlila, interspersing the reenactment of the Ramayana with a tour of the places described in the epic. Singham is kept busy with Shiva Squad, and they've finally caught a break - a group of fishermen have been caught off the coast of Tamil Nadu carrying drugs. The prisoners refuse to talk until Singham arrives to threaten them personally, but they eventually give him a name: Danger Lanka (Arjun Kapoor).

Thanks to the tip, DCP Shakti Shetty (Deepika Padukone), also known as "Lady Singham", captures three of Lanka's men.  She's supposed to deliver them to Singham in the morning,but that night Lanka and his men rescue them, setting the police station on fire and killing everyone there in the process.  Shakti is devastated, but Singham convinces her to avenge her fallen colleagues.

Lanka is playing a different game, though.  With the help of Avni's assistant (Sara Arfeen Khan) she's lured into a trap and abducted.  Thanks to the timely intercession of ACP Satya Bali (Tiger Shroff) and the sacrifice of another police officer (Dayanand Shetty) Avni manages to escape, at least temporarily.  Bali takes her to the ashram run by his adopted mother, but Lanka and his men attack in force, and Avni is shot and then recaptured; Singham arrives, but he's too late to do anything but beat up a lot of people.

Lanka has a hidden agenda.  His real name is Zubair Hafeez, Omar's grandson, and he's avenging his uncles, who were summarily executed by the heroes at the end of Sooryavanshi.  He promises to release Avni,but only if Omar is turned over to him, along with Singham and his fellow maverick cops, Simmba (Ranveer Singh) and Sooryavanshi (Akshay Kumar).  Singham won't do anything unless he is sure that Avni is alright, so Lanka will allow Simmba to visit his lair and see for himself.

Lanka's  evil plan is based on the Ramayana, casting himself as Ravan.  And that might have been a surprise except that the movie hammers home the Ramayana connection at every opportunity, cutting back and forth between the contemporary action and the performance of the Ramlila, making it absolutely clear that this plot is just like the Ramayana and pointing out the Ramayana counterparts of all of the characters, while the Ramlila's narration spells out exactly what the intended moral is.  

The action scenes are every bit as over the top as you'd expect from a Singham movie, but everything else is completely po-faced, from Singham's many, many dramatic speeches about family and vengeance to Avni making condescending remarks about people like her son Shaurya (Viren Vazirani) who consider the Ramayana to be mythology rather than history.

Things brighten up considerably when Simmba is on screen; Ranveer Singh switches between action hero and comic relief at the drop of a hat, but he seems to be having a fantastic time, and he livens up the overly serious action/drama/patriotic epic proceedings.

But my real problem with Singham Again is the problem that I have with all of the Cop Universe movies. Singham and friends are presented as the incorruptible ideal police officers, but they are happy to step outside of the law   and summarily execute people when they feel it's right. We're supposed to trust them toact as judge, jury and executioner because the movies assure us that they're good cops, but it doesn't want us to consider the possibility that these cops could be wrong, or even less  than perfect. Absolutely nobody points out that the only reason Lanka started his campaign of bloody revenge is because Singham and company executed his relatives without a trial.  

Simmba is fun and the action scenes are visually impressive, but overall it's less realistic than the time that Young Singham turned into Aquaman and rescued a mermaid princess.

The rare Triple Reverse Scooby-Doo.

 As the title implies, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 (2024) is the latest installment in the Bhool Bhulaiyaa franchise.  While it shares much of the cast of Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2, and one key actor returns form the first movie, this is a spiritual sequel rather than a direct sequel; there's no shared universe, but character names are the same and plot points echo the previous films, up until the point when they do not.

The first real difference is in the choice of protagonist. In the first movie, Aditya (Akshay Kumar) is a psychiatrist, using the trappings of spiritualism to help a patient suffering from a spooky but ultimately natural problem. In the second movie, Ruhaan (Kartik Aaryan) is forced by circumstances to pretend to be Rooh Baba, and winds up dealing with a very real ghost. Here Ruhaan (Kartik Aaryan again) is already posing as Rooh Baba, cheerfully driving away fake ghosts and fleecing the wealthy and gullible with the help of his sidekick Tillu (Arun Kushwah.)

A potential client (Rajesh Sharma) turns the tables by faking a haunting by the ghost of his actually very much alive niece Meera (Triptii Dimri).  Even though they know he's a fake, Meera and her uncle need the help of Rooh Baba, and the video of him freaking out over an apparent ghost provides excellent blackmail material.

Meera's father (Vijay Raaz) is the Raja of Rakhtghat,but the entire family are living in squalor in the cowshed across form the palace. The place is supposed to be haunted by the ghost of Manjulika, a supremely talented princess of the family who murdered her brother Debendrenath two hundred years ago, was burned alive as punishment, returned as a ghost to kill her father, and was ultimately sealed up behind a scary door which must never be opened under any circumstances, which is surprisingly common in this sort of movie.  Ruhaan looks so much like the portrait of Prince Debendrenath that everyone assumes he is the prince's reincarnation, here to drive away Manjulika and restore the family to prosperity.  That is certainly the thesis of the family's spiritual advisor, a Rajpurohit (Manish Wadha), who tells Ruhaan that he must open the scary door, but only on the night of Durga Ashtami.

The family moves back into the palace and starts to live comfortably for the first time in ages - the villagers are sure that Manjulika is about to be exorcised, so they're willing to lend money to the Raja again, and once the palace is ghost free it can be sold for enough money to support them indefinitely, and pay Ruhaan a tidy commission.  And soon enough Mallika (Vidya Balan) and her team show up to handle the restoration; she's not the person Meera was expecting, but Mallika explains that he's suddenly left on a long vacation.

Spooky things begin to happen, because this is a haunted house movie. But Ruhaan quickly realizes the truth: the scary door is already open, and three grifters (Rajpal Yadav, Sanjay Mishra, and Ashwini Kalsekar) have been living in the forbidden room and faking the haunting to keep people away. Ruhaan knows a thing or two about faking hauntings, so he arranges a public ceremony to drive the ghost out,and asks Mallika to play the part of Manjulika.  Everyone buys it, and nobody seems to notice that Mallika really threw herself into the part.

The "ghost" is gone, and the palace is put up for sale, drawing a few interested buyers,but no one is willing to pay the Raja's asking price. Mallika's team accidentally break a wall, revealing yet another scary door, and the Rajpuroihit discovers that Manjulika had an older sister, Anjulika.  The Raja and Ruhaan open the new scary door but don't discover much, and soon after the glamorous Mandira (Madhuri Dixit) arrives to buy the palace, though she won't sign anything until Durga Ashtami.

And then rich jerk Vicky Khanna (Shataf Figar) arrives and announces he's willing to buy immediately. He can easily match Mandira's price, so the raja quickly agrees.  Khanna doesn't want to restore the palace, he wants to remodel it and turn it into a five star hotel, which is always a recipe for disaster in an Indian ghost movie.  It makes the ghosts angry, and it seems to infuriate both Mallika and Mandira. Khanna dies in an apparent car accident that night, and suddenly Mandira is the top bidder again. 

The haunting intensifies, the masked red burning phantom of Manjulika appears to multiple characters,and both Mallika and Manjira are acting very strange indeed.  The Rajpirohit prepares Ruhaan for a final supernatural confrontation, but what nobody realizes is that this isn't a house haunted by two sisters, it's haunted by three.  

"Bhoolm bhulaiyaa" translates roughly to maze or labyrinth, and this is easily the most labyrinthine plot in the series, with a haunting that is being faked by a different ghost.  While it's complicated, the plot mostly hangs together. It's never especially scary,but the smoldering masked ghost of Manjulika is an arresting image.  And it's a movie with its heart in the right place, though I am not really qualified to judge how well it handles the social issues it touches on.

All that aside, though, there are two real reasons to watch Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3: Madhuri Dixit and Vidya Balan. They're both veteran actresses at the top of their game here, mixing spooky scenery chewing, quiet menace, and surprisingly touching moments of genuine emotion.

It's a Christmas miracle!

 It's no secret that I love a big, splashy Bollywood romance, with big dance numbers and sidetrips to Switzerland and Amrish Puri glowering angrily but coming around in the end, but I also love quiet, quirky romances with eccentric and wounded souls blindsided by love and learning how to handle it.  And that's where Merry Christmas (2024) comes in.

Albert (Vijay Sethupathi) returns home to eighties Bombay after seven years.  A kindly neighbor (Tinnu Anand) lets him into the family home, because after the death of his mother, Albert is the only one left.  It's Christmas Eve, so rather than stay at home moping he goes out on the town.  At a restaurant he's approached by a stranger (Sahil Vaid) and asked to tell the man';s date that he's been called away on business and will be sneaking out the back now.  The date, Maria (Katrina Kaif) isn't too surprised; she's therewith her young and mute daughter Annie (Pari Maheshwari Sharma) and it was clear that the man was freaking out.

Albert and Maria meet again at the movie theater; he watches Annie's teddy bear while maria takes her daughter to the bathroom, and after successfully fulfilling that responsibility he is allowed to walk the ladies home.  Annie is sent to bed, Maria and Albert start talking,and there's some genuine chemistry there, as well as a shared sense of loss.  Albert is still pining for his lost love Rosie (Radhika Apte), while Maria is stuck in a failed marriage with Jerome (Luke Kenny), who is both overly jealous and compulsively unfaithful.

At this point Annie is fast asleep, so Maria decides to take Albert out to a few of her favorite spots in town, assuring him that they'll only be gone for an hour and Annie will be fine.  One hour turns to three, and then they make their way back to maria's flat, only to discover Jerome's dead body, shot in the chest and with a gun in his hand. Maria checks on her daughter (thankfully) and then insists on calling the police, but Albert refuses to stay; he hasn't been in Dubai for the last seven years, he's been in prison for murdering Rosie, and he the police will ask questions if Maria has a convicted murderer with her as they are investigating her estranged husband's murder.  Maria tells him to leave.

Albert lingers in the area, though, waiting at a tea stall to keep an eye on things.  So he's there to see Maria and Annie head out into the night; they're stopped by a passing policeman and explain that they're on their way to Midnight Mass.  Albert follows them to the church, where he sees Maria faint, and sleazy caterer Ronnie (Sanjay Kapoor) come to her rescue.  Albert looks after Annie, and joins the cab ride back to Maria's flat, even as she silently and subtly urges him to go away, and he's  there when they enter the flat and discover that everything is apparently fine.  Maria puts Annie to bed, then discovers she's left her watch at the church, so Ronnie offers to escort her there to find it, and Maria pointedly suggests that they drop Albert off on the way.

This isn't just a quiet, quirky romance, it's also quiet, quirky film noir, though the big twist owes more to Agatha Christie than Raymond Chandler.  The mystery is well-crafted, but the move is less concerned with whodunnit than it is with who these people are.  And despite the shift in genre midway through the film, the tone stays remarkably consistent; it's a somber little romance, but it's also a surprisingly romantic mystery.

Maria needs to stop leaving her daughter home alone, though.  That's a recipe for disaster, especially at Christmas.

Ted Lasso in and as Die Hard.

 One Cut Two Cut (2022) is the story of Gopi (Danish Sait). Gopi is not your typical Indian film hero; he's earnest, awkward, out of shape, and has an advanced degree in Arts and Crafts; even his late mother found him more than a little ridiculous. But then,One Cut Two Cut isn't your typical Indian move.

Gopi has finally found a job teaching arts and crafts to elementary school students. The school is run down, most parents have just stopped sending their children, and the few kids who do show up are herded into a single classroom and mostly allowed to run wild.  Gopi takes  his place at the head of the class and politely asks for the students' attention. They ignore him, so he makes a paper crane.  That gets one girl's attention and then another, and soon he has the whole classroom watching with fascination. It turns out that Gopi isn't just good at arts and crafts, he's also a genuinely good teacher.  He's kind and patient and kind of ridiculous, and the students respond well to that.

Meanwhile, Pruthviraj (Prakash Belawadi) has retired after a long and successful career, and he's not happy about it. Years ago he beat a young Amitabh Bachchan for the radio station job,and he's convinced that if it had gone the other way than Amitabh would still be working at the radio station, while he would be the legendary legendary actor and star of Don, Coolie, Deewar, and Mard.  (I have seen Mard. I think Amitabh would be willing to let that one go.)  

Pruthviraj decides to hold a protest in order to get attention and maybe bring about social change, but only three people show up: aspiring stand up comedian Ayan (Vineth "Beep"Kumar), retired army chef Gurudev (Manoj Sputnique Sengupta), and militantly vegan blogger Neha (Roopa Rayappa).  The four give up on the protest and go to lunch, and everyone starts talking about how they need something bigger. Not a protest, a revolution!  When Gurudev mentions that he has a gun, Pruthviraj comes up with a spectacularly terrible plan to gain attention.

Back to Gopi, who has been having a great day so far - not only are the kids listening to him, but Nagaveni (Samyutka Hornad), one of the other teachers, is the literal girl who got away; their potential arranged marriage fell apart as soon as her father learned he had a degree in arts and crafts, and now she's here and Gopi has an actual job.

And then the day gets worse, as four strangers in red jumpsuits with Salvador Dali masks burst  into the room and take everyone hostage.  Nobody knows they're there, and there's no one to make their demands to, but fortunately the Hindi teacher (Aruna Balraj) has aphone number for the Chief Minster's secretary (Sampath Maitreya).  Unfortunately, the secretary only speaks Kannada, while none of the would be terrorists do.  Gopi is fluent in Kannada, though, and thinks he's fluent in English, so he acts as translator, and wackiness ensues.

Things don't go well.  Pruthvirak and his gang can't get along for long enough to present a coherent manifesto, let alone a list of demands.  The secretary has no intention of giving them anything, anyway.  He's already ordered the state government's top Secret Agent (Vamsidhar Bhogaraju) to gather some men, go to the school, and kill everybody before word can get out and threaten the Chief Minister's reelection.

These people need a hero.  What they've got is Gopi, and he sets out to save the children and the woman he barely knows but has a thing for with his particular set of skills: kindness, patience, and papercraft. He might get some help from plucky reporter Komala (Soundarya Nagaraj) if she can convince her boss that there really is a hostage situation so he stops sending her to cover hula hooping stories..

In some ways the movie reminds me of Mr. Bean  or even Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp - they're comedies which take a bumbling and silly character and put them in stressful situations with characters who are not silly. Granted, those comedies don't normally involve schoolchildren being held hostage - at one point Gopi breaks the fourth wall to point out that the movie has gotten really dark, and the actors all pull out their scripts and confirm that yes, things have gotten very dark.

Things don't stay dark, though.  In the end this is a comedy, and Gopi saves the day by being kind, rather than by transforming into an action hero.  That doesn't mean that Gopi winds up successful or even respected at the end of the movie, and certainly doesn't herald an era of widespread appreciation for professional arts and crafts, but he saved people and proved something to himself in the process.  One must imagine Gopi happy.

Chhota Bheem and the Inevitable Remake

 It seems like every other day a new Bollywood cinematic universe begins, but the Spy Universe, the Cop Universe, and the Maddock Supernatural Universe can't begin compete with the sheer volume of material released  for the Chhota Bheem franchise. Bheem and his pals have been all around the world, fighting pirate Vikings, meeting aliens, gaining super powers, and spawning at least five spin-offs.  (It's hard to keep up.)  And now, in Chhota Bheem and the Curse of Damyaan (2024), Bheem and his friends cross over into a whole new world: live action.

In the deep desert outside the tiny kingdom of Dholakpur, something is stirring. A celestial convergence, combined with a weird green meteorite thing, has weakened the seal imprisoning the great serpent mage Damyaan (Sumikt Keshri), and he has dispatched his shapechanging servants Skandhi (Makarand Deshpande) and Takshika (Navneet Kaur Dhillon) to find a pure hearted warrior of great power to break the last seal, so that Damvaan can rise and use his ultimate power to turn all of the humans in the world into snakes.  This is normally the sort of problem that you get Conan to handle,or at least Ator, the Fighting Eagle, but Dholakpur doesn't need them, because it has Bheem (Yagya Bhasin.)

Bheem is a kid, but he's not an ordinary kid.  He's really strong (especially after he's eaten laddoos), consistently brave, reliably heroic, and just generally nice.  He's also loyal  and humble, happy to solve everyone's problems and protect the reign of the good king Indraverma (Sanjay Bishnoi.)  He doesn't work alone,though - he's usually accompanied by Chutki (Aashriya Mishra),  his sassy platonic gal pal; Raju (Advik Jaiswal), his bald sidekick; Kalia (Kabir Sajid), a somewhat reformed bully who would be the strongest kid around if not for Bheem; Kalia's twin sidekicks Bholu and Dholu (Divyam Dawar and Daivik Dawar); and Jaggu (Aryan Khan) the blue CGI monkey. They are also friends with Indraverma's daughter Indumati (Swarna Pandey) but she doesn't have much to do in this one.

While Bheem's friends are busy preparing for his upcoming birthday, Skandhi and Takshika are hard at work being evil.  They ambush a friendly merchant bringing supplies into town, take his place, arrange a painfully transparent scene in which Skandhi apparently saves Indraverma from a deadly snake, and just to be on the safe side they sneak out at night and burn the village's crops using their snake magic.  This is bad news for the kingdom,which means that Indraverma is desperate enough to listen when they suggest an expedition to find Sonapur, the lost City of Gold, buried deep within the desert sands.  Skandhi predicts that the king is the fabled mighty and pure hearted warrior who can unlock the lost city, and off they go into the desert.

Naturally, the kids come along on this dangerous expedition. Bheem is deeply suspicious of these strangers, but all of the adults are happy to ignore every warning sign, including the wild-eyed sage (Chandrashekhar Dutta) ranting about the danger of releasing Damyaan.  They find the seal, and Indraverma tries his luck, but he's into the prophesied warrior.  Neither is Kalia, so Skandhi suggests that Bheem try.  Bheem doesn't want to, but he obeys his king, and the seal is opened. This does not reveal Sonapur, it releases Damyaan, because that was the evil plan all along. 

Bheem and his pals put up a good fight, but Damyaan is just too powerful, and they are quickly defeated.  Rather than taking the opportunity to turn them into snakes, Damyaan imprisons them all and goes about his evil,business. Fortunately, the sage they met in the desert has also been imprisoned, and he is able to provide them with valuable exposition about the last days of Sonapur and how the ancient Guru Shambhu (Anupam Kher) sacrificed his life to seal the immortal serpent mage away. They quickly hatch a plan: Bheem and his friends will travel back in time to defeat Damyaan before he can become immortal, which will prevent him from escaping and nobody will be turned into a snake.  And Indraverma can stay in the present and think about what he's done.

Sonapur in the past is a world of amazing magic,with flying vehicles and street vendors conjuring gold vases out of mid-air, but it has also been nearly conquered by Damyaan and his minions, so Bheem and the gang must move quietly in order to make contact with the resistance and find Shambhu.  And that plan falls apart immediately as soon as Bheem sees someone in trouble.

This is a kids movie, and it's clearly playing to its target audience. However, the scope of the story is a lot different than what you usually see in Paw Patrol; Bheem and his pals are kids TV archetypes, but they're embroiled in a high fantasy plot with a Sword and Sorcery villain and a time travel twist,and all of the elements blend surprisingly well.  It's a decent rollicking fantasy epic, but for kids.

Though the time travel rules are total nonsense.  Once the kids arrive in the past, everything proceeds on the same schedule as the present,including the countdown to Bheem's birthday, and they have a deadline based on the future which determines how long they have in the past.  The past is a different country rather than a different time, though defeating Damyaan still works.