Screenshots I'm hosting for another internet project.

 

  

Enter the Joharaverse.

 Karan Johar didn't write or direct Nadaaniyan (2025), but he did produce it, and the film strives to capture the Karan Johar vibe, with young love, family drama, ludicrous misunderstandings, buckets of tears, and an appearance by Ms. Briganza (Archana Puran Singh), the pretentious English teacher with a heart of gold from Johar's debut movie, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.

 

Ms. Briganza is now Mrs. Briganza-Malhotra, which means that she finally managed to marry the goofy college principal played by Anupam Kher in KKHH, and good for them.  She is now the principal of Falcon High, a high school which is so prestigious and exclusive that the students don't have to wear uniforms.  Pia (Khushi Kapoor) is one of the wealthy students at Falcon, and she has a problem: her friends Sahira (Aaliyah Wureishi) and Rhea (Apoorva Makhija) aren't speaking to her for a range of fairly stupid reasons, but mostly because Sahira has a crush on the overbearing Ayaan (Dev Agestaya), and they assume that Pia is secretly dating him because he's been sending her a stream of pushy text messages which she never replied to.  Ayaan claims that yes, they are an item (they are not) and when Ayaan and her friends pressure her in the hall, Pia claims that she can't be dating Ayaan because she already has a boyfriend who is really cool and lives in Canadashe's just not ready to introduce him yet.

Of course, now she needs a fake boyfriend.  And after several false starts, she discovers Arjun (Ibrahim Ali Khan), a driven scholarship student with anger issues who stands out from the rest of the student body because is father is merely a doctor.  Arjun has plans, plans which include law school and eventually launching his dream app to make legal services more available to the common man, and to fulfill his dreams he will need money, while Pia is really, really rich, so she convinces him to pose as her boyfriend.

And you can probably guess where this is going.  The fake relationship requires them to spend real time together, and so they get to know each other, become friends, and maybe more?  There's drama along the way, mostly involving Pia's parents Rajat (Suniel Shetty) and Neelu (Mahima Chaudhry), who always wanted a boy to join the family business and didn't seem to realize that girls can also become lawyers, so mostly treat Pia with benign neglect.

Meanwhile, Ayaan finally starts dating Sahira so he can worm his way into the friend group and needle Arjun about being (relatively) poor.  He's unpleasant enough that Pia stands up to her friends to defend her fake boyfriend, and she and Arjun become even closer.  Suddenly she's starting to dream bigger and considering a career in law, and she pressures Arjun to let her join the debate club.  (He's the president, because of course he is.)  

And then everything goes wrong.  The couple attend a Diwali party together, and Arjun is immediately jealous of Pia's family friend Rudra (Meezaan Jafri) and leaves early because they have a big debate tournament, so he isn't there when Pia's family falls apart completely and she and her mother leave to stay at Rudra's ancestral castle.  She misses the debate tournament, and before she can contact Arjun a photograph of her being comforted by Rudra leaks to the press, so when they return to school Arjun angrily reveals the fake boyfriend scheme to the entire school, publicly and utterly humiliating her.  

 

That ought to be the end of it (Rahul never treated Anjali that badly) but this is supposed to be a romantic comedy so of course they're bound to get together in the end, though Piua can't get through her reconciliation speech without pointing out what a terrible idea it is.

A lot of the criticism of Nadaaniyan focuses non the fact that both of the leads have strong family ties to the Bollywood industry - Khushi Kapoor is the daughter of  the legendary Sridevi, and Ibrahim Ali Khan is the son of Saif Ali Khan.  But many of the actors in the industry, including a slew of the current big names, got their start through family connections, and while there is a serious conversation to be had about nepotism in Bollywood I don't think we can hold the star kids responsible for trying to succeed in the industry as it exists.  The kids are fine. Kapoor is appropriately wistful during her narration, and while Khan has room to grow, I've seen Saif Ali's early films and he's a great actor. Now.

No, the real problem with the movie is that nobody is very likable.  Pia is self-absorbed, her friends are awful, her parents are a nightmare, and Arjun is short-tempered and quick to jump to conclusions.  His parents are nice, I guess.

 This is the Karan Johar formula, but it's the wrong Karan Johar formula; it's hyper-competative high conflict Student of the Year rather than warm and fuzzy Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, and I really didn't like Student of the Year.

Ms. Briganza is always a delight, though, and I'm glad she's doing well. 

Fruit, forbidden.

 

I'm not sure what I was expecting from Kathal: A Jackfruit Mystery (2023), but it still managed to surprise me.  One thing's for sure - it's not really about jackfruit.

 Mahima Basor (Sanya Malhotra) is a Deputy Superintendent of Police in the town of Moba in Uttar Pradesh.  It isn't always easy; in addition to the usual small town police politics, Mahima is a member of the Basor caste, and faces low-key discrimination, sometimes even from her own subordinates.  To make things even more complicated, she was dating Sub-Inspector Saurabh Dwivedi (Anant V Joshi) before her promotion; they're still trying to make the relationship work, but he's now her direct subordinate.

Still, Mahima is very good at her job, and after watching her supervisors take credit for a dangerous and high profile criminal she captured, Mahima is assigned her next case.  Two jackfruitrs were stolen from the home of local politician Munnalal Pateria (Vijay Raaz), and he wants them back.  They are not ordinary local jackfruits, they are "Uncle Hong" jackfruit from Malaysia, and when picked they are so delicious that he can trade them for political favors.

 Clearly there are more important things the police should be focused on, but Pateria is a powerful and important person, so despite her protests Mahima and her quirky subordinates are on jackfruit duty.  Suspicion quickly falls on former gardener Birwa Mali (Ambrish Saxena).  However, when she gets the chance to interview him, She discovers that Mali has been desperately searching for his eighteen year old daughter Amiya (Apoorva Chaturvedi.)  Digging deeper she learns that Amiya is only one of a number of girls who have vanished in the area and the disappearances have been largely ignored by the police.  Even worse, Mali had approached Saurabh earlier and been ignored.

Mahima has an idea.  She convinces Mali to claim that Amiya stole the jackfruit, which means that suddenly suddenly the police department is using all its resources to find the missing girl.  It also means that mahima will be in huge trouble if anyone finds out, and the faintly ridiculous local amateur journalist Anuj Sanghvi (Rajpal Yadav) doesn't believe the story for a second.

Meanwhile, Mahima also has to deal with the cracks in her relationship with Saurabh, who is both her subordinate and of a higher caste, and has been behaving like a typical Indian movie cop.  Not even his famous berry chutney can make this better.

It's not unusual for an Indian movie to play with genres, and Kathal does it better than many.  It's an interesting mix of quirky character-driven comedy, police melodrama about human trafficking, and complicated drama about a woman forced to navigate a corrupt system who finds a way to make her corner of the world just a little bit better.  But the impressive thing is that it maintains a fairly consistent tone throughout.  It helps that the good guys are quirky but not hilarious, the bad guys are dangerous but not particularly competent, Amiya is more than just a victim, and Anuj, the ridiculous looking wannabe reporter played by legendary comic actor Rajpal Yadav, turns out to be very good at his job.  It's the kind of movie that seems like it should be a black comedy, but winds up hopeful instead.

Like Jane Austen with guns.

 Dhoom Dhaam (2025) opens with a violent robbery, and a masked man with a mouthful of blood, but forget about that for now - this is a romantic comedy.

 

The families of Koyal Chadda (Yami Gautam) and Veer Poddar (Pratik Gandhi) are just putting the final touches on their impending arranged marriage.  The pandit has compared their horoscopes, and it's an amazing match, like ram and Sita only nobody has to be set on fire.  There's only one catch - the couple need to be married within the next two weeks, or they'll have to wait two and a half years for the next auspicious date.  Do they accept?

 They do.  Cut to the honeymoon suite, where Veer awkwardly prepares to make his move.  Suddenly there's a knock on the door, and two armed men (Eijiz Khan and Pavitra Sarkar) burst in and demand that Veer tells them where Charlie is.  Veer patiently tries to explain that he doesn't know any Charlie, but they don't believe him, and things are about to turn violent when Koyal throws boiling water at them, picks up the gun, and drives the men away.  Briefly.  The pair make their escape and pick up some shoes from a neighboring hotel room; Koyal gets sensible flats while Veer is stuck with fluffy bunny slippers.

The pair try calling their families, only to learn that they are all playing cards with a new friend named Pradeep (Anand Potdukhe), and when the family hands Pradeep the phone he demands to know where Charlie is.  They get a call from a CID officer named Sanjay Reberio (Mukul Chadda), who delivers some useful exposition and urges them to bring him Charlie as soon as they can.

 This sends Koyal and Veer on a scavenger hunt through the city, while dodging their armed and increasingly angry pursuers.  What does Charlie have to do with Koyal's skeezy ex boyfriend Arya (Prateik Babbar)?  Or her aggressively cheerful uncle Kushwant (Kavin Dave)?  Those are plot details, and they matter less than you might think, because this is a romantic comedy.

Okay, it's also an action comedy, but the real focus is on Veer and Koyal finally getting to know each other.  Veer discovers that Koyal isn't the sheltered and highly traditional girl she's been presented as, but also that she is brave and compassionate and has learned some hard lessons trying to navigate modern India as a woman, while Koyal discovers that Veer is the naive veterinarian that he appears to be, but he's also riddled with phobias and still is willing to risk everything to protect his new wife.  There's some tension about whether they'll find Charlie in time, but the real question is whether or not they'll choose to stay married.

Yami Gautam and Pratik Gandhi are charming, with an easygoing chemistry, so while this is a decent action comedy it's a pretty good romantic comedy.

 

No rockets. Just Tarzan.

 Adventures of Tarzan (1985) is a product of the golden age of Bollywood plagiarism, a time when you could pad out your Tarzan movie with songs lifted from The Sound of Music. At its best, it's the kind of movie I that I can use the sentence "Tarzan incapacitates the snipers with thrown guitars" when summarizing.  At it's worst . . . well, we'll get to that.

 

Tarzan (Hemant Birje) is a legendary figure, believed to live somewhere deep in the jungles of India.  When circus owner Krishnakant Verma (Narendranath Malhotra) sees a news report about a recent Tarzan sighting, he hires big game hunter D. K. (Dalip Tahil) to capture the wild man so he can force him to perform in the circus, because that's much easier than hiring an acrobat and having them dress up as Tarzan.

 D. K. teams up with shady archeologist Shetty (Om Shivpuri), who is leading an expedition to discover the lost civilization of Shakhabhumi.  Soon they're joined by Shetty's estranged daughter Ruby (Kimi Katkar), who traveled thousands of miles to tell her father she hates him, but reconciles with him almost immediately and is soon hanging around the expedition and occasionally wandering into the jungle.

 At night the expedition members can hear Tarzan's cry echoing through the jungle, and occasionally stragglers are carried off - not by Tarzan, by a problematic tribe of angry natives and their enormous Chief (Gorilla, and that is the actor's screen name; I'm not editorializing) but everyone assumes that Tarzan is responsible for everything bad.

After sneaking off to bathe in a river, Ruby is attacked by a rubber crocodile, and rescued by Tarzan.  She drives him away with her pistol.  On another day,  she's bitten by a venomous snake, and Tarzan saves her again.  At this point it's getting dark and she doesn't know how to get back to camp, so she embraces her narrative roll and falls in love with Tarzan instead.  

In the morning Tarzan takes her back to the camp, and D. K. and the others immediately shoot at him.  From here things proceed as you might expect, alternating between jungle peril and the developing romance.  Ruby sings a song as she tries to teach Tarzan the English alphabet for some reason, and in another scene she's abducted by natives.

One day, while Ruby is in the jungle making friends with all of the stock footage animals, the natives attack the expedition and wipe out nearly everybody, except for D. K. and his personal henchmen.  Tarzan fights the natives, but D. K. takes the opportunity to tranquilize Tarzan and capture him and Ruby.

 D. K. delivers Tarzan to the circus, and he plans to force Ruby to marry him, but it's soon clear that the only way they can get Tarzan to cooperate with the show is by directly threatening Ruby, so that's what they do.  D. K. and Verma add her to the show; she'll sing while Tarzan performs feats of acrobatics, then after the first night D. K. will forcibly marry her.  They plan to have snipers with rifles placed about the tent to keep Tarzan in line, but they don't have a backup plan in case Tarzan incapacitates the snipers with thrown guitars, and they really didn't count on a small army of jungle animals attacking the city to rescue their friend.

This in sot a good movie, but it's generally on the pulpy side of ridiculous. It's also structured like a King Kong movie rather than a Tarzan movie, with Tarzan treated as a figure of legend, the ruthless hunter, the kind woman who touches the ape-man's heart, and the greedy showman who refuses to cancel his exhibition despite being clearly warned about his impending doom.

 

I would probably like it a lot more if it wasn't so damned sleazy. It's not so much Ruby's skimpy costumes; that's in genre for both tarzan and Kong..  It's the fact that Ruby is repeatedly threatened with sexual assault, by D. K., by the natives, and even by two random sailors he meets while traveling to join her father in a scene which  doesn't connect the plot and seems to be there to establish that Ruby has a gun and isn't afraid to use it, though after shooting the sailors she goes on her way, and only uses the gun to scare Tarzan during their first meeting.  The movie opens with a flashback to a woman (presumably Tarzan's mother, but they never really spell out his origins)  dragged off screaming by the natives after watching her husband being murdered.  Sexual assault as a plot device was distressingly common in the Bollywood of the eighties, but this movie really leans into it.

In other words, tone is a serious problem here.  The movie wants to be light hearted pulpy and romantic fun,  but it's a bit too enthusiastic about putting its heroine in peril, and while Bollywood has never been good at portraying Adivasi communities, this movie is particularly bad about that as well.  There are some fun bits, but if you want Tarzan, you might be better off just reading the books.