The rare Reverse Cyrano.

 We're living in a post-Dil Chahta Hai world.  Romance is complicated these days, and the real barrier to a couple finding true love is their own neuroses and insecurities, rather than wicked stepmothers, identical twins and Amrish Puri.  And that's fine - Dil Chahta Hai was a really good movie, and Bollywood was in dire need of a little psychological complexity for a long time.  Sometimes I miss the simple earnestness of the old days, but To Jhoothi Main Makkar (2023) is here to remind me to be careful what I wish for.

 Mickey Arora (Ranbir Kapoor) certainly seems like an old-school Bollywood romantic hero.  he's handsome, charming, rich, and lives with his eccentric but loving family, headed by his overbearing mother Renu (Dimple Kapadia), and father Ramesh (film producer Boney Kapoor in his acting debut) is there as well.  But Mickey doesn't just help run the family businesses, he and his best friend Manu (Anubhav Singh Bassi) have a secret side business managing breakups.  Not just any breakups, because there are rules - most importantly, they won't accept married clients, but if they accept the job, thye will help their clients to break up with their romantic partners without having to look like a jerk or feel guilty.  Mickey thinks of this as a public service, and maybe even an art form.

Manu has other issues.  he's engaged to Kinchi (Monica Chaudhary), and while she's great, she's so invested in the relationship that she invites herself along to Manu's bachelor trip to Spain.  Manu aks Mickey to do his thing, and he reluctantly agrees . . . until he meets Kinchi's best friend and fellow traveler Tinni (Shraddha Kapoor.)  Tinni is gorgeous, independent, and charming, and Mickey is immediately smitten.

Mickey drops Manu's case and  launches a full scale charm offensive, leading to a brief fling, but Tinni is surprised to learn that Mickey isn't only after one thing, he's interested in a real relationship.  When the party returns to Delhi, Manu and Kinchi are married, while Mickey brings Tinni around to meet the family.  The family are ecstatic, and Renu is soon talking about expanding the family home in order to accommodate the young couple.  Tinni is aggressively welcomed into the family, and everyone is really, really happy.

And then Mickey gets a call from a woman in need of his breakup services.  He starts slow, because he's distracted by his own upcoming engagement, but before long he notices that the new client's relationship events are closely coinciding with his own, and he soon realizes that yes, it's Tinni trying to find a graceful way to break up with him.  Mickey is faced with a moral dilemma; he knows that he's talking to Tinni, but she has no idea that the man she hired to help her leave Mickey is in fact Mickey.   At first he uses his suggested "relationship tests" to make himself look good, but Tinni isn't satisfied, and Mickey carries through with his job, hoping to at least find out why Tinni wants to leave.

When I watch romantic comedies, I often find myself saying "this is a problem that could be solved with five minutes of conversation," but I have never seen a couple so determined to avoid that conversation.  There are definite problems with their relationship; Tinni is a Dil Chahta Hai girl, modern, excruciatingly self aware, and hiding her pain with a smile, while Mickey is a Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge boy, earnest, determined, apparently carefree, and a lot more traditional than he appears.  Unfortunately, like Raj in DDLJ, he's also kind of low-key sexist and more than a little manipulative.  They come from differnet sub-genres, and they're looking for completely different things out of life.  Ranbir and Shraddha are both charming and attractive actors, and they display a natural chemistry, but for me to believe in this relationship it will take more than passionate speeches, a noble act of romantic self-sacrifice and a last minute dash to the airport, it will take lots and lots of therapy, and I'm not sure they're going to get that.

And yet, that was the case in a lot of nineties Bollywood movies as well.  (Like DDLJ, for instance.)  If you're willing to accept that movie relationships aren't always going to be healthy then this movie has a lot to offer.  The leads are charming, Dimple Kapadia is clearly having a great time and the rest of the family is happy to follow along, the dance numbers are great, and the film is occasionally very funny.  Just don't try any of this at home.

 

Another brief hiatus.

 I'm taking some time off for reasons - I'll be back when I'm good and ready!

"Bantuka4" is a pun aimed directly at me.

 Shehzada (2023) has one of the classic Indian movie plot lines: a street-smart youngster moves in with a wealthy family under false pretenses and proceeds to make everyone's lives better. resolving longstanding conflicts through honesty, pluck, and cheeky charm.  The only real difference is that in this movie, the youngster is actually helping his own family.  (And even that has been done many times already; this movie is a remake of the Telugu film Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo,)

 On a rainy night, the wealthy Randeep (Ronit Roy) and his employee Valmiki (Paresh Rawal) find themselves in the same hospital, eagerly awaiting the births of their respective sons.  Then tragedy strikes - Valmiki learns from a nurse (Sharvari Lohokare) that Randeep's son has stopped breathing, and he convinces the nurse to quietly swap the infants, claiming that the sacrifice is the least he can do for his beloved employee.  When the not dead after all infant starts crying and the nurse wants to switch the babies back, the truth comes out: Valmiki and Randeep started in the company at the same time, but Randeep married the CEO's daughter and became rich while Valmiki continued to struggle, but now he'll see his own son raised in luxury no matter what.  The nurse protests, they struggle, and she falls, slipping into a coma for the next twenty five years.

Twenty five years later, Valmiki still works for the company, and he dotes on the family's spoiled and hapless heir, Raj (Ankur Rathee), while pressuring and berating Bantu (Karthik Aaryan), the man everyone thinks is his son.  Still, Bantu has earned a law degree and fights like a South Indian movie hero when he has to beat up a group of toughs and recover the shawl they stole from his sister Nisha (Debattama Saha), while Raj owns a toy car which he uses to get from room to room in his own house.

 Bantu needs a job, and he applies to be the assistant to Samara (Kriti Sanon), but she turns him down, since most of the people who apply to her law firm have degrees from Ivy League colleges while Bantu went to school in India.  However, he later discovers Samara being menaced by a potential client in a restaurant, and saves the day with his quick wit, quicker reflexes and knowledge of the Indian legal code.  he gets the job, and soon they are flirting up a storm.

Raj faces a test of his own.  Randeep sends him to negotiate with family nemesis Sarang, a toy manufacturer who used the family's transport business to smuggle drugs.  When Randeep learned what happened, he was banned from using the Jindal family planes, but for some reason he is not in jail and is demanding to be allowed to do business with them again.  All Raj has to do is say no.  He fails the test, but Randeep makes the family position clear, and Sarang plans revenge.

The things start to happen quickly.  Samara's father (Rakesh Bedi) arranges a marriage between Samara and Raj, and she confesses to Bantu that she'd much rather marry him.  The young couple hope to explain things to Randeep, but when they arrive at his office he's just been stabbed by an umbrella-wielding Sarang, and Bantu gets to show his action hero chops again while rushing Randeep to the hospital.  And once Randeep is safe, Bantu meets the nurse from twenty five years ago, who emerges from her coma just long enough to tell him about the baby swap, then dies before she can tell anyone else, leaving him with the truth but no evidence.

 Randeep's father-in-law Aditya (Sachin Khedekar) invites the young hero to the house, and they quickly bond.  Soon Bantu has a new job working for the family, and he sets out to make everybody's lives better.  Dealing with Sarang is actually the easy part; he also has to convince Raj to take responsibility for himself, as well as reconcile Randeep and his estranged wife Yashoda (Manisha Koirala), and Yashoda has no intention of making it easy.

If a masala film like this one is going to be successful, a lot of things have to go right.  The action scenes have to be kinetic and fun, the romantic leads need good chemistry, the music and dancing has to be on point, and the senior actors need to deliver a dose of honest emotion.  And this worked for me; Koirala is probably the standout in the cast, but Aaryan balances an easy swaggering charm with a genuine moral core.  I liked his Bantu a lot more than Allu Arjun's Bantu in Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo - in the earlier film Bantu was a sexist jerk at times, while in Shehzada Bantu has a big hero speech about how no means no.  

 

However, Shehzada was a flop while Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo was a big hit, which just goes to show you that my taste is suspect.

 

 

If it wasn't for your misfortune, I'd be a heavenly person today.

 I See You (2006) is a Bollywood ghost story with a difference.  It's a romance, with a ghost who is not actually a ghost, and a plot that bears a strong resemblance to the Hollywood film Just Like Heaven.  (I am assured that both films are based on Marc levy's novel If Only It Were True, and I am willing to believe it.)  But that's not the real difference.

 Raj Jaiswal (Arjun Rampal) lives in London and hosts a popular Hindi language talk show called "British Raj."  Raj is a carefree bachelor, which in this sort of movie means that he's a walking HR nightmare who hits on every woman within reach, including his new co-host Dilnaaz (Sophie Choudry).  She agrees to a date, though it's not clear whether that's because he is charming or she is ambitious.  And it doesn't really matter, because when Raj gets home after making the date he discovers Shivani (Vipasha Agarwal) in his apartment, and she just won't leave.

Shivani claims to be a spirit.  Not a ghost, exactly - she explains that she's not actually dead, she's in a coma, and she is thrilled to meet someone who can see, hear, and even touch her.  Raj assumes that his best friend Akshay (Chunky Pandey), but after some comic business and a quick trip to the hospital to see her body, Raj accepts his spectral roommate.

It takes a little while before they warm up to one another.   At first Raj tries to use Shivani's ghostly nature to help him pick up girls and cheat at poker, and she takes the opportunity to mess with him.  But soon enough they're friends, leading to more comic business as Raj apparently talks to himself in public and the people around him assume that he's lost his mind.  Before long, though, they're close.  Raj talks about Shivani all the time, much to Akshhay's chagrin.  

And just as the relationship is starting to get romantic, Shivani reveals her secret:  the car crash that put her into a coma wasn't an accident.  before the crash she stumbled across an organ trafficing ring run out of the hospital, with Doctor Shah (Ashwin Mushran) as the ringleader.  Shah is in charge of Shivani's care, and if he can't convince her mother (Kirron Kher) to sign the papers to take her off life support, he'll take care of the problem himself.  It's time for Raj to take action - ill-advised and largely ineffectual action.  Fortunately minor comic relief character John Smith (Michael Maloney), a police inspector who appeared as a human interest story on The British Raj because he learned Hindi through Bollywood movies in order to woo the movie theater cashier, is on the case.

The plot of I See You is not terribly unusual; in addition to Just Like heaven and Vismayathumbathu (a South Indian movie which came out in 2004 and is, I am assured, based on the same novel), 2021's Teddy takes the same coma-and-organ trafficking plot beats and adds violence and a giant Teddy bear.  Still, the movie is reasonably well made and entertaining.  Arjun Rampal is probably miscast; he does better with brooding action heroes, but the role is crying out for Rajkummar Rao.  Still, he does his best, and the movie is sufficiently fun.

The real difference is the music.  Composers Vishal-Shekhar created a bright and poppy soundtrack with a vibrant eighties techno beat -  it's Bollywood by way of New Order, and it doesn't sound like any Indian movie I have ever seen.

You and me could write a bad romance.

 Some Bollywood heroes are charming scoundrels, some are callow youths in need of a valuable life lesson, but the hero of Gori Tere Pyaar Mein! (2013) is just a jerk.  At least to start - can he become less of a jerk?  I certainly hope so, or the movie is going to be a bad romance.

Sriram (Imran Khan) is young, handsome, rich, and a trained architect, though he spends his time partying and disappointing his father (Nizhalgal Ravi) rather than architecting.  After Sriram skips his grandfather's deathbed, and funeral, and memorial service, his family decide that the best way to deal with the lad is to get him married.  The prospective bride is Vasudha (Shraddha Kapoor), and Sriram likes her smile.  Vasudha takes Sriram aside and asks him to reject the match, since she is in love with someone else, but Sriram cheerfully accepts the match because he's a jerk.  Basically he's the unsuitable bridegroom from a more conventional Bollywood romance.

They've got nothing but time, so Vasudha tries to find out exactly what Sriram's deal is, and he tells her about his previous fiance, Dia (Kareena Kapoor.)  Dia is a social worker, loud, passionate and always involved in some charity program or protest.  The relationship was always rocky, since opposites might attract but they're still opposites, and no one is really surprised when the relationship finally crumbles and Dia goes home to Delhi.

Vasudha doesn't buy it - their first date was to a place Sriram used to take Dia, he talks about her a lot, and he still owns the pet crab that Dia adopted and left in his care.  Sriram still loves Dia, so why aren't they still together?  With some prodding he details the end of their relationship, when he sold a plot of land she wanted to use to build an orphanage because he wanted a new car, and when she confronted him he called her a hypocrite who dabbles in social awareness while shielded by her privilege, lamenting the lot of the hungry from expensive Italian restaurants.   That's more than enough to end the relationship permanently, salting the earth for good measure.

Or it would be, but Vasudha convinces Sriram to flee the wedding ceremony and go find Dia.  It's not that hard - he asks her parents, and they tell him that she's working in the tiny village of Jhumli, a place which is nearly cut off from the outside world apart from a rickety rope bridge.  Sriram travels to the village and witnesses the poverty and brutal conditions firsthand, and he also sees Dia doing everything she can to help.  Naturally he wants to take her away from all of this, but she won't leave until the work is done.  Almost all of the village's problems could be fixed if they had a proper bridge, allowing ailing villagers to go to the hospital and children to go to school, and Sriram impulsively vows to build a new bridge, while Dia impulsively vows to leave with him if he succeeds.  But they'll have to get past the region's gleefully corrupt and vengeful collector (Anupam Kher) while Sriram rockets through his character development, because the bridge is not just a bridge, it's an objective correlative.

It's hard to balance goofy romance with a redemption arc, but Khan and Kapoor are both effortlessly charming, and Sriram is such a jerk early on that every good deed feels like progress, while Dia has flaws of her own and also enjoys some character development.  I hope that they keep a relationship counselor on speed dial, but that's the case with a lot of movie couples. 

 

Come for the Machina, stay for the Deus.

 Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani (2009) presents itself as a comic book movie, complete with bright colors, pop art titles, and a literal iron man providing narration in the frame story.  Not just any comic book, though, an Archie comic book.  This isn't superhero action, it's sunny romance filtered through broad farce.

The frame story is just an excuse to talk about Prem (Ranbir Kapoor), though.  He's a fairly typical Bollywood protagonist of the era - young, charming, unemployed, and a bit of a natural con artist who spends his time hanging out with his young and carefree friends rather than getting a job.  Prem is the president of the Happy Club, the spiritual descendants of the Youth Club from Bhoot Bungla.  Unlike the older movie, the Happy Club doesn't have any "No Girls" rule, but they do have their own code.  Happy Club members help people without expecting anything in return and are particularly determined to unite star-crossed couples, when they're not busy scamming food from the restaurant owned by Prem's father (Darshan Jariwala).  Prem also has a stutter which only surfaces when he's really emotional and it's convenient to the plot.

While helping one such young couple elope, Prem accidentally kidnaps Jenny (Katrina Kaif), and it's love at first sight - for him.  Jenny is understandably upset about the whole kidnapping thing, but after a few more misunderstandings they finally become friends.  Jenny also has a stutter which emerges during dramatically appropriate moments, and when she's explaining the circumstances of her adoption to Prem she begins to stutter which makes him start to stutter.  She assumes that he's making fun of her, slaps him, and storms off.  

But this misunderstanding doesn't last long either.  They make up and become fast friends.  Prem still likes her romantically, but can't work up the courage to tell her, so he tries to remake himself to become someone she could love.  That means getting a job, and for some reason it also means eating meat; Prem is a staunch vegetarian, but Jenny is Christian so they all assume she will want a man who is non-veg.  Prem feels so guilty about the meet eating that he feels he cannot fave his own God, and instead goes to Jenny's church to confess directly to Jesus and ask Him for His help in winning Jenny's heart.  This will be important later.

However Prem is so busy reinventing himself that he doesn't have time to spend with Jenny, so he doesn't find out that her parents are forcing her to marry the genuinely awful Tony Braganza (Pradeep Kharab) until it's almost too late.  He follows the family to Goa and manages to meet Jenny.  He promises to help her . . . and she asks him to contact Rahul (Upen Patel), the handsome, muscular and rich guy that she loves.

Prem takes the news surprisingly well.  He's sensible enough to realize that Jenny never said she wanted a romantic relationship with him, and that he had never worked up the courage to ask her for one. More than anything else he wants Jenny to be happy, Happy Club is all about uniting star-crossed lovers, and his motto the entire movie has been "No complaints, no demands," so Happy Club gets to work.

And wackiness ensues fairly quickly.  After Prem arranges an elopement, Rahul vanishes from the train, leaving Jenny with nowhere to go, so Prem has to hide her in his house.  Rahul has been captured by his own father, wealthy politician Pitambar Jalan (Govind Namdeo), so Prem has to outwit Jenny's parents, Rahul's parents, his own parents, and a group of gangsters led by Sajid Don (Zakir Hussain), and that's the easy part.   

The hard part is letting Jenny go.  After all of the strife, he can't stand to watch Jenny get married to someone else, so he leaves town, which means he's not there when Jenny realizes that Prem has done an awful lot to ensure her happiness and safety, while Rahul has done basically nothing.  Prem loves Jenny, Jenny now realizes that she loves Prem, but it's too late - in order for the pair to be united they'll need a literal Deus Ex Machina, and they get one.  In this case, it's Jesus driving a pickup truck.

Divine intervention is not unknown in Bollywood romance, though it's usually Krishna doing the intervening, and the rest of the plot is classic Bollywood romantic melodrama.  What's different is the tone - the romance is completely sincere, but the rest of the movie plays out as a broad farce, with elements drawn from silent comedies.  On the other hand, this is perhaps the cuddliest farce I've ever seen, with everything leading toward an emotionally satisfying happy ending for the adorable characters.  It's a weird movie, but it's the good kind of weird.

 

They look for their destiny in parrots.

 Apparently Deewane Huye Paagal (2005) is the unofficial Indian remake of There's Something About Mary, which means that once again, I have seen the Bollywood version but not the original film.  I'm pretty the subplot about the elixir of youth is unique to this version, though.

The film opens with a cowboy hatted narrator (Vivek Oberoi) floating through a pink background.  The narrator summarizes the surprisingly complicated backstory - a brilliant but absent minded scientist (Om Puri) has developed a serum which can reverse aging.  His gangster brother Khurana (also Om Puri) wants it, and he's willing to kill to get it.  The scientist is even more absent-minded than the stereotype would suggest, and uses a stuffed parrot with a built in recording device to help him remember key information.  This will be important later.

 Meanwhile, Karan (Shahid Kapoor) is a college student working an the restaurant owned by Murugun (Johnny Lever.)  Like most of the students at his college, Karan is infatuated with Tanya (Rimi Sen), who performs concerts on campus for some reason.  Karan knows that he doesn't have a shot with Tanya, but after standing up for her mentally disabled brother Gullu (Rakesh Bedi) when he's threatened by Khurana's son Sunny (Suresh Menon) he suddenly does have a shot.  

 

Tanya and Karan grow closer, but on the night of Karan's birthday, she sees Khurana's competent son Baljeet (Baljeet Singh) murder his scientist uncle, and the parrot is left in her car.  Since the parrot holds the code to the safe that contains the youth formula, Baljeet is doubly motivated to find her, so Tanya has to flee town without telling Karan.  He looks for her, but the only thing he finds is a stuffed parrot, which he assumes is his birthday present.

And all of that is prelude.  Three years later, Karan is less geeky, but still pining for Tanya.  he bumps into some of her college friends and learns that she's moved to Dubai, and he wants to leave immediately, but Murugun convinces him to wait until they have arranged passports.  While they wait they hire private detective Rocky (Akshay Kumar) to find Tanya's address.  And that's when things get even more complicated.

 Rocky discovers that Tanya is now Natasha, and learns that she's become a popular singer who is about to release her first album, as you do when you are in hiding.  he also discovers that she's gorgeous, and quickly falls in love as well.  When Karan and Murugun arrive, Rocky spins a long list of lies, telling Karan that Tanya is overweight, in a wheelchair, running a laundry business in her home, and raising seven children with three different fathers.  Karan is even more determined to find her; if she needs him he's going to be there for her.  Finally Rocky claims that Tanya has left Dubai and is on a honeymoon with her new gangster husband, and they are also on the run from the law, so Karan sadly starts making preparations to return home and disappears from the movie for a bit.

 Rocky continues to spy on Tanya/Natasha so that he can present himself as the perfect man for her.  he also learns that he's surrounded by other men - her brother Gullu has died, but she has practically adopted Tommy (Paresh Rawal), who suffered brain damage after she ran him over with her car.  Her overprotective architect friend Sanju (Suniel Shetty) walks with crutches, and keeps telling her terrible things about her rich and charming ex-boyfriend Raj (Aftab Shivdasani).  And there's a blind man (Asrani) who keeps bumping into her for some reason.

 Rocky keeps spying and manipulating, and along the way he discovers that the men around Natasha are all in love with her and also all lying; Tommy isn't disabled at all, Sanju is an able-bodied plumber who makes things up about Natasha's suitors, and Raj is actually a decent guy, but thanks to Sanju he's out of the picture.  Rocky is better at manipulating Natasha than they are (though Natasha is spectacularly gullible, so it's not that hard) and he's nearly convinced her to marry him when Karan happens to bump into them.  

We have a love triangle!  Sort of!  Rocky is still lying, and while Karan is still devoted to Tanya, he's so reflexively noble that he's constantly about to leave so that she can be happy, and he never thinks to mention that he knows for a fact that Rocky isn't an architect or a navy captain.  

 The gangsters finally return, and secrets are revealed, leading to kidnapping, car chases, and an interminable climactic action scene involving motorcycles and an infinite supply of dune buggies.  

 This is a very silly movie, but silly isn't always bad.  There are some good things here!  Because the movie is so ridiculous, everybody pitches their performance to Johnny Lever levels, which gives him the chance to shine; Murugun is the most consistently sympathetic character in the film, and actually gets to contribute to the plot rather than just providing comic relief.  This is early in Shahid Kapoor's career, so he's still doing a Shah Rukh Khan impression here, but young Shahid does a good Shah Rukh Khan impression.

And I'm done saying nice things.  I have tried to present the plot as I understand it, but the whole thing is pretty incoherent, and even with the narrator it's hard to follow.  The actual jokes often land, but for a lot of the time the movie relies on mugging for the camera rather than bothering with actual jokes.  Tommy's mentally-challenged act is pretty gross. And even that is not the real problem.

The real problem is that the film thinks we like Rocky.  Karan vanishes for a good chunk of the runtime, and we're left to follow Rocky as he spies on, lies to, and manipulates Natasha.  Akshay Kumar is a very charismatic man, and he's great at playing lovable rogues, but Rocky is not a lovable rogue, he's a creep in dire need of a comeuppance that never quite arrives.  I don't want to follow him in his attempts at romance, and I actively don't want him to get the girl.  (He doesn't.)

 I realize that this is basically the same complaint I had about Blue, but Akshay's character here is even more unlikable.