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.

Dil Tera Aashiq

 

 Dil Tera Aashiq (1993) is a classic masala movie, combining action, romance, family drama, youthful hijinks, and a whole lot of broad farce. Maybe too much broad farce.  Tone is an issue.

Sonia Khanna (Madhuri Dixit) has a problem: she's highly intelligent and well-educated, but no one will give her a job. Actually,she has two problems; her mother (Anjana Mumtaz) has a persistent cough which has progressed to a bad case of Bollywood Mystery Disease (though from context it's almost certainly tuberculosis.)  She needs money to get her mother treated, and also to continue to eat. 

Chaudhary Ranbir Singh (Anupam Kher) also has a problem.  He threw his sister Radha (Aparajita) out of the house years ago after she dared to fall in love with a poor man, and he's spent the decades since carefully insulating himself from love, making his status as a bachelor a point of pride.  But Radha has died, leaving behind two young children (Master Monty and Baby Tina) and one technically adult son,Vijay (Salman Khan.)  Actually Chaudhary has two problems: the children are terrible in the way that only children in movies can be, and their relentless pranking has driven away every potential nanny or governess in Ooty.  He needs to find someone who can handle the kids, and he insists that she should be an older woman.

The solution is obvious - Sonia puts on a grey wig, a pair of glasses, and a slightly different voice and becomes Savitri Devi, governess. On the train to Ooty she meets Vijay, and because he's an early Salman Khan character he attempts to win her heart by annoying the hell out of her.  This doesn't work.

The kids immediately try to drive Savitri Devi away with their various pranks, and Chaudhary threatens them, but Savitri/Sonia stands up for them. This is enough to win over the kids, so they immediately become well-behaved and practically vanish from the film. It's also enough to win over Chaudhary - the resulting crush hits him with the force of several years of bachelorhood,and he immediately resolves to win over the age appropriate (he thinks) beauty who has walked into his life, and he enlists the help of his best friend, failed actor and drama teacher Naseeb Kumar (Kader Khan).

Kumar, meanwhile, is having trouble attracting students to his acting school, so he decides to offer dance classes, and hires two new dance teachers: Vijay and Sonia-as-Sonia - she needs another job to help pay for the increased cost of her mother's medication. This gives the pair plenty of time to get to know each other, and plenty of chances for Vijay to try and fail to improve that bad first impression.

Chaudhary actually has three problems.  As the local Thakur he shut down the factory belonging to local wrong'un Pratap Singh (Tej Sapru), who was using it as a front for drug manufacturing. Pratap is under pressure from the international gang lord known as the Black Eye (Shakti Kapoor with a silly mustache) to get the factory reopened, but it can't be opened until Chaudhary signs the appropriate papers, and while he may be a loveless and joyless miser in desperate need of a visit form three spirits, he is a man of principle.

While he's working on a tight deadline, Pratap still finds time to be evil in other ways, so he attempts to assault Sonia.  She's saved by Vijay, and now she likes Vijay while he is pretending to play hard to get.  After some comic business, they work things out, so the movie takes a turn for the David Dhawanesque, with Sonia juggling her blossoming relationship with Vijay and Chaudhary's growing infatuation with Savitru Devi.  Everything's going well until Pratap sees through her flimsy disguise and decides to blackmail her, while Vijay sees Sonia and Pratap together and leaps to exactly the wrong conclusion.

This is very early 90's Bollywood comedy; the tone is all over the place, and the plot dissolves into a cloudof dust if you look at it too hard.  However, Sonia is a surprisingly strong heroine for the era. She drives the plot, she makes most of the choices (even if some of them are terrible), she gets her fair share of the goofy comedy beats, and she even gets to join in on the final fight, punching her fair share of the Black Eye's goons.

However, while Sonia's portrayal has aged surprisingly well, other aspects of the film have not.  the script takes some cheap shots, particularly aimed at Guddi Maruti's overweight and overenthusiastic train passenger and veteran supporting actor Asrani's flamboyant dance master.  And one of the early songs is sponsored by cosmetic company Emami's skin-lightening cream, complete with giant bottles hanging on stage.  The movie is quick to move on to the next joke or fight or tearful confession, but that just means the tone is wildly inconsistent.  Madhuri's great, but the movie is no better than it ought to be.

The walls of Jericho are toppling.

 Kitne Door Kitne Paas (2002) is a fairly typical example of the Indian road trip movie: two attractive young people are forced by strange circumstances to travel together, and while they don't get along at first they eventually fall in love.  It sounds a lot like It Happened One Night, but a lot of Bollywood from the turn of the century sounds like It Happened One Night.

Jatin (Fardeen Khan) is young, rich, and living in America, which makes him perfect son-in-law material to a certain type of Indian parent.  Babu Patel (Tiku Talsania) is that type of Indian parent, so he leaps at the chance to set up a match with his daughter Jaya (Sonali Kolkarni.)  Jatin is an incredibly dutiful son, and he's genuinely delighted to be betrothed, even though he hasn't seen so much as a picture of Jaya.

Jatin and his overly attached best friend Jackie (Nasir Khan) are picking up the engagement ring when they bump into Karishma (Amrita Arora).  There's a misunderstanding leading to a terrible first impression, and during the argument Jatin and Karishma both drop their identical cell phones.  It takes a while, but they eventually realize what happens and agree to meet at the airport to switch their phones back, because Jatin is flying back to India to get ,married,and as it happens Karishma is also flying back to India to get married.  They are on the same flight, but Jatin is a decent person so he leaves her alone instead of harassing her for the entire flight like some Bollywood romantic heroes I could mention.

The trouble starts when they reach Delhi.  Jatin's flight to Gujurat has been cancelled,and the train service isn't running, so he needs to get a cab. The only cab driver willing to take him there has another passenger - Karishma.  She's also getting married in Gujurat. In fact, she's getting married in the same village.  Jatin and Karishma may not like each other, but they're both adults, so they can be civil long enough to reach their destination. What's the worst that could happen?

When the group stops for a meal, the cab driver (Satish Shah, in one of many roles he plays in this film) gets into a fight and is arrested. Jatin and Karishma are in a hurry, so they decide to take the cab; naturally,this ends with them getting arrested.  Fortunately Police Inspector Limbachia (Shehzad Khan) assumes that they're newlyweds; Jatin and Karishma try to correct him,but since he's going easy on them because he thinks they're newlyweds they don't try very hard. I'm sure this will have no negative consequences.

 And from there . . . well,it's a road trip movie.  They bounce from one mode of transportation to another, encountering one misadventure after another, and along the way they talk to each other and realize that they are attractive young people with a great deal in common, including dedication to their parents and a positive attitude toward arranged marriage.

Eventually they run into Limbachia again, and instead of just taking them to the village he puts them on a private bus that's been chartered by a family celebrating the anniversary of their grandparents (Rammohan Sharma and Beena Banerjee.)  Thanks to Limbachia the family thinks that Jatin and Karishma are married, and they insist that the young people stay for the party, take part in rituals, and consult with the family priest (Satish Shah again) about their future married life together, which leads to even more rituals.

By this point Karishma and Jatin are obviously in love, but neither one wants to admit it, so they part and rejoin their respective families, secure in the knowledge that they will never see each other again.  But of course it's not that simple - Jaya and Karishma are best friends, the families are close, and as the wedding day approaches (they're getting married on the same day,at the same time, in the same venue) so everybody will be spending a lot of time together.

Naturally there's a great deal of angst as the two young lovers try to pretend not to be in love.  It's not a secret that you can keep forever, but everyone who finds out is pretty understanding - even Karishma's strict traditional father (Govind Namdev) places her happiness above any potential embarrassment.  But Karishma is a very traditional girl, and she won't do anything to risk the family prestige, while Jatin will follow her lead no matter what, so the weddings are on.  It would take a miracle to unite these two, or a daring rescue from a raging fire.  Or actually asking Jaya what she wants.

There are a lot of these road trip movies in Bollywood, and Kitne Door Kitne Paas follows the formula almost exactly, though there's a greater emphasis on the needless self sacrifice.  The fire leads to a genuinely well-crafted and exciting action scene in which absolutely nobody gets punched, and that's a nice surprise, but in the end it's another movie about modern young people sacrificing their love for their traditional family values and getting what they want in the end anyway.

On the other hand, this movie has aged better than many other Indian road trip movies because Jatin doesn't start out as a sexist jerk.  The initial bad impression is the result of a genuine misunderstanding, he doesn't hit on Karishma during the road trip,and he's happy to listen to the women that he meets along the way.  That's rare for a Bollywood hero of the era, and really rare for one played by Fardeen Khan.

On the other other hand, Babu Patel makes a lot of references to American politics of the time, and they haven't aged well at all.  It's a very minor aspect of the movie, though.

I don't care if Monday's Blue.

 Blue (2009) has a very simple plot.  Professional diver Sagar (Sanjay Dutt) knows the location of the Lady in Blue, a ship which sank in 1949, carrying a fantastic treasure.  he does not want to look for the treasure, but eventually he does, and also Kylie Minogue shows up for an item number.

It's not quite that simple, but it's pretty close to that simple.  Sagar lives in the Bahamas, and he works with and for Aarav (Akshay Kumar), who is wealthy, cocky, and a determined womanizer.  Sagar, on the other hand, just wants a quiet life with his gorgeous girlfriend Mona (Lara Dutta), who dreams of opening an aquatic wildlife center.

Sagar's father was a marine archeologist, and it's rumored that he found the Lady in Blue, took some of the treasure, and abandoned his two sons.  Aarav thinks that Sagar should find the wreck, secure his future, and fund Mona's institute, but Sagar doesn't want to, so instead the two men spend their time bonding in various macho ways, like boxing and rescuing a hat from a shark.

But Sagar does have a brother.  Sam (Zayed Khan) ran away five years ago, and now he's competing in underground motorcycle street races in Bangkok.  He defeats gangster Gulshan (Rahul Dev), in the process scoring a date with Gulshan's employee Nikki (Katrina Kaif.)  Gulshan is also impressed, and offers Sam a job; he'll pay him 50,000 dollars to carry a package across town. After a bit of macho posturing, Sam takes the job.

After Sam leaves, Gulshan calls the police.  Suddenly there are four police motorcycles chasing Sam, leading to an enormous, almost apocalyptic amount of collateral damage, and also Sam losing the package.  Gulshan contacts him and tells him that he wants to be paid fifty million dollars as compensation.  There's no possible way that Sam could pay that much money, so he has to run before Gulshan kills him.  Nikki asks if he can think of anywhere he could run to, and Sam tells the woman he barely knows who works for the man trying to kill him that he'll be staying with his brother in the Bahamas.

The brothers are reunited, and then nothing happens for awhile.  Sam and Sagar hang out with Aarav for a while, they go to a club and meet Kylie Minogue, and Sagar still doesn't want to look for the Lady in Blue.

And then Gulshan shows up, threatens Sam, blows up Sagar's house, kidnaps Mona, and indicates that he would like fifty million dollars please. As it happens, Sagar knows the location of a sunken ship filled with treasure, so he teams up with Sam and Aarav to find the shipwreck and dive for the treasure.

So much diving.  The underwater scenery is impressive, but the diving scenes are sloooow and dialogue free, so the momentum grinds to a halt whenever the characters go underwater.  That's not the only padding in the movie, though.  The bike races are long, the chase scenes are long, and the the endless discussions of whether Sagar should look for the Lady in Blue are long.  There's a whole lot of nothing happening in the movie, then a very frenetic ending to wrap everything up.

That's not the problem with Blue.  The problem is that the film thinks we like Aarav.  Sagar's the protagonist, but he's written to be stolid and kind of dull (which is a shame, because Dutt is at his best when he gets to be funny and roguish) so Aarav is supposed to be the lovable scamp.  He's not. He's sleazy, obnoxious, overbearing, and insufferably smug.  This is supposed to be a pulpy adventure, but it takes forever to get to the adventure, so we just have to watch Sagar mope and Aarav brag about his money, his many girlfriends,and the fact that he always wins.

On the plus side, the music is by A. R. Rahman, and he is reliably good.

Even a man who is pure in heart.

 Bhediya (2022) is set in the heavily forested state of Arunchal Pradesh, in the northeastern part of India, and it draws from local folklore, especially the Yapum, a type of forest spirit known to take the shape of a wolf.  That's not all it draws from, though; other influences include The Wolf Man, 1982's Cat People, and just a dash of Spider-Man.

After a cold open involving a fairy tale interrupted by a wolf attack, the film cuts to ambitious young contractor Bhaskar (Varun Dhawan) updating his employer, Bagga (Saurabh Shukla), on his current assignment.  They plan to build a road straight through the jungle in a rural corner of Arunchal Pradesh, and Bhaskar is supposed to win over the locals.

Bhaskar collects his quirky cousin J. D. (Abhishek Banerjee) and meets with his local contact Jomin (Paalin Kabak). They are joined by another local, Panda (Deepak Dobriyal), who also serves as the designated dispenser of spooky warnings about the forest and its spirits not taking kindly to development projects.  Bhaskar and friends blow off the warnings, until one night in the forest Bhaskar is bitten by a wolf.  

He's bitten on the backside, but it is a serious injury requiring medical treatment, and on Jomin's advice they avoid the hospital and instead seek help from the local veterinarian, Anika (Kriti Sanon.)  And in the morning, Bhaskar is . . .  fine? His wound has healed basically overnight, and there have been other changes.  His sense of hearing has improved, and his sense of smell has improved even more.

It's not all good news, though.  Bhaskar also suffers from sudden flashes of temper, and he can understand the local animals, which will not shut up.  He begins waking up in strange places. Local businessmen who have been bribed to support the road project are attacked by some sort of wild animal, and something Bhaskar ate is disagreeing with him.

Bhaskar and his friends quickly realize what's happening; the bite has transformed Bhaskar, and on full moon nights he's striking at those who threaten the forest.  They don't think to ask who bit Bhaskar, though, and instead focus on finding some way to lift the werewolf's curse.  

They're not the only ones who have noticed, though. The police consider Bhaskar to be the prime suspect in the attacks, and at least one local officer has connected Bhaskar to the local legends about the Yapum.  In addition, the authorities have hired a band of crack hunters to deal with the wolf problem, so the forest is in danger, Bhaskar is in danger, and his friends are in danger, and the only solution is for Bhaskar to stop acting like a Hollywood werewolf and start acting like a shapechanging forest spirit.

Bhediya is a part of the Maddock Supernatural Universe, along with Stree and Stree 2, and like the Stree movies it's not afraid to tackle social issues; in addition to the obvious environmental message the movie deals with the prejudice that Northeastern Indians face.  It's a solid horror comedy in its own right,though, playing with the Hollywood werewolf mythos but remaining its own thing.  And while J. D. was actually in Stree, the movie stands alone and the connection isn't really mentioned until Vicky shows up in the end credits scene.