This one's for you, Carrie Pipkin!

3 Idiots (2009) has all the hallmarks of a typical college comedy: hazing, wacky pranks, the crusty old Dean, the crusty old Dean’s beautiful daughter, and the free-spirited outsider who changes everybody’s lives, sometimes for the better. And that’s okay; I don’t mind formula as long as it’s executed well, and 3 Idiots is executed well.

The film opens with former roommates Farhan (Madhavan) and Raju (Sharman Joshi) rushing back to the Imperial College of Engineering to meet their old friend Rancho (Aamir Khan), who vanished right after graduation, five years ago. When they arrive, though, it’s not Rancho waiting for them, it’s former college rival Chatur (Omi Vaidya), who reminds them of a drunken challenge he issued to Rancho years ago to meet up on the same date and see whose life has been the most successful. Rarhan and Raju are not impressed, and they’re about to leave when Chatur announces that he’s traced Rancho to Shimla.

From there the film alternates between Farhan and Raju trying to unravel the mystery of what has happened to their friend, and flashbacks of Rancho clashing with college chairman Viru “Virus” Sahastrabudhhe (Boman Irani) and the rest of the faculty over the nature and purpose of education, wooing Virus’s beautiful daughter Pia (Kareena Kapoor), and inspiring his friends to follow their dreams.

The mystery deepens when the group arrive in Simla and meet with Ranchoddas Shamaldas Chanchad, and discover that he’s someone else entirely and played by Javed Jaffrey. They’re a bit disturbed to find out that their friend wasn’t who he said he was, but the real Rancho does point them in the right direction, and after a quick stop to pick up Pia, and the little group are on the road again.

Often in this kind of movie the college faculty are stuffy to the point of caricature, obsessed with maintaining order above all, while the nominal protagonists are borderline sociopathic jerks who just want to have fun and drink beer. In 3 Idiots, on the other hand . . . well, Virus is a bit of a cartoon tyrant who is so obsessed with the rules that he drives more than one student to attempt suicide, and Rancho enjoys the occasional drink and likes to use pranks as object lessons, but isn’t always as careful as he should be about who his object lessons hurt, but there’s an actual argument there. Virus is preparing his students to be the best of the best, to thrive in a difficult world. Rancho, on the other hand, is interested in education for its own sake; he doesn’t care about passing the test, he just wants to learn about engineering. That’s an argument worth having.

While 3 Idiots does raise some big questions about the nature of education and the high suicide rate among Indian college students, it’s still a comedy, and a silly one at that. There are more fart jokes than I would have preferred, but the protagonists are flawed but likeable, the friendship is believable, the romance is charming, and the Zoobi Doobi song is guaranteed to get stuck in your head.

Why does this sort of thing never happen to me when I go to Scotland?

It’s hard to summarize Delhi-6 (2009) without making it sound like an early 90s Shahrukh Khan movie; it’s about a young NRI who travels to India, is charmed by traditional Indian life and the colorful and eccentric locals, meets a nice girl, and finally wins over her stern and disapproving father by being beaten to a bloody pulp. The difference is one of emphasis; Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge focuses on the girl, while Delhi-6 focuses on the country.

New York resident Annapurna Mehra (Waheeda Rehman) is dying, and she wants to end her life in her native Delhi. Her grandson Roshan (Abhishek Bachchan) volunteers to take her home. In Delhi, they’re met by family friend Ali Beg (Rishi Kapoor), who takes them back to the old neighborhood.
Annapurna quickly slips back into neighborhood life as if she had never left. Roshan, on the other hand, busies himself by enthusiastically playing tourist, but he can’t help but be drawn to the people around him, and especially to Bittu (Sonam Kapoor), who hopes to compete in the Indian Idol competition as a way of escaping the marriage her father Madan (Om Puri) is arranging for her.

While Roshan is reconecting with his roots, the city is abuzz with rumors of a mysterious black monkey which may also be an alien or part robot, but which is definitely terrorizing the city unless it doesn’t exist. At first, the talk of the Black Monkey is an amusing side note, but as rumors continue to spread, tensions continue to grow. When someone suggests that the Black Monkey is a Hindu plot to discredit the Muslims, or possibly a Muslim plot to attack Hindus, lines are drawn, even in the Mehras’ normally peaceful neighborhood, and suddenly, beautiful, romantic Delhi is a very dangerous place to be.

The plot of Delhi-6 develops gradually. One moment you’re wondering when something is going to happen, the next moment you’re marveling at how much has already happened, but you can’t spend too much time marveling, since the temple tree is on fire, the streets are filled with an angry mob searching for the Black Monkey, and the heroine is eloping with the wrong man.

The plot is almost beside the point, anyway. This isn’t a movie about Roshan’s adventures, it’s a movie about Delhi, a love letter to the city, an extended essay on “What Delhi Means To Me.” Roshan is the audience stand-in here; he spends his time watching, taking pictures, and observing until the girl and city he loves are in danger. Delhi-6 isn’t a throwback to those old Shahrukh movies after all; it’s its own thing.

For entertainment purposes only.

It’s entirely possible that I have no taste. I certainly spend a lot of time watching and writing about movies which the Indian film-going public, the Bollywood fan community, and humanity in general have decided are crimes against the cinema. This week, that means Jaadugar (1989), part of the string of flops that (temporarily) killed the career of superstar Amitabh Bachchan.

Shankar (Aditya Pancholi) has finished his medical training in America. he and his sassy and apparently platonic galpal Mona (Amrita Singh) arrive in the village of Dharampur, only to discover that Shankar’s father (Amrish Puri), formerly a respected if somewhat shady businessman, has become Mahaprabhu Jagatsagar Chintamani, a flamboyant guru who uses an array of magic tricks to rule over the superstitious villagers.

When he sees just how corrupt his father has become, Shankar is horrified, and decides he must take action. On the advice of Gajender (Pran), his father’s former partner in crime from the shady businessman days, Shankar travels to Mumbai to recruit the fabulous Goga (Amitabh Bachchan), the greatest magician in the world, believing that it takes a magician to catch a magician.

The two men settle on a price, and Goga agrees to come to Dharampur. At the airport, though, Goga catches sight of aspiring actress Meena (Jayapradha), and the movie is derailed by a romantic subplot which includes boorish behavior, outrageous coincidences (she’s staying in his apartment while he’s supposed to be in Dharampur!) and some truly unfortunate subtitles.

And after the romance, it’s back to Dharampur and back to work. Goga assumes a variety of wacky disguises in order to test the limits of the Mahaprabhu’s abilities, and then becomes the heavenly sage Gogeshwar in order to steal his followers and usurp his position at the ashram. Of course, what happens when the villagers start worshiping Gogeshwar is sort of an open question.

I am willing to concede that Jaadugar may very well be a terrible movie, but I enjoyed it, for two reasons. First, I am a big fan of Bollywood’s perennial supporting actors, and this movie features several of my favorites, including Pran, Bob Christo, and even a young Johnny Lever. And rather than simply recycling Mogambo or Mola Ram, Amrish Puri creates yet another memorable villain; the Mahaprabhu is certainly corrupt and evil, but he’s also a clueless dad who’s genuinely trying to make a better future for his son, and who is baffled by Shankar’s resistance.

Second, while the script is wildly uneven, the writing does include a very clever bit of sleight of hand. When everything is at its darkest, and our beleaguered heroes have no one left to turn to but God, they are saved by an apparent throwaway character who was briefly introduced at the beginning of the film, but has been offscreen for most of the intervening time. You can’t even call it a Deus Ex Machina, because it was set up almost from the beginning.

Jaadugar isn’t going to top my list of favorite movies, but I had fun. Then again, what do I know?

It's funny because they're violent criminals!

As Darwaza Bandh Rakho (2006) begins, failed businessman Kantilal Shantilal Shah (Ishrat Ali) is enjoying a quiet evening at home with his family, when four armed, masked men burst in. The men are kidnappers, looking for a place to hide out and keep their captive, spoiled heiress Isha (Isha Sharvani) quiet. Soon, Isha, Shah, and his family are tied together and being held, at gunpoint, in a dark room. And, as you may have already guessed, the film is a comedy.

The four kidnappers are recently unemployed waiter Ajay (Aftab Shivdasani), recently unemployed driver Raghu (Chunky Pandey), recently unemployed roadside paan seller Goga (Snehal Dabi), and ticket scalper Abbas (Zakir Hussain). They are, in other words, ordinary guys who have fallen on hard times and made a terrible, if desperate, choice.

As kidnap gangs go, they’re also pretty hapless. They try to contact Isha’s wealthy father (Gulshan Grover) in order to make their demands, only to discover that he’s on a plane headed for America; rather than hiding out in Shah’s house for a few hours, they’ll have to spend at least a day there. And people keep showing up! The maid (Divya Dutta) is hiding in the closet. Her husband (Ravi Kale), an off duty police officer, shows up looking for her. Nobody has money to pay the pizza deliveryman (Nitin Raikwar), so he joins the other hostages. Raghu invites Julie (Manisha Koirala) a door to door shampoo saleswoman, to come inside, so that’s one more. By the end of the movie, the gang have collected at least fourteen hostages (I may have lost count) and, naturally, wackiness ensues.

Not as much wackiness as you might think, though. Darwaza Bandh Rakho has a perfect setup for a farce, with each of the many hostages introducing a new set of comic problems, some clever (Mughal E Azam, the pizza delivery boy, wants to be a gangster and tries to prove his worth to the kidnappers) and some cliche’ (one of the hostages has heart trouble, and the only doctor they can find to treat him is a vet! Ha HA! Comedy!) There aren’t as many jokes as you’d expect from a farce, though, because the film is so relentlessly focused on plot. With this many characters, there’s a lot of plot to get through, so the movie doesn’t have time to really focus on any one character’s set of gags.

Another side effect of the focus on plot is that what little character development we get is inconsistent, with characters suddenly changing in order to facilitate the next twist. Julie the shampoo saleswoman is a particularly glaring example; she changes from a saintly dispenser of sage advice to a greedy, scheming mini-Lady MacBeth when it’s time for the kidnappers and hostages to turn on one another. There’s no real reason for the sudden change in personality, it just happens when the plot requires it.

Darwaza Bandh Rakho is billed as “An edge of the seat comedy from Ram Gopal Varma,” and while Varma only produced the film, rather than directing, there’s a definite influence there. The film is written as a wacky comedy, but it’s shot as . . . well, as a Ram Gopal Varma film, with moody lighting, strange camera angles, and absolutely no musical numbers. Taken as a whole, it’s a strange and worthy experiment, a farce that focuses on plot and looks like a serious movie, but it doesn’t quite work. This is a dumb movie that could stand to be a good deal dumber.

No buildings were harmed in the making of this movie.

I discovered Shikari (1963) through a link on the excellent Bollywood blog Memsaab Story. The film is not available on DVD yet, but follow the link above and you can watch the movie online and subtitled.

So what’s it about? For the first half of the film, Shikari is a straightforward remake of, or possibly sequel to, King Kong. Circus owner Jagdish (Madan Puri, Amrish Puri’s older brother) is concerned about competition from the newfangled “circus on ice” that’s moved into town. After checking out the competition (we’re treated to about five minutes of ice capade stock footage, and it’s even more boring than it sounds) Jagdish and his partner Kapoor decide that the best way to revitalize their own circus would be to capture the legendary King Kong, also known as Otango, and bring him back to Bombay.

(I get the impression that the monster is actually named Otango, and everybody calls him King Kong because he’s, well, a giant gorilla. Which would mean that the characters in Shikari have heard of King Kong; either they saw the movie, or this film is an unofficial sequel to the original. Either way, you’d think someone would point out that historically giant apes make poor performing animals.)

Jagdish and Kapoor recruit Doctor Sharma, a famous scientist with a silly beard and a tendency to shout “Idiotic!” and, accompanied by Kapoor’s daughter Rita (Ragini) and stowaway clown and alleged comic relief Chandu, the group set off for the jungles of . . . Malaysia, maybe? It’s hard to tell, and when Rita joins the locals in a dance number in front of a giant totem pole it quickly becomes clear that our heroes have arrived in darkest Madeupistan.

During a river crossing, Rita is swept away from the group, only to be rescued by handsome plantation owner Ajit (Ajit). This is fortunate, since they were hoping to find Ajit and convince him to support their expedition anyway. By the time the group is reunited, Ajit and Rita are thoroughly smitten with one another, so he immediately agrees to help. Jagdish, however, is not happy; he’s had his eye on Rita for quite some time.

As the group moves deeper into the jungle, they fight off some unruly tribesmen, dangle over a pit of bubble-gum pink lava, and catch a brief glimpse of Otango himself. And then the plot takes a sharp left turn; rather than the expected dinosaurs and giant spiders, the group become the guests of the nefarious Doctor Cyclops (K.N. Singh) and his beautiful daughter Shoba (a very young Helen, dressed as a Swiss milkmaid for reasons unknown). The dialogue, along with the Doctor’s talent for shrinking people, certainly implies that this is the Doctor Cyclops from the 1940 movie, though if that’s the case he’s had Lasik surgery and broadened his scientific interests; he created Otango, and is now seeking to turn men into beasts and beasts into men.

For a giant monster movie, Shikari has a disappointing lack of giant monsters. Apart from a brief appearance by a chained dinosaur-rat-thing, Otango is the only giant monster on display, and until his climactic rampage, he’s a background threat. Our heroes spend much more time dealing with the villages Otango has trampled than they do dealing with the great ape himself.

Given a limited budget and an unconvincing ape costume, limiting the screentime for Otango makes sense. It makes for a very different movie, however. King Kong is the tragic,savage, but majestic monarch of a land that time forgot. Otango, on the other hand, is a mindless rampaging monster that needs to be put down. In the end, it’s clear that it was not beauty that killed the beast, it was the fall.

Still, if you’re looking for a cheesy movie to watch, rather than a movie to write a paper about, you could do a lot worse than Shikari. It’s bizarre fun. Helen and Ragini’s psychadelic dance-off in an imaginary mushroom forest is worth the price of admission by itself.

I’m disappointed by the lack of mustache jokes.

Bollywood movies are full of nice people. Sure, the villains are despicable, committing horrible acts out of the sheer love of evil, but the good guys are often wonderful and self sacrificing, and even when they have to break the law it’s because they need to pay for their sister’s operation. And subsequent wedding. There are family dramas in which every single character is a wonderful human being. And then you have Bollywood farces, like Golmaal: Fun Unlimited (2006), in which the bad guys are still bad, and the occasional supporting character is nice, but the leads are smug, self-centered jerks.

Golmaal‘s jerks of interest are ringleader Gopal (Ajay Devgan), fast talking Madhu (Arshad Warsi), mute Lucky (Tusshar Kapoor) and naive college student Laxman (Sharman Joshi). The four are all crashing in Laxman’s room at the college’s hostel; while the others have dropped out of college years ago, they don’t have jobs or any other visible means of support, and the hostel provides a decent base from which they can scam the student body and harass the college’s hapless, neurotic dean, Mirchandani (Manoj Joshi).

After they get caught selling an exam, Laxman is kicked out of the college once and for all, and the others are thrown off the premises with him. This is bad, since not only do they no longer have a place to live, they also owe a great deal of money to Vasuli (Mukesh Tiwari), a local gangster with a Sanjay Dutt obsession. (Vasuli appears to be in the movie solely to give Arshad Warsi a chance to show off his Dut impression; it’s really pretty good.)

While hiding from Vasuli’s men, the boys stumble across the home of Somnath (Paresh Rawal) and Mangala (Sushmita Mukherjee), a kindly blind couple continually hoping for a visit from their grandson Sameer, now living in America. Gopal has a terrible idea – he’ll impersonate the couple’s grandson, allowing him to live in the house, and the others can move in as well. As long as they’re all completely silent, the old couple will never know.

It’s a great set-up for a farce, so naturally the rest of the movie largely ignores the boys’ tenuous living situation, focusing instead on the quartet alternately competing to woo Nirali (Rimi Sen), the disinterested next door neighbor, and inadvertently thwarting the henchman of the unfortunately named crime lord Babli (Sanjay Mishra).

The protagonists of Golmaal are, by and large, horrible people. Laxman is supposed to be the token nice guy, but he’s either in denial or incredibly susceptible to peer pressure; either way apart from the occasional gripe he’s a willing participant in the scheming and feuding. Lucky is probably the most sympathetic of the four leads, but that may just be because he doesn’t talk, and isn’t actively competing for Nirali.

On the other hand, in a farce you don’t necessarily need your protagonists to be sympathetic. Wackiness is more likely to ensue from selfish scheming than it is from noble self sacrifice. And Paresh Rawal is on hand to do a little acting, investing his paper thin character with remarkable pathos. He and Mukherjee even get their own dance number, a delightful black-and-white homage to classic Bollywood.

I’m not sure I’d call the fun in Golmaal unlimited, but it’s certainly sufficient. It’s a decent farce, with a few very funny moments, a few moments that fall painfully flat, a cast of horrible characters, and a plot that doesn’t bear thinking about for more than a minute.

Crocodile tears.

Khoon Bhari Maang (1988) is a Bollywood revenge melodrama starring Rekha as a wronged and very angry woman. Unlike the average ”avenging wife and mother” movie, though, the heroine’s family is not completely destroyed; it’s harder to exact bloody brutal vengeance when you have living people to worry about rather than convenient corpses to avenge.

Rekha plays Aarti Saxena, widow of Vikram (Rakesh Roshan), mother of Kavita and Bobby (Baby Swetha and Master Gaurav), and only daughter and heir of wealthy industrialist Mr. Saxena (Saeed Jaffrey). Aarti is no great beauty or social butterfly, but she’s completely devoted to her children, and the small family is really, really happy. What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty, as it turns out. Mister Saxena has discovered that his friend Hiralal (Kader Khan) has cheated him. he’s about to break the news to Aarti when Hiralal smothers him. Then, in his capacity as kindly old friend of the family, he introduces Aarti to his nephew Sanjay (Kabir Bedi).

Aarti isn’t really interested in romance, but Sanjay quickly wins over her children – wins over everybody, really. When Sanjay suddenly declares his love and proposes, her best friend, supermodel Nandini (Sonu Walia), who is secretly Sanjay’s lover, urges her to accept for the sake of the children. She does, and after a quick civil service, Aarti, Sanjay, the kids, and Nandini all retire to the Saxena family farm. In the morning, Sanjay takes Nandini and Aarti out hunting, and when they come across some stock footage crocodiles . . .

Which turns out to be a mistake. Since no body was found, Aarti can’t be declared for seven years, so Sanjay can’t get his hands on the money until then. He also can’t remarry without losing out on the money entirely, and he’s not willing to work, so he doesn’t have much to do but leech off Nandini, drink, and terrorize the children.

Aarti, meanwhile, is pulled out of the river by a kindly fisherman (P. Jairaj), horribly scarred but alive. Fortunately, the earrings she was wearing are valuable enough to finance a trip overseas to have extensive cosmetic surgery. When she returns to India she has been transformed into an unrecognizable beauty. (And by unrecognizable I mean she looks basically the same, but with a more flattering hairstyle and clothing, and without the giant birthmark on her cheek.)

Aarti wants revenge, and the first step is obviously to become a major supermodel. With the help of fashion photographer JD (Shatrughan Sinha) she transforms herself into Jyothi, and arranges a meeting with Sanjay, who is immediately smitten. Jyothi plays hard to get while secretly spying on and longing for her children. Separation from them is the price she has to pay for the brutal revenge she’s chosen.

Rekha is one of the great legendary beauties of Bollywood. Even as the supposedly homely Aarti, she’s attractive, but when she’s transformed into the glamorous Jyothi, she looks absolutely ridiculous. Jyothi’s look is clearly supposed to Joan Collins and other nighttime soap stars, but the look isn’t just dated, it’s exaggerated to the point of parody, with pancake makeup, baroque hairstyles, and shoulder pads big enough to build a cathedral on. To be fair, I found the look silly during the eighties as well, so I may not be the target audience, but it certainly hasn’t aged well.

The film has a few other silly points, including one of the more blatant and bizarre bits of musical plagiarism I’ve heard, in which the theme from Chariots of Fire is transformed into a sultry poolside love song. On the whole, though, the film is put together well. Kabir Bedi is particularly noteworthy; rather than chew the scenery like a typical Bollywood villain, he gives a natural and restrained performance which somehow makes Sanjay appear even more despicable.

The story, while improbable, is fairly tight, and it’s nice to see the death of the beloved old family retainer is treated as something worth adding to the list of crimes to avenge, rather than treated as an afterthought or collateral damage. However, it does underline the problem of a revenge movie where the avenger has surviving family to worry about; if Aarti had gone directly to the police in the first place, she could have saved a few lives and spared her children a great deal of suffering, while still punishing Sanjay and Nandini. Ironic punishment may be satisfying, but it’s not an efficient problem solving technique.