This is a Yama fanblog now. Time I admitted it.

I've joked before about the Yama Cinematic Universe, but Yamaho Yama (2012) takes the joke one step further; an early scene involves a brief flashback to the events of Yamadonga.  The rest of the movie doesn't really follow through, of course.  There's no real connection between the two films, apart from Yama and Chitragupta.  Still, Cinematic Universe or not, this is one of Yama's nest outings in terms of character development.

This time, Yama (Srihari) is introduced in an action scene, attempting to collect the soul of a very powerful and evil undead CGI ascetic.  It's a puzzle fight of the sort that Hercules used to get into; Yama has the full use of his divine powers (including heat vision, apparently), but he has to use the right power in the right way to stop his undead opponent from continually coming back to life. Once that's sorted, Yama heads back to Yamalok and sings a song about how he's really great, and also he treats all humans equally in the end, no matter who they are.  This will be important later.

Meanwhile, Yama's wife (Sithara) has a problem.  All of the other goddesses have been teasing her because Yama has no mortal worshipers.  Yama gently explains that he's the god of death, and so the living want to keep him as far away as possible.  She's not convinced, but they are interrupted by the sound of a young boy on Earth offering prayers to Yama.  Suddenly he has a devotee after all.

The boy grows into Balu (Sairam Shankar), who is also introduced with an action scene, wrestling a bad CGI leopard in order to save a little girl, and then performing a dance number with the leopard in order to convince it to save itself and go back to the jungle.  (This will not be important later.)

After the leopard wrestling, Balu's grandmother (Rama Prabha) insists on shipping him off to America - not actual America, of course.  This is Filmi America, where the Statue of Liberty is in California, Las Vegas is a few minutes away, the city is a mix of beaches and shopping malls, and every important character speaks fluent Telugu.  Balu is a charming scoundrel, so he's soon living (platonically) with the beautiful, rich, and clearly smitten Nisha (Sanjjanaa Galrani.)  And when I say clearly smitten, I mean an hour after meeting Balu she sings him a song about the various ways she would like him to touch her body.  It's about as subtle as an overly literal simile.  

Balu spends his days scamming the good citizens of Filmi America.  He briefly bonds with bright, beautiful and charitable medical student Swapna (Parvati Melton) over his devotion to Yama, but when she finds out that he's a conman, she's disgusted, and declares that any god should be ashamed to have a worshiper like him.  That's enough to start the other goddesses teasing Mrs. Yama again, so Yama must take action.  It's time to go . . . to America!

Yama and Chitragupta (M. S. Narayana) go to America.  Wackiness ensues; there are fish-out-of-water jokes, and Yama briefly dresses up as Batman.  More importantly, Yama discovers that Balu is indeed a scoundrel, but he has a good heart and is absolutely sincere in his Yama-worship.  Yama decides that the best way to reform Balu's character is to marry him off to a good woman, so he arranges for the God of Love to make Balu fall for Swapna.  (The business with the Love God is kind of pointless, honestly, because Balu already had a thing for Swapna.  Nisha never really stood a chance.)

After some work, Balu finally manages to charm Swapna.  The problem is that Swapna has an admirer back in India.  Jinda is a bloodthirsty thug who is methodically killing all the men in Swapna's village in order to eliminate the competition.  Swapna returns to India in order to stop the bloodshed.  Balu follows her, because he's the hero and that's what the hero does.  Balu issues a bold challenge to Jinda, but he is destined to die, and Yama cannot help him since he is bound to treat all humans equally, as was clearly established in his first song.  (See, I told you it would be important.)

The special effects in Yamaho Yama are not great.  The jokes are pleasantly dumb.  The performances are really broad.  But the character of Yama himself is pretty interesting.  As always, Yama is bold, boisterous, and clever rather than smart.  However, unlike other Yama movies, he's never treated as an antagonist.  He's always rooting for Balu, and forms a genuine bond with his lone devotee, but cannot and will not let that keep him from his duty.  In other words, Yama has an actual character arc for once, rather than just moving the plot along.  It's a refreshing change.

Family drama. With dacoits.

Amitabh Bachchan rose to stardom in the early Seventies playing a series of angry young men, virtuous heroes fighting a lonely, doomed battle against societal injustice and a corrupt system.  Young Amitabh wasn't always angry, though; his character in Zameer (1975) is downright jolly at times, a charming rogue with a heart of gold fighting his own con gone wrong, along with the occasional bandit.

Millionaire Maharaj Singh (Shammi Kapoor) loves horses and guns, but he really really loves his wife Rukmini (Indrani Mukherjee) and their three year old son Chimpoo (Master Chimpoo.)  It's hard to find really competent staff, so when a group of bandits attack his stud farm, he's forced to defend it himself.  And he does, shooting and killing one of the bandits in the process.

 Unfortunately, the bandit he killed was the son of bandit leader Maan Singh (Madan Puri), who takes his revenge by kidnapping little Chimpoo.  Maharaj and Rukmini spend the next twenty years grieving; the film indicates the passage of time with a montage of untouched birthday cakes.  At this point, Rukmini has serious heart problems, and Maharaj has stepped back from the business in order to care for her.

 And the film cuts to Badal (Bachchan), who has just been released from prison.  Badal is bright, charming, and deeply cynical.  He claims that he'll do anything for money, but almost the first thing he does onscreen is steal from the rich and give to the poor.  Badal has a definite talent with guns and horses, and he is definitely not Chimpoo, because he doesn't have Chimpoo's birthmark.

However, he's good enough for Ram Singh (Ramesh Deo), a disgruntled former employee of Maharaj's.  Ram Singh hatches a scheme to pass Badal off as Chimpoo, then when the family's "long lost son" gets his hands on the family fortune, they can split the cash.  Badal doesn't have anything better to do, so he agrees.  The first step is to tattoo Badal with a copy of Chimpoo's birthmark.

Along the way, Badal meets a group of college students, and immediately falls for Smita (Sairu Banu.)  She's pretty taken with his singing and wild-horse-taming skills as well, but Badal has a job to do, so he makes his way to the stud farm.  He gets a job, and after some finagling manages to "accidentally" reveal his fake birthmark to Maharaj.  He is quickly recognized as the long lost son and heir.

But there's a problem.  Actually, two problems.  After spending time with Rukmini and Maharaj, Badal realizes how deeply wounded they are by the loss of their son, and how cruel this particular con really is.  And it turns out that Maharaj and Rukmini have a daughter as well - Smita.  Badal has a new and loving family, but he's lying to them, and he can't leave without breaking their hearts, and can't pursue the woman he loves because everybody thinks she's his sister.  He's trapped in his own con, and the only way out is to find the real Chimpoo.

While Bachchan's character is clearly the protagonist here, it's actually Shammi Kapoor who gets top billing.  And he probably deserves it, too; while Badal's character arc is pretty straightforward, Kapoor acts the hell out of his part as Generic Dad, infusing the character with a profound vulnerability.  This is silly escapism rather than cutting social drama, but the performances lend the movie a certain weight.

 

I would like to see them conquer the Martians, though.

 As an American, it's really hard for me to judge just how offensive Santa Banta Pvt Ltd (2016) is.  Santa and Banta are the "stars" of a series of jokes in India, rather like Sven and Ole in the Midwest.  At best, the Santa Banta jokes present the Sikh community as naive, boisterous, but ultimately brave and good-hearted hicks, which makes it a strange subject for a film.  The movie does open with a dedication to the Sikh community, and there's a lot of dialogue towards the end about how Sikhs are brave patriots who are the first to defend India, but our heroes are still naive, boisterous, but ultimately brave and good-hearted hicks.  

This Santa (Boman Irani) and Banta (Vir Das) are unemployed layabouts who spend their time drinking and crashing parties in search of free food.  After Santa is forcefully reminded of his lost love Billoo (Neha Dhupia), the pair resolve to reform and get honest jobs.  And they do!  They immediately get a job driving a truck . . . which turns out to be a front for liquor smuggling.  Santa and Banta are arrested, but are promptly bailed out by RAW agent Arvind (Vijay Raaz), who is in Punjab looking for two missing agents, codenamed Santa and Banta.

Arvind has the wrong Santa and Banta.  He knows he has the wrong Santa and Banta, but he packs them off to Fiji anyway, mostly to annoy his boss Hanumanth (Tinnu Anand.)  Our heroes are supposed to be rescuing a kidnapped ambassador (Ayub Khan), but instead they sort of bumble around and annoy the various suspects (mostly Ram Kapoor and Neha Dhupia again), like Columbo if there were two of him and they both really were stupid.  Fortunately, actual and hyper-competent RAW agent Cutie (Lisa Haydon) and less competent but skilled supervisor Akbar (Sanjay Mishra) are there to watch over them.

They also keep running into another cultural stereotype; Nepali expat and aspiring crime lord Chooza (Johny Lever), who is convinced that Santa and Banta are there to capture him, and plans to stab them with his kukri.

There's a lot of plot in this movie, and none of it matters.  The movie is a vehicle for jokes, and some of them are funny.  The cast is full of veteran supporting actors; Boman Irani is the biggest name here, and he actually manages to give Santa a tiny bit of gravitas.

However, I don't think Santa and Banta being Santa and Banta really adds anything to the movie, apart from a sliver of name recognition.  It's a fish out of water comedy set in Fiji, and so the leads could be from literally anywhere in the world except for Fiji; dumb guys are a universal phenomenon, so there's no need to dabble in stereotypes.

I mean, with the price of meat what it is. When you get it. If you get it.

 Compile a list of Shakespeare's top five tragedies, and Titus Andronicus . . .probably won't be on it.  It's a brutal play, modeled on the revenge melodramas that were fashionable at the time, in which terrible people do terrible things and eventually meet a terrible fate.  The play has  bombastic and bloody charm, but it lacks a certain nuance when compared with, say, Hamlet.  The Hungry (2017) is a different story.

The film opens with a New Year's Eve party, attended by two families.  The Ahujas consist of wealthy patriarch Tathagat (Naseeruddin Shah), hapless son Sunny (Aejun Gupta) and spirited daughter Loveleen (Sayani Gupta).  The Ahujas are joined by Tathagat's right hand man Arun (Neeraj Kabi).  The Joshis, meanwhile, consist of widowed mother Tulsi (Tisca Chopra), golden child Ankur (Suraj Sharma), and her other son, Chirag (Antonio Aakeel).  The families are close; Tulsi is the daughter of Tathagat's old business partner, Ankur and Loveleen are in a relationship, and Sunny is nursing a hapless crush on Tulsi.  During the party, something goes terribly wrong, and Ankur is discovered dead, an apparent suicide.  

Two years later, Tathagat is released from prison (for white collar crimes) just in time to preside over the preparations for Sunny's and Tulsi's wedding.  Sunny is happy because he may be a coked-up loser, but he's finally landed the girl of his dreams and a place in the family business.  Tathagat is happy because Tulsi agreed to sign a very generous prenuptial agreement.  Loveleen is happy because her obnoxious boyfriend Bentley (Karan Pandit) is present.  And Tulsi is grimly determined, because she knows Tathagat is responsible for Ankur's death, and she and Arun have hatched a plan to wipe the Ahujas out.

Chirag is not a part of the revenge plan, and so Tulsi is horrified when he shows up at the wedding unannounced.  Before she has a chance to explain things to Chirag, he gets into an argument with Loveleen which ends in an act of horrifying, brutal violence.  (I am not kidding - I was genuinely horrified by the brutal violence.)  Tulsi asks Arun to send Chirag back to London while she cleans up his mess, but neither of them quite succeed.  Loveleen manages to leave a clue for her father, and he starts cooking up a revenge scheme of his own.

Meanwhile, the film keeps flashing back to the New Year's Eve party, revealing more and more of what actually happened to Ankur.  And there are several loving shots of fine food being carefully prepared, just to ensure that if you know Titus Andronicus at all, you know exactly where this is heading.

The Hungry isn't an exact adaptation of Shakespeare's play; the characters (apart from Ankur and Loveleen) are still terrible people doing terrible things, but they are motivated by more than the simple love of evil, and the film has some of the nuance that the play is lacking.  Making the Tamora equivalent the protagonist rather than Titus is also a new and interesting twist.

However, one thing the film and play definitely have in common is violence.  Not elegant, stylized violence, nasty and brutal violence perpetrated on helpless people, with graphic and lingering effects.  If you choose to watch this movie, be prepared.

Bhooty Call - Sardaar Ji

Normally, I like to end my annual Bhooty Call with something really scary, but this year the real world has been entirely scary enough for my tastes, so I'm going with something different.  After all, ghosts are exciting, but sometimes, they need to be busted.  That's when you call Sardaar Ji (2015.)

Bilal (Ali Kazmi) and Ruksana (Anita Kailey) live in London, or possibly Birmingham or Leicester - the geography isn't always clear.  They are rich and happy and blissfully in love, so their wedding is going to be a big event; the Queen is expected to attend, and they've booked a "castle" for the ceremony.

The problem is, the place is haunted.  However, the invitations have already been sent out, and the Queen has already accepted, so the wedding absolutely must happen at the appointed place and time in order to preserve the royal honour.  They try a team of American ghost hunters and an exorcist from Africa, but they fail.  It's clear that they need someone absolutely fearless, who won't ever quit once they've accepted the mission.  Obviously, they need a Sardar.

The Sardar in question, is Jaggi (Diljith Dosanjh), a highly efficient exorcist.  He can rid a building of a ghost in just a few minutes, forcing it into a bottle and carrying it home.  He actually keeps the bottled ghosts around and talks to them sometimes, often flirting with the ghost ladies, but he hasn't yet found that one special lady ghost that he can . . . keep in a bottle on the shelf and occasionally talk to.  Yeah.  Moving on.

(I think the intention here is to showcase that despite his bravado, Jaggi isn't confident around actual women.  Flirting with ghost girls is safer, because it can't lead to anything serious, while courting a living woman means making yourself emotionally vulnerable.  It's a bit clumsy, but I'll allow it for now.)

Despite his successful ghost busting business, Jaggi is happy to drop everything and fly to England in exchange for a large sum of money.  Jaggi enters the house,m but instead of the exotic English blonde ghost he was expecting, he meets and is immediately captivated by the beautiful and very Punjabi Pinky (Neeru Bajwa.)

 

Wait, wrong picture.

Pinky tries to drive him away, but Jaggi is experienced and persistent.  He tracks down Pinky's mother (Sunita Dhir) to learn all he can about her, then returns to try again to convince her to leave.  They settle into an uneasy truce, and Pinky agrees to leave if Jaggi will bring her a dancer named Jasmine Gill (Mandy Takhar.)

Jaggi finds Jasmine, and utterly fails to make a good first impression.  However, she teaches a salsa class, so he tries to sign up for her class.  She doesn't want to accept him as a student, both because the class has already started and because she thinks he's kind of a creep, but reluctantly agrees to let him join the class if he can demonstrate basic salsa proficiency.  Since he doesn't know salsa at all, that means it's back to Pinky for remedial salsa lessons.

 

When it comes time for the actual test, though, Jaggi chokes.  Salsa dancing involves touching an actual, living human girl, and he just can't do it. At the last minute he manages to save the situation with his bhangra skills, because there's no problem that can't be solved with judicious application of bhangra.  

 

Jaggi spins a story about learning salsa to impress his fiance, Lucy Spanish (you wouldn't know her.  She goes to a different school) and the lessons begin.  As Jaggi and Jasmine grow closer, he realizes that he has feelings for this actual, living human girl, and he feels terrible for lying to her.  Of course, Jasmine has been keeping secrets as well, especially about what happened to Pinky.

 

The supernatural elements take a back seat to relationship drama here.  The romantic triangle is a bit clumsy at times, and the "collecting ghost women like Pokemon", but the movie does do a good job of showing just how terrifying it can be to open yourself up and make a connection with a real person..

Bhooty Call - 1920 London

 1920 London (2016) is not exactly a sequel to 1920.  The movies in the 1920 franchise are unrelated stories, the only real connection being the basic premise of people being possessed by ghosts in a historical setting.  In this case, the historical setting is London in 1920, or at least London in a vague year which is supposed to be 1920 but includes costume and design elements drawn from the late Victorian era all the way to the early 1960s.  However, I don't think historical accuracy was a real priority.

 Newlyweds Shivangi (Meera Chopra) and Veer (Vishal Karwal), an honest to goodness Rajastani princess and prince, are happily settled in London.  Veer is just finishing up his law degree, and everything is wonderful. . . until a package from home arrives, containing a mysterious amulet.  Suddenly there are whispers in the night and shadows on the stairs, and everything takes a turn for the spooky.

 Now, I've seen a lot of these "possessed by a ghost movies: the original 1920, Bhoot, Raaz, Machli Jal Ki Rani Hai,  and those are just the ones that I can think of off the top of my head.  Most of them start in the same way; a young couple experience some sort of life change which results in the wife being left at home, at first everyone thinks she's going a bit Yellow Wallpaper, but it turns out that she's possessed, so her husband must team up with an unconventional spiritual advisor to drive out the angry spirit. It is a surprisingly gendered subgenre.

But that is not what happens here.  Veer hears strange noises at night and discovers an empty rocking chair, and Veer suddenly starts behaving strangely, eventually leaving him nearly comatose and wracked with extreme muscle spasms.  Shivangi rushes him to the hospital, and the doctors diagnose tetanus, but Shivangi's servant Kesar Maa (Sushmita Mukherjee) notices that all the portraits of Veer in the house have developed spooky blacked-out eyes, so she diagnoses ghost, and suspects that Veer's stepmother is responsible.

Shivangi returns to Rajastan to consult with her family, and the family hires a Tantric (Gajendra Chauhan), who attempts an intercontinental exorcism involving the secret shadow world that lies behind the mirror.  (Not a particular mirror, all mirrors.)  He fails, and tells the family to seek out a more powerful Tantric, Mewar Baba (Sharman Joshi.)  This is a problem, because back when Mewar Baba was plain old humble shepherd Jai Singh Gujjar, he was Shivangi's star crossed lover.  (This movie puts the "ex" into exorcist!)

Since the breakup involved Shivangi's testimony sending him to prison for a crime he did not commit, Jai is reluctant to help.  Shivangi eventually wins him over by reminding him that he would agree to help literally anybody else, and the pair are off to London.  In order for the exorcism to work, Shivangi must complete a series of dangerous rituals, but there's something Jai is not telling her, and she's not being entirely honest with him either.

I can't really say that the choice of which spouse gets possessed utterly transforms 1920 London; it definitely impacts the film, but in the end , the plot is fairly typical for a bhoot movie.  (Apart from the other big twist.)  Still, there are some decent scares here, including a very tense scene involving a lemon, and it is interesting to see which genre elements are played with, and which ones are played straight.

Bhooty Call - Saboot

The Ramsay family made their name in Bollywood with a string of low budget supernatural thrillers like Purana Mandir and Purani Haveli, movies which feature broad comedy, cheap props and costumes, and reasonably attractive young people trapped in a secluded location with an unconvincing supernatural monster.  Saboot (1980) is not one of those movies, despite the murderous ghost.

Newlyweds Asha (Vidya Sinha) and Vikas (Vinod Mehra) are enjoying a bit of morning canoodling when Vikas gets a call from his old friend Anand (Navin Nischol).  Anand is leaving the country, but invites Vikas to fly out and meet him before he goes.  Vikas agrees, but his plane crashes and there are no survivors.

After his death, the factory he owned and managed reverts back to his father in law, Dharamdas (Trilok Kapoor).  Shady businessman Dhanraj (Prem Chopra) wants to buy the factory, but at the last minute Dharamdas cancels the sale, deciding to keep the factory in the family as a monument to his son in law.

Dhanraj is not the type to take no for an answer, though.  When Dharamdas is on a business trip, Dhanraj boards the train, accompanied by four of Dharamdas's employees, Manmohan (Roopesh Kumar), Ashok (Narendra Nath), and Rita (Padma Khanna).  They force him to sign over the factory, then stab him and bury him in a shallow grave in the jungle.  Rita notices that he's not quite dead yet, and warns the others that when someone is buried alive, their spirit will return to take revenge.  They don't listen.

Years pass.  Asha's younger sister Kaajal (Kaajal Kiran) is returning home when someone steals her purse.  Anand arrives, beats up a whole gang of goons in order to retrieve the purse, and introduces himself as Inspector Anand.  She is quickly won over by his doughy middle-aged charm, and soon they are engaged.

Meanwhile, Dhanraj is having a hard time sharing.  The other conspirators demand their share of the ill-gotten gains, and he reluctantly agrees to pay them off one at a time, starting with Manmohan.  Manmohan dies that night under mysterious circumstances, and Anand is called in to investigate.  All signs point to "Angry Ghost," but Anand instead suspects Ajit Roy (Om Shivpuri), long time employee and friend of the Dharamdas family.  Which does make things a little awkward.

 Despite the ghostly trappings, Saboot isn't really a horror story, it's a mystery.  It's not a very hard mystery, but it does rely on people making decisions that make no sense at all.  There's just as much cheese as in the Ramsays' more famous films, but it's cheese in the service of a different genre.