John Woo presents Jane Austen's 'Persuasion'

 If you're looking for a Bollywood Christmas movie, pickings are decidedly slim.  There's Bada Din, which is fantastic and which I reviewed years ago, and there's Hide & Seek, an okayish slasher movie featuring a killer Santa prowling through a deserted shopping mall, but after that you have to settle for vaguely Christmas adjacent movies like Dilwale (2015), set in largely Christian Goa, in which Christmas lasts just long enough to rip off a scene from Love, Actually.

 

Let's start with Veer (Varun Dhawan.)  Veer works as a mechanic in the garage owned by his brother Raj (Shah Rukh Khan.)  Veer is a simple soul; he likes fast cars and . . . well, that's pretty much it.  Fast cars.  Until, that is, he meets Ishita (Kriti Sanon), and immediately falls in love.

One night while out on the town the pair run afoul of a gang of drug dealers.  Veer beats them up, but later they ambush him and beat him badly enough to put him in the hospital.  At which point his older brother Raj, gentle, responsible Raj, covers his face, tracks the drug dealers to their lair, beats them all up, then burns their merchandise.  When the goons say that they work for King (Boman Irani) and he'll have his revenge, Raj tells them to look for Kaali.

And we flash back fifteen years to an unnamed city in Bulgaria, where two crime cartels are battling for control of the city, one run by Dev Malik (Kabir Bedi) and one by Randhir Bakshi (Vinod Khanna) and his son and right hand man, Kaali (SRK).  

During a car chase, Kaali accidentally hits a woman named Meera Dev Malik (Kajol) with his car, and if you noticed her surname, you're paying more attention than Kaali is.  Kaali is fascinated by her, and she is surprisingly open-minded about the whole "brutal gangster" thing, so he wages a full Shah Rukh Khan charm offensive and apparently wins her over. 

 

It's obviously a trick.  Meera is Dev Malik's daughter, and ambushes Kaali and his men during a gold shipment.  On a whim, she leaves him alive.  Soon after, he saves her from falling off a cliff (long story) and she falls for him. Will she be able to win him back?  Yes, thanks to the most expensive musical number in Bollywood history.  They resolve to tell their respective fathers about the relationship, and it goes badly.

 

The movie flashes forward to 2015 Goa.  Veer wins Ishita's heart thanks to the aforementioned scene from Love, Actually and the nice young couple decide to tell their respective family, starting with Raj.  Raj is delighted, and goes to meet with Ishita's sister to formalize the proposal, only to discover that the sister is Meera.  The young lovers find themselves suddenly star-crossed, and since it is really, really obvious that Raj and Meera have a history together, they resolve to get their older siblings to fall in love . . . again. What could possibly go wrong?

Let me deal with my Festivus grievances before I get to my Christmas delight.  Boman Irani is a fine actor, more than capable of playing a genuinely menacing character.  That's not what he does here; King is a buffoon who is consistently played for laughs, and because he's the designated villain for the Goan sections of the story, that undercuts a lot of tension.

More seriously, because we see the flashbacks almost entirely from Raj's perspective, we understand his perspective and actions in a way that Meera can't, which means that he comes across as noble and self-sacrificing, while she seems like a terrible person.  The fact that she is still somewhat sympathetic is entirely due to the strength of Kajol's performance.

 

And that leads me to the Christmas delight.  The plot may be a bit muddled at times, but the cast is stellar.  I would happily pay good money to see Shah Rukh and Kajol read the phone book together.  It's not just their well-publicized chemistry; the pair work best when they are playing grown-ups with grown-up concerns, balancing their responsibilities with their love lives.  It gives the relationship more weight than you get when Shah Rukh is cast opposite a youngster like Anushka Sharma or Deepika Padukone.

The first time I watched Dilwale, it struck me as a version of Romeo and Juliet gone wrong.  On a second viewing, though, it seems more like something out of Jane Austen.  He's too proud, she's too quick to judge, and they're both missing a key piece of information which will help them unravel their competing priorities.  More gunfights than you usually see in Austen, though.

Actors never stay in the jeep.

 Sometimes you can just look at a character in a movie and see that they're doomed.  In Main Khiladi Tu Anari (1994), that character is Arjun Joglekar (Mukesh Khanna, who will always be Shaktimaan to me.)  Arjun is an incorruptible supercop and thorn in the side of drug kingpin Goli (Shakti Kapoor.)  He's also a devoted family man, with a wife (Beena Banerjee) that he just learned is pregnant, and a spunky younger sister, Shivangi (Raageshwari).  And of course he's in a big budget Bollywood movie, but played by an actor who is mostly known for his television work.  He's doomed.

Goli asks bar dancer Mona (Shilpa Shetty) to lure Arjun to her apartment and offer him a bribe.  She does, and Arjun refuses the money and delivers a lecture about honor and duty which, to be fair, is exactly what Shaktimaan would do. And then Goli and his henchmen walk in the door and kill him.  Traditionally, the actual hero (usually another cop) enters the movie at this point, vows to take care of his fallen comrade's family, and spends the rest of the movie seeking justice and maybe finding love in his spare time.  And that's exactly what happens here.

Said actual hero is Arjun and Shivagi's brother Karan (Akshay Kumar), who is also an incorruptible supercop, but he's played by a film actor so he's probably safe.  Karan quickly convinces Mona to testify against Goli, but before that can happen Goli uses a helicopter to sneak up on them and shoots her dead.  And even though Karan saw the whole thing, Goli is too powerful and connected to be charged with a crime without hard evidence.  (The testimony of a police officer who witnessed everything directly isn't enough.)

While he waits for another chance to take down Goli, Karan busies himself with actual police work, and by actual police work I mean he hears about a corrupt and mob-connected film producer assaulting aspiring actresses, so he goes to the man's office and beats him to a bloody pulp.  Film star Deepak Kumar (Saif Ali Khan) happens to be there to see the beating, and he thinks that Karan is so incredibly cool that he must play him in a movie.  Deepak makes arrangements to shadow a reluctant Kumar in order to research the character.

Meanwhile, Kumar stumbles across Basanti (also Shilpa Shetty), a street performer who happens to look exactly like Mona.  Suddenly Deepak is useful!  Deepak trains Basanti to impersonate Mona, then they install her in Mona's old job and apartment so that she can spy on Goli's organization.

(Side note - Basanti is very obviously based on Hema Malini's performance as Geeta in the long lost twin drama Seeta Aur Geeta; she dresses like Geeta, speaks like Geeta, and even even threatens to demolish a police station like Geeta.  However, she's named after Malini's character in Sholay.)

And while Basanti is risking her life in the figurative lion's den, Karana nd Deepak . . . mostly muck about and engage in buddy comedy hijinks.  There's a lot of bickering, and each man has his own deeply problematic romantic arc.  Shivangi is a Deepak Kumar fan, but they only realize how big a fan she is when she cuts herself badly while trying to carve his name into her hand.  Apparently this level of extreme devotion is just what Deepak is looking for in a woman, because before long they're talking about marriage.  Karan is an obstacle, but Deepak tries to deal with the problem by tricking Karan into falling in love with Basanti, a plan which revolves around getting Karan drunk and then, in the morning, convincing him that he had taken advantage of Basanti.  It's . . . it's not good.  Shaktimaan would not approve.

Dysfunctional courtship is kind of a hallmark of mid nineties Bollywood, and, as usual, once the respective relationships are established with their respective dance numbers, the characters start acting like relatively reasonable people again.  It does take a little while to get there, though.

Icky romance isn't the only nineties trope on display here.  The plot is lifted from an American movie that I haven't seen (The Hard Way), the film meanders from genre to genre, there's a board meeting of international criminals, Goli has a right hand man with a distinctive look and a stupid haircut, and Johny Lever, Kader Khan, and Shakti Kapoor all have significant roles.  (Much to my surprise, Shakti Kapoor isn't terrible here.)  It's like a microcosm of the Bollywood of nthe era; mostly big dumb fun, but there are elements that have not aged well at all. 

The fly who loved me.

 The reincarnation revenge drama, like the snake movie, is one of those subgenres you don't normally see outside of India.  (Sometimes reincarnation revenge dramas are snake movies!)  It's a fairly simple formula: our hero is brutally murdered, but he comes back in his next life to defend his loved ones and avenge his own death.  Of course, they tend to have the same problem.  It takes time for the reincarnated hero to grow up and get into revenge-taking shape, so no matter how you dress it up, in the end you have a virile young hero beating up an old guy.  Eega (2012) finds a way around the problem, though, and it is clever.

Nani (Nani), a poor but charming fireworks salesman, lives across the street from Bindu (Samantha), who works for a charity and creates micro-art in her spare time.  (All of this will be important later.)  Naturally he loves her, but she studiously ignores him.  He is convinced that she's just playing hard to get. (Ugh.)

Bindu's charity needs money, so she approaches suave businessman Sudeep (Sudeep).  Sudeep is happy to help, because he is a sexist creep who believes that he can have any woman in the world and who probably murdered his wife.  Sudeep doesn't just donate money; he hangs around and feigns interest in the charity's work, all to get closer to Bindu.  He is worried about Nani, though.  And he is right to be so, because Bindu really has been playing hard to get. (UUUUGHH.)

Before Bindu can tell Nani how she really feels, Sudeep's men kidnap him, and Sudeep steals his phone, reads Bindu's romantic text messages aloud, then kills him.  Fortunately, Nani is immediately reincarnated . . . as a housefly, which means it's time for a quick change of genre as Nani explores his strange new oversized world.  He eventually winds up in Sudeep's office, though, and immediately regains his memory, so it's time for REVENGE!

Or not.  The tiny fly literally bounces off Sudeep.  Nani settles for an ongoing campaign of harassment, leaving Sudeep twitchy and paranoid.  But despite his best efforts (including a car crash), it's clear that he's going to need some help.  Thanks to Bindu's powerful magnifying equipment (because micro-art) and some spirited gestures, Nani explains who he is and what happens to him, and Bindu immediately joins Team Kill Sudeep. She makes him tiny armor and weapons, there's a training montage, and I suddenly find myself wondering exactly who the target audience for this movie is.

For the most part, Nani's crusade against Sudeep is played for laughs; it's more Tom and Jerry than The Punisher.  Nani's early experiences as a fly are very light-hearted and filled with wonder as well as danger.  And there's a light framing story in the opening credits, with a father telling the tale of the bad man and the fly to his young daughter.  And yet the hero is murdered onscreen, Nani and Bindu are planning to kill Sudeep, and the final confrontation is brutal and bloody.  Is this a particularly violent kid's movie, or an unusually whimsical action movie?  I don't know.

What I do know is that Eega manages to neatly sidestep the "beating up an old guy" problem.  You can't help but be the underdog when you're a literal housefly.

Legal action!

 Bollywood is better known, but the Telugu film industry produces some of the most innovative and exciting films in India, often kicking off major cinematic trends for the subcontinent; Bollywood is still trying to make its own Baahubali, and many new Bollywood pictures are remakes of Tollywood films.  Tollywood has a reputation for films of epic scale and high quality . . . now.  Vicky Dada (1989) comes from a different time.

Vikram (Nagarjuna) is a young, idealistic law student.  He'd better be idealistic; his mother Srividya (Srividya), a judge, raised him to respect the law and seek justice whenever he can.  Vikram does have a bit of a temper, especially when his girlfriend Shyamlee (the incomparable Juhi Chawla) is threatrened.  But I'm sure this will have no negative consequences.

Shyamlee is called away to tend to her ailing sister in America.  Vikram graduates, and immediately begins work as a prosecutor.  His first case (tried in front of his mother, which is far from the worst conflict of interest in a courtroom scene in this movie) involves Savitri (Radha), who has been accused of prostitution.  Vikram wins easily, because he is good at lawyering, but when he realizes that Savitri was framed as part of a land grab masterminded by corrupt politician Ranganatha Rao (Ranganath), he pays her fine and uses his lawyering skills to stop the land grab.

Thwarted, Rao calls on crimelord Prabhakar (Tiger Prabhakar) for help.  Prabhakar sends his goons, one of them kills a guy, and Vikram vows to bring the killer to justice.  Prabhakhar uses his corrupt influence to threaten the eyewitnesses, and the goon is set free.  Vikram doesn't give up, though.  He and his sister, the plucky aspiring reporter Rekha (Vara Lakshmi), team up to find out more about him.  Unfortunately, Rekha decides to break into Prabhakar's evil lair and film him.  She's caught and kidnapped, but not before she mails a cassette tape to Vikram, revealing what's happened.

Vikram has Prabhakar arrested, and prosecutes the case.  (Again, in front of his mother, which also means that both the prosecutor and judge are related to the victim.  And yet that's still not the worst example of conflict of interest in the movie.)  Prabhakar gets off, thanks to some genuinely ridiculous legal trickery, and because Vikram was provoked into throttling the defense counsel, he's suspended.  Vikram declares that he doesn't want to be a lawyer anymore anyway, and runs off to become a violent (but stylish) vigilante.

Vigilante stuff happens.  Vikram and his dog wage war on Prabhakar's criminal empire, beating up vast quantities of henchmen and picking off the gang's lieutenants one by one, then using his lawyer skills to get off scot-free. Yes, I'm kind of glossing over the vigilante action, but the movie does as well, because surprise!  This is actually a romance!  Shyamlee returns from America and wants to continue their relationship, but Vikram dispenses justice on a freelance basis now, and feels he no longer has anything to offer her, so he pushes her away.  Savitri, meanwhile, has fallen hard for the man who has saved her so many times.  It's a good old fashioned love triangle, with occasional action scenes.

About halfway through Vicky Dada, I realized that it's probably not a very good movie.  The plot doesn't really make sense, the action scenes are enthusiastic but sloppy, the court scenes are enthusiastic but really sloppy, the dance numbers are phantasmagoric, and why does Prabhakhar have a jeep with an infinite number of rockets, anyway?  More seriously, the movie indulges in some of my least favorite eighties Indian movie tropes, particularly the hero's sister meeting a dire end in order to motivate the hero.

And yet, bad movie or not, I was glues to the screen the whole time.  Maybe it's the fantastic cast, who treated the wobbly material with a respect that it may or may not have deserved.  Maybe it's the sheer enthusiasm of the thing.  Maybe I just wanted to see what the hell the dancers would be wearing in the next number.  Whatever the reason, Vicky Dada is possibly bad but definitely watchable.

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.