MILEY NAA MILEY HUM: No Charm, No Foul Smells

[thanks, Wikipedia]

Poor Chirag (Chirag Paswan). His feuding, separated parents are competing to arrange his marriage. Will they ever see eye to eye? Will Chirag be able to please them both? These are the burning questions of Miley Naa Miley Hum.

Mom (Poonam Dhillon) imports an attractive young woman, a designer from London. As a designer, she is quite a shopper—until Chirag suggests that since she can't find exactly what she's looking for, she might try designing it herself. This discussion of The Obvious is apparently a revelation to her.

Dad (Kabir Bedi) calls in a favor from an old friend, who calls off his own daughter's impending wedding so she'll be available to become Mrs. Chirag. Dutifully, the daughter plays along, abandoning her future plans to cook and serve at Dad's residence while waiting to be promoted to Bahu No. 1. Her feelings on the subject are totally unexamined. (To quote Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, "It can't matter to you!")

Why does Dad hate Mom? Because Dad is a humble farmer—Bollywood humble, that is, which means that he lives in a mansion with a pool surrounded by vineyards—and Mom wanted to run a non-agricultural business and spoil their son with Western luxuries. No surprises there. And why does Mom hate Dad? Because TENNIS. That, frankly, was a bit of a surprise.

In order not to show favoritism—or perhaps in order to manage parents who have the emotional maturity of preschoolers—our handsome hero pretends to be in love with a model (Kangana Ranaut). He pays her to be seen in public with him, and then they... oh, you can guess how this plays out.

In 2011, when she made Miley Naa Miley Hum, Kangana Ranaut also gave a standout performance in Tanu Weds Manu, and she has since proven her comic and dramatic chops as the irresistible heroine of Queen. As Anishka, though, she barely registers. Perhaps that's because her pretty but blank costar gives her so little to work with. (He has now retired from films and gone into politics.) As the parents, Poonam Dhillon and Kabir Bedi work joylessly through the plot machinations. If controlling their son's life isn't even any fun, why do they bother?

Product placement provides the only hilarity in this otherwise dreary slog. Anishka attends a party that is the place to see and be seen by producers and important people, hoping to expand her career. At this party she will drink champagne and eat sushi and meet Chirag by adorably puking on his shirt, but that is not the comedic climax of the scene. Check out this actual uncropped screenshot from the film:

Yep, that's right—there are no actors onscreen, just a full shot of the deodorant billboard that adorns the lawn of the expansive bungalow. Imagine the calls from agents to starlets before the event: "Look your best, darling! It's for OCTANE!"

Other advertisers get in the act after [spoiler alert, if you have never seen a film before] Chirag wins a major tennis match and reunites his parents. Here Chirag, trophy in hand, comes to meet his chastised mom and dad. The big finish plays out here—in front of this billboard for mouthwash:

Did director Tanveer Khan get in trouble for failing to capture the brand name in the shot? Just curious. He seems not to have directed anything since.

And that's that. Chirag and Anishka and Mom and Dad will all live happily ever after, with bad breath forever banished! Apparently even the filmmakers knew that Miley Naa Miley Hum was going to stink.

GANGS OF WASSEYPUR: Return of the Kingpins

One of my first posts on this blog was a response to a first viewing of Gangs of Wasseypur, Part 1, and two and a half years later, the full two-part, 320-minute film has finally gotten a U.S. theatrical release. I took this rare opportunity to catch both parts back to back at Lincoln Center in NYC, where the film is playing for the rest of the week.

There's nobody working in Indian cinema--or maybe any cinema--who uses musical numbers better than director Anurag Kashyap does. First, he's not afraid to include music, and a lot of it. Second, he gets the best people in the business to write the new material (here, the great Sneha Khanwalkar is music director) and also weaves in a few classic Bollywood songs. And third, he uses the score brilliantly to comment on and contrast with what he's showing onscreen.

The outstandingly profane* number "Kehke Lunga," for example, underscores what Part 1's opposing strongmen, Ramadhir Singh (Tigmanshu Dhulia, also a well-known director) and Sardar Khan (Manoj Bajpayee), are doing to each other and to all the little people they mangle with so little thought:

The full version of the film is admittedly imperfect. Part 2 may be overpopulated; is it necessary to introduce two major new characters an hour from the end of a five-hour film? Also, Sardar Khan's third son, the one between Faizal and Perpendicular, vanishes without a trace--his presence in the story at all seems like a vestige of a storyline not quite completely left on the cutting-room floor. The narration by family retainer Nasir (Piyush Mishra**) sometimes exposits at excessive length to introduce complications that vanish in a few minutes and might have been omitted without much loss to the film. Blips like these are evidence that the plot's layers and layers and layers of complexity aren't completely under anyone's control.

But this feels like quibbling. My overwhelming feeling after watching the full five-hour, seventy-year, three-generation story is that it all went by awfully quickly, the way life does. Perhaps the unspooling narrative aims to demonstrate that nobody from Anurag Kashyap on down can keep track of all the petty slights and monstrous deeds that repeatedly bring repercussions in Wasseypur. At any rate, I sure can't, even after seeing both parts more than once. The one sure thing is that there's going to be a lot of killing, most of it for really bad reasons.

I love Manoj Bajpayee and Nawazuddin Siddiqui in pretty much every film of theirs I've seen, and they are typically terrific as a father-son duo of fuckup kingpins. As mentioned in my 2012 post, in Part 1 Sardar Khan makes a series of disastrous personal choices that enrage two steely women, Nagma (Richa Chadda) and Durga (Reema Sen). Sardar fears their reactions, but probably not enough. Nawazuddin's Faizal Khan is the lead in Part 2, a stoner who cares only about his chillum and his girl, Mohsina (Huma Qureshi), whose love of 1970s action movies matches his own. When Faizal finally exacts vengeance for the murder of his sometimes-deadbeat dad, it's because his mother Nagma insists--and also because he's realized that in the movie of his life he's been the sidekick (or as he says, not Amitabh Bachchan but Shashi Kapoor).

The reduced screen time for Richa Chadda and Reema Sen in Part 2 is a bit of a disappointment, but perhaps Nagma and Durga's declining influence is a necessary result of Faizal's decision to be more like Amitabh (well, except much more enthusiastically bloodthirsty). Until the end of the film, Mohsina seems mostly OK with Faizal's turning himself into the star of the show. But then she's pregnant, and suddenly it must seem to her that being married to good-boy Shashi instead of to avenging Amitabh might not be such a terrible thing.

The rage of Nagma and Durga continues to infect their sons, and there is plenty of blowback from the feuds that they've helped perpetuate. The ongoing bloodshed touches all the women in the extended household, even those who aren't machinating behind the scenes. A high point of Part 2 is the song "Taar Bijli," performed by Nagma for the women celebrating Mohsina's wedding to Faizal. Nagma has been widowed by gang violence, as have other women in the room. Her voice cracks and tears run down her face. But she keeps singing. The younger women comfort Nagma while continuing to dance.

The film whirls on at a dizzying pace, tossing out romance and hilarity and fury and horror without leaving the audience time to breathe. The final scene at last allows a few characters to escape the maelstrom, but without illusions. With cast changes, deadlier guns, and updated Bollywood ringtones, the story seems likely to go on for generations to come.

*Google it if you want to know exactly how obscene the lyrics are--or just see it in the print playing in theaters now, which (I'm thrilled to report) includes song subtitles!

**Piyush Mishra also serves as lyricist for a number of songs, including the raunchy one mentioned in the previous footnote.

HAPPY ENDING: Or Not

About ten minutes into Happy Ending, the new film from writer/director duo Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK, I recalled with a pang my high expectations for and indifferent response to their last movie, Go Goa Gone, which also starred (and was produced by) Saif Ali Khan. Saif was funny in that one as a blond zombie-killer with a faux Russian accent. Overall, though, Go Goa Gone felt like a sketch that lasted much too long. Raj and DK’s earlier 99 and Shor in the City remain favorites of mine, films with heart and soul and danger as well as comic timing, so GGG’s sogginess was a particular disappointment.

I had forgotten all about Go Goa Gone until Happy Ending got into its introduction of Saif Ali Khan’s callow Yudi, who loves the ladies but is such a commitment-phobe that he alienates every girlfriend the moment she says “I love you.” A film about such a lad is not, shall we say, an especially fresh idea. Yudi, who narrates, breaks up with an adoring Kareena Kapoor and then launches into a rant about men being like dogs, of which there are apparently two types: lap dogs and street dogs. <counter-rant>This bogus two-typing irritates me first on behalf of dogs, many of whom are neither spoiled and overfed nor happy to be “free” to scavenge and suffer, and second on behalf of men and women everywhere, who are the same species, after all. I’m deeply tired of assumptions about what women want from men and how women’s wanting inevitably makes men miserable. GAAHHHHH</rant> Watching this, I suddenly remembered that weak film Raj and DK had made in the years since Shor in the City.

#HeforShe

The supporting actors in Happy Ending are players I’m almost always glad to see, so I wish that they hadn’t been given roles that further solidify the women-want-to-domesticate, men-want-to-be-free storyline. Kalki Koechlin is amusingly terrifying as a stalker-girlfriend-dentist who refuses to believe Yudi has broken up with her, but when she tries to manipulate Yudi into marriage by claiming she’s pregnant, my patience with the character became very thin. Preity Zinta has even less to work with as the motherly ex who is willing to put her own family life on hold in order to let Yudi cry on her shoulder for no apparent reason. Ranvir Shorey is a miserable cartoon of a best friend who acts as if his wife is keeping him on a leash and, when released for an evening, demonstrates that he needs further housebreaking.

Go Govinda Gone

But then there's Govinda. In a small role as over-the-top Bollywood star Armaan, who hires Yudi to multiplexify his single-screen career, Govinda has the time of his life. I am not likely soon to forget the scene in which Armaan ji takes simultaneous meetings with his writer and his plastic surgeon, parading around shirtless with the surgeon’s pre-op Sharpie marks all over his flabby torso and middle-aged face. Props to Govinda for his willingness just to be middle-aged on camera in spite of all the Salmans, Shahrukhs, and Aamirs who have made being forty-plus look so strenuous (even if there is a presumably CGI follow-up scene in which Armaan displays his far more chiseled post-surgical self).

Other small grace notes finally made this a more likable film than I expected after the disappointing start. Saif Ali Khan is loose and easy in a double role as buff Yudi and schlubby Yogi, who may be Yudi’s socially awkward twin or may be a manifestation of Yudi’s inner couch potato (I do wish the screenplay had made it clearer whether this was a real person or a figment of Yudi’s imagination). Leading lady Ileana D’Cruz, who seemed mostly waif-like in Barfi, where she had the misfortune to be cast as the non-disabled character admiring the leads’ enduring love from afar, here has a chance to show a bit of spark. She and Saif Ali Khan have chemistry in a goofy mutual seduction scene—and her character, Aanchal, isn’t nearly as drippy as the godawful prose she has to present at readings of her hit novel. (I know there’s a joke in there about how bad bestsellers can be, but why should her book bore even the people who come to her readings?) Aanchal is no romantic; she’s even more resistant to love than Yudi is, and unsurprisingly, he soon finds that he doesn’t want to live without her.

The ending for Yudi and Aanchal seems happy enough, but Yudi's voiceover points out that the key to a "happy ending" is simply stopping at the right place. There are no guarantees about what will happen afterward.  It's a weird, if potentially thoughtful, note to hit at the end of a romantic comedy.

The film’s meta-story, which purports to be Yudi’s Hollywood notes for Bollywood king Armaan, moves at a leisurely pace and vanishes altogether at regular intervals. Its meandering path only bothered me because I’m a great admirer of the tightly interwoven storylines of 99 and Shor in the City and of the way those two films adroitly mixed great comedy with cold fear. Both films offered happy endings that were not just upbeat, but immensely satisfying.* Happy Ending moves from hardcore cliché toward something more nuanced, but that move somehow makes the film feel as if it simply hasn’t decided on an ending at all.

Damn it, I want closure!

Heading for a happy ending

*I saw Raj and DK at the New York premiere of Shor in the City (then called simply Shor), and after the showing the mostly NRI audience gave the directors a grilling about the lack of “realism” in the ending. The filmmakers pointed out that happy endings are not inherently more unrealistic than unhappy ones. I can’t help wondering, though, if the films they’ve made since Shor have been affected by the festival-goers’ grumbling. Raj and DK, ignore New Yorkers, please! Except me, of course.

QUEEN: News of the World

Kangana Ranaut is so positively adorable as Rani Mehra, the title character in Vikas Bahl's Queen, that I'm willing to overlook the film's imperfections. I've seen her before without being wowed (in Once Upon a Time in Mumbai, as a Bollywood starlet involved with a noble gangster; in Tanu Weds Manu, as a girl so wacky and high-spirited that R. Madhavan falls for her while she's unconscious; and in Double Dhamaal, ugh ugh ugh). However, in Queen she inhabits the part of the sheltered apple of her family's eye with enormous charm and gusto. Queen follows Rani's rollercoaster emotional journey from happiness to heartbreak and back, from India to Europe and back, without turning our heroine into a cliché. 

Would that the same could be said for everyone she meets—but oh, well; let's give credit where it's due: the film's time in Delhi is well spent, and it's a pleasure to meet not just Rani but all the people at home who have made her the gentle soul she is and the strong woman she becomes over the course of the film.

Amit Trivedi scores, in both senses. The first song, just minutes into the film, plunges us into the kind of prenuptial song and dance that would be the climactic number in a more conventional Bollywood narrative. The bride-to-be (Kangana) and her people all dance to filmi songs! Everyone sings vaguely naughty lyrics! Everyone is so, so, so happy!

It's a great song, and a great setup for the quick descent that follows. The bridegroom, Vijay (Rajkummar Rao, once again playing cute-but-weak—I'm still waiting for a role in which I find him likable), asks Rani to meet him at a coffee shop. He has just returned from London and seems as full of pompous notions as SRK was at the beginning of the splashy 2002 Devdas—but Vijay's impulse isn't to woo his old flame by wearing a monocle and English suit; it's to tell his fiancée that he can't marry her because he has become a man of the world, and she's still just a simple, traditional girl.


I can't recall a more dramatic change of mood, from raucous to heartbroken, in the first fifteen minutes of a film, and Amit Trivedi is more than up to the task. The spare, heartbreaking second song plays as the stricken Rani shares an autorickshaw ride home from the coffee shop with her little brother, who wants to help but can't. The would-be bride runs into her house (where everyone has already heard the news) and locks herself in her room.

Both song sequences are smashing--great music and great visuals that work together to make something even more powerful than either one alone. Come to think of it, that pretty much defines what I love about Bollywood at its best.

As Rani remains in her room, a montage of her memories takes us through the surprisingly sweet courtship leading up to the happy engagement party at the beginning. We learn how doggedly Vijay pursued Rani and why she fell for him. Even though we're already quite prepared to see Vijay as a louse, this flashback instead makes us see him as Rani has seen him, and it ensures that we share her shock and bewilderment.

Rani then decides to use her honeymoon ticket to travel to Europe alone. Why shouldn't she see Paris and Amsterdam? Her grandmother sagely agrees with the plan. Her parents are worried about her safety if she goes, but more worried about her misery if she stays. And so, off Rani goes to see what this seeing-the-world is all about.

The film from this point is still charming and funny in parts, but unfortunately, Rani's family at home are far more interesting than the people she meets abroad. In Paris, there's Vijaylakshmi (Lisa Haydon), a brash half-Indian hotel maid, whose small child serves mostly as a cute prop and never gets in the way of his mother's job, romances, or partying. She's a familiar type—a movie babe who looks like a model, wears club clothes to go for a stroll, and boasts of her no-strings-attached attitude about sex. There doesn't seem to be much depth below these surface characteristics, which are nevertheless supposed to persuade us that Vijaylakshmi is the very model of a modern major feminist and that, therefore, a brief exposure to her midriff-baring tops and short shorts will persuade buttoned-down heroine Rani to loosen up and enjoy life already. You can safely go get a cold drink during the scenes in which the obligatory loosening-up happens: shopping for skimpy clothes = Freedom, alcohol is mistakenly ingested (oops!), dancing on the bar ensues. Rani and the maid become fast friends, the way people do in interludes like this.

Maybe I shouldn't be too hard on the screenwriter for constructing this female character out of plywood; the Euro-boys Rani meets are equally two-dimensional. When the newly loosened-up Rani stays at a youth hostel in Amsterdam, she meets cheerful, understanding boys from Russia, Japan, and France who also want her to enjoy life already. While wandering about with them, Rani stumbles across a handsome Italian restaurant owner and argues with him about seasonings. You won't be surprised to learn that Rani ends up cooking Indian food and selling it on the street and that everyone loves it. Or that she kisses the Italian guy and makes him swoon.

However, the film does do some things right, and most of them have to do with taking the time to develop Rani's character*. Rani doesn't cure the Russian of his tendency to drink too much; she doesn't assuage the grief of her Japanese friend, who is mourning his parents' death; and she doesn't fall for the boringly hunky Italian. Even when she does come out of her shell, the movie doesn't require her to display her newfound confidence by trading her salwar kameez for Daisy Dukes and plunging necklines. And best of all, even though dopey Vijay realizes what a mistake he's made and begs her to marry him after all, she doesn't do it (hooray!!!).

The saggy middle of the film might have been a real disappointment if it weren't such a treat to watch Kangana Ranaut in every scene, listening intently and puzzling out how to behave while surrounded by stereotypically free-thinking Europeans. She does an amazing job of letting Rani's smarts, strength, and humor peep through, even when she's facing humiliations large and small. At the end of the film, Rani is back in Delhi, wiser and happier for her adventure, fully aware of what she wants and doesn't want from life. Here, for once, is a character I'd follow to a sequel.

(But next time I'd like both an interesting heroine and interesting sidekicks. Well, baby steps....)

*Kangana Rangaut gets a screen credit for Rani's dialogues.

SAAGAR: An Ocean of Cheese

A couple of years ago, while putting together a retrospective to show Americans the glories of Hindi film, Mike Enright and I tried to come up with a great film from every decade of the first century of Indian movies.

It was going fine until we hit the 1980s and stalled. Yes, of course, we've enjoyed some 1980s films--but generally we have enjoyed them ironically. Could we in good conscience recommend any of them to someone else? So many films of the decade seem to feature predictable plots, cardboard characters, and over-the-top acting, all smothered in cheese.

All of these generalizations are more or less true of 1985's Saagar ("Ocean"), which marked the return of Dimple Kapadia to filmidom after her 12-year marriage to superstar Rajesh Khanna foundered. (She was all of 28 when she made this film, having gotten married right after she made a splash as the bikini-teen heroine of Raj Kapoor's Bobby.)

Saagar was India's submission for that year's foreign-film Oscar, a category in which Indian films have traditionally not done very well. Oscar likes India's films about villagers who suffer nobly (Mother India, Lagaan) but so far not much else.

Inevitably, Saagar didn't make the final Oscar cut. You can imagine the nominating committee's members watching with a condescending smile and saying to each other, "This was the greatest film from India this year?" And indeed, Saagar encapsulates much of what strikes sophisticated viewers as embarrassing about Bollywood: greeting-card sunsets as the backdrop for pining lovers, sneering villains doing evil just because, star-crossed romantics chewing the scenery with big soulful eyes. This film's claim to lasting fame, apparently, is its titillating slow-mo shots of Dimple swimming (and dropping her towel afterward--this viewer saw nothing R-rated in a rental DVD, but maybe I blinked at the wrong moment, since plenty of Googlers have more fevered memories of the scene).

Yet I do think Saagar has something going for it, not least because of the fact that it's directed by Ramesh Sippy of Sholay fame. I think we can all agree that the man knows how to put together a masala entertainer. Subtlety, schmubtlety! When Ramesh Sippy's in charge, the film plays to the balcony, and the audience gets to go along for the ride.

As the title suggests, the story begins at sea, with good-hearted orphan Raja (Kamal Hassan), a poor but happy fisherman. He enjoys playing practical jokes, usually trying to convince his childhood friend Mona (Dimple) that he's been fatally injured. She's the high-spirited and poor but responsible daughter of a bar owner (Saeed Jaffrey). We're in Goa and she's Christian, which, as I understand it, makes the whole bar thing not only perfectly fine but pretty much a tradition.

Along comes another good-hearted orphan, Ravi (Rishi Kapoor), the rich grandson of a sour-faced businesswoman (Madhur Jaffrey). He has returned from abroad, where he's presumably been shopping for leisure wear, to learn the family business. He has fond memories of his deceased parents, but Granny's face gets even sourer whenever she remembers that non-rich girl her son ran off and married.

These three good-hearted young people of course form a triangle. Rishi loves Dimple and sees Kamal as a brother; Dimple loves Rishi and sees Kamal as a brother; and poor bro-zoned Kamal loves Dimple and sees Rishi as a brother. True Love™ between Rishi and Dimple (un-spoiler, because Bobby) crashes into True Friendship™, allowing the boys to compete to see who can be more self-sacrificing while entirely ignoring what the girl's heart wants (un-spoiler, because Bollywood in the 1980s).  

The girl, though good at heart and a helpful daughter, unwittingly reveals sexy sexiness at every turn (un-spoiler, because DIMPLE).

Don't hate Dimple because she's sexy.

Granny's haveli festers with scheming, villainy, greed, and self-confessed sycophants.

I love this subtitle. 

The fishing village seems pleasant enough, but scratch the surface and the place seethes with resentment. The girl's father is beaten by goons in Rishi's granny's employ. The villagers rage at Rishi for this, but they rage even more at Dimple for daring to cross class lines--and apparently for being so damnably sexy, a crime of which young women all over the world are still being accused all these decades later.

Well, you don't have to be a Bollywood Genius to be several steps ahead of the screenplay on this one. The love triangle alone guarantees that people will be wailing NAHIIIIIIIIN! near the end.

I'm making Saagar sound terribly silly--and it is indeed a very silly film. Do I believe in my heart of hearts that the Oscar voters overlooked a classic, blinded by their own anti-Bollywood snobbishness? No, I don't. But...somehow...in spite of its flaws and its undeniable cheese factor, there is real emotion in this movie, and it is a whizbang entertainer.

Obviously, Sippy knows his whizbang entertainment and isn't afraid of emotion. Who didn't weep when Jai died in Veeru's arms? Saagar, like Sholay, flaunts its commitment to male bonding and masala, and too much of either one is perfectly OK with me.

It's true that Sippy has less to work with here--no speeding-train dacoity, no Gabbar Singh, no slaughtered innocents. He also has no Amitabh and Dharmendra; nevertheless, the leads in Saagar are still in (over-
the-) top form. Rishi and Dimple have undeniable chemistry, as they did in Bobby. For that matter, so do Rishi and Kamal.

All three stars embrace the cliches they've been asked to enact, convincingly gung-ho in their effort to Do the Right Thing--Bollywood pan-Indian version--and improve a situation in which someone has to end up unhappy. Eyes brim and lips tremble. Yes, you may want to shake Rishi and say, "Why don't you ask HER which boy she loves?" Yes, you may want Dimple to flee a village where people blame her when her father is abused by evil rich people. Yes, you may wish Kamal would not be quite such a martyr. Yet no matter how clearly you can see the ridiculousness of the characters' plight, you can still get caught in Saagar's net. You may even end up wailing NAHIIIIIIIIIIN in the final moments yourself.

So should you see Saagar? Well, that depends. If you sneer at predictability, then stay away--you can be pretty certain that a movie in which Rishi Kapoor and Kamal Hassan compete for the love of Dimple is going to end badly for Kamal.

On the other hand, if you're irresistibly drawn to a raucous drunken dance-off, then by all means go for this one. And I'll be with right there with you. Oscar only likes noble villagers? Well, never mind. I'll watch Rishi in a leisure suit any time he's flinging himself wholeheartedly into the arms of the terpsichorean muse.* It doesn't have to mean anything more than WOOOOO WE ARE HAVING SO MUCH FUN.

Who needs you anyway, Oscar? Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

*Accidental, but fitting, that this Monty Python reference comes from a sketch about cheese.

ANDAZ APNA APNA: Fun and Funner

Comedy stylings.

After several weeks during which an online course ate up all my free time and there was precious little Bollywooding, I am celebrating the (presumably imminent) arrival of SPRING here in the northeastern US by working my way through a box of comedy DVDs sent my way by the wonderful Supraja*!

First up: a film I tried to watch years ago and so did not get, Andaz Apna Apna. This film stars what today would be a deeply unlikely comedy duo, Salman Khan and Aamir Khan. Even in 2002, renting this from my local Indian grocery, I didn't quite see how Lagaan plus Hum Aapke Hain Kaun could equal anything remotely coherent.... And I ended up flummoxed and not very amused. (Others whose tastes I admire have had similar qualms, including the excellent Beth Loves Bollywood.)

But if Supraja says that this film is a favorite--and if dozens of other writers praise it as one of India's funniest comedies--then I must give it another go! So here's what I think after revisiting this film ten-plus years into Hindi film fandom.

Coherent? OK, it's still not very coherent, or at least not for a gori filmi-fan. And Andaz Apna Apna will probably never be considered great filmmaking by anyone, no matter how fondly fans recall it in the coming decades. (Continuity people, please note that  real hair does not become shorter, longer, and then shorter again over the course of a weekend.) But the good news is that if you're in the mood for something very silly, and if you have seen a lot of Hindi movies, or Sholay several times, then you'll probably be able to move this from the "Wha...?" column to the "Ha!" column. You just might need to watch this one.

We begin with Aamir, as Amar, cycling along in shorts, and aai la! running into stranded film heroine Juhi Chawla (who was Juliet to Aamir's Romeo in Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak). He rescues her and wins her heart, but even in this dream sequence Amar is a gold-digging layabout:

How very modern he is not to insist on Juhi's giving up her film career after the wedding.

When Amar wakes up, he's revealed to be a good-for-nothing who steals money from his hardworking dad's barbershop so he can blow it (or "blow it up," as the subtitles say) on fancy haircuts.

Next we're introduced to Salman as Prem, who is swiping money from his father, a tailor, to pay off a swindler who pretends he has film-world connections and will make Prem a big star. This provides an excuse for a series of hilarious Salman headshots--this trio pretty much sums up his career so far (yet I find him ridiculously charming here).

I love Salman's game face!

Clearly, we've departed from the Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare plots and moved to the implausible wacky Shakespeare comedies, and Andaz Apna Apna plays to the groundlings. Amar and Prem both hear about Raveena, an heiress who has come to India from London in the hope of finding a nice Indian boy to marry. Both of our "heroes" sell their father's businesses and run off with Dad's money, hoping to marry the rich girl. Amar and Prem meet and discover the things they have in common (i.e., lying, laziness, and a desire to marry an heiress). They play some dirty tricks on each other before deciding to join forces to defeat the other thousand or so young men who are lining up to be Raveena's choice.

Raveena Tandon and Karisma Kapoor play Raveena and her secretary, Karisma, or possibly they play Karisma and her secretary, Raveena. (None of the main characters in this film are exactly who they say they are, so this confusion is par for the course.) 

Once the other suitors are dispatched, Amar finagles his way into the heroine's house by faking amnesia, and then Prem pretends to be a doctor who pretends to cure him. Salman in particular appears to be having the time of his life in this scene. He gets to slap and throttle Aamir and threaten him with an injection meant for horses. 

Salman wielding a mallet (and a mullet)

Salman's enthusiasm for Karisma's suggestion that the amnesiac be beaten on the head makes for the film's funniest scene. "WHY NOT?!?" he exclaims, in English, with unfeigned glee. If only Salman could work up as much interest in the roles he plays in this decade! 

Karisma wears some of the most hideous outfits you'll ever see on anyone, which is saying a LOT for a 1994 Bollywood film. (The pictured ensemble--pants that appear from the front to be fringed white Daisy Dukes with suspenders but from the back look like leggings--ought to serve as a cautionary tale to adventurous young designers everywhere.)

In due time the boys' identity is more or less revealed, not that anyone cares. The couples pair off, and the girls explain that Karisma is Raveena and vice versa, which is problematic for a couple of minutes and then falls by the wayside to make room for bigger identity issues. Raveena/Karisma's rich industrialist daddy (Paresh Rawal) has an evil twin who decides to kill the daughter to get back at his brother, or something. The servants in the Raveena/Karisma house, Bhalla and Robert, are secretly in the villain's employ and try to do the poor heiress in using a bomb, a poisoned drink, and Vasco da Gama's gun. All of this works exactly as well as it does when Elmer Fudd tries to kill Bugs Bunny. Let it wash over you in the Warner Brothers spirit and/or have a few drinks while viewing, and you'll find yourself giggling like an idiot.

Two simultaneous kidnapping plots, a diamond heist, and dacoity from a villain who calls himself "Crime Master Gogo" occupy much of the second act, which brings all the characters--including both Paresh Rawals--together for a final showdown. And since it's a godown showdown**, the room is filled with barrels and henchmen. One Paresh Rawal's cheek is marked with an X. But is he the good Paresh Rawal or the bad one? 

The good guys (using the term loosely) and the cartoon villains take turns having the upper hand. At one point Gogo and Prem have what appears to be a pelvic-thrust-off:

There's no physical contact, but the sheer force of their masculinity knocks them over anyway. Fortunately, nobody gets hurt.

It will come as no surprise that all is well in the end. Everything turns out so well, in fact, that Paresh Rawal (the good one) apparently forgets that Karisma (or is it Raveena?) is merely his daughter's secretary instead of his actual daughter, and everyone acts as if both Amar and Prem are about to become lucky rich husbands of two women who now are apparently both heiresses. What a relief for Amar, who was resigned to marrying the penniless one!

And speaking of families--astonishingly, we never return to the badly dissed fathers of the opening sequences, last seen being put out of their houses. Paresh Rawal is apparently daddy enough for everyone! Pretty soon, he will get to play three father-figures in Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, so I guess this is good practice.

Aai la! Oooee ma! Elmer Fudd and Bhalla! A good time is had by all, even by the bad guys whose bombs and guns always backfire. Live-action cartoons can be pretty hilarious. 

*who is AWESOME!! Thank you, Supraja!!

**I have always wanted to say that. 

RAM TERI GANGA MAILI: My Eyes Are Up Here

Ram Teri Ganga Maili ("Ram, Your Ganges Is Dirty"), the last film from Great Showman Raj Kapoor, features his son Rajiv, who bears a strong resemblance to his Uncle Shammi, and Raj's discovery Mandakini, a gorgeous woman with black hair and blue, blue eyes.

And breasts. Large breasts. Did I mention the breasts? I probably hardly need to mention them--after all, if you google this title you will get an eyeful--but I wouldn't want anyone to think that Raj's obsession with "generous scoops of flesh" had gone unnoticed. Yes, I noticed the breasts; I promise you that if you watch this film, you will notice them too.

The excellent Phillip's Fil-ums discussion taught me quite a lot that I didn't know about the relationship between this film's story and the Shakuntala story of old. I've heard of Shakuntala (after all, she makes a brief appearance in Hum Aapke Hain Kaun--oh, yes, I am that shallow). However, I didn't know the particulars, so I didn't recognize that this film's plot "recapitulates the Shakuntala story," which is itself a recapitulation of a tale from the Mahabharata. Color me enlightened!

And who knows? Maybe the original story aimed at titillation* of a dudely audience while acting oh-so-concerned about the fate of poor Shakuntala, who was really truly married and therefore the unsullied mother of a legitimate son. If so, then RTGM is definitely the recapitulation of the Shakuntala myth, because titillation and concern-trolling are very much in evidence in this story of lovely Ganga and her misadventures after her secret wedding.

The film opens with the river Ganga looking distinctly on the grubby side. There's even what appears to be a documentary shot of a human corpse drifting along face-down in the water; in the US such things only happen in times of major disaster (see Hurricane Katrina), and in those situations Americans tend to feel hat they're not supposed to stare. But Raj Kapoor invites us, even wants us, to stare--first at the river Ganga and then at our heroine Ganga (Mandakini), a pure and innocent girl from the Himalayas who falls in love with Naren (Rajiv Kapoor), the guileless and rather clueless son of a corrupt politician from Calcutta. There may be some surface tsk-tsking about how badly the men she encounters treat poor Ganga, but I think if Raj Kapoor meant to inspire any real empathy he would have spent less time zooming in on her breasts.

As everyone who has ever heard of this film probably knows, Naren is off on a jaunt to find the source of the river Ganga when he meets a rustic mountain girl of the same name. How can a city boy resist? For one thing, the girl-Ganga bathes in a white sari that becomes transparent when wet, singing that her arms call to him. Ganga, I won't be the first to point out that your arms are not the feature everyone notices.

The foggy sheet doesn't do a very good job.

Reader, he marries her. It's legit--her brother (Tom Alter!) accepts her spouse, even keeping watch outside the temple during their wedding night. It's a fairly racy wedding night as Bollywood films go, though this time there is only side-cleavage for the slavering dudes. (I can only imagine how many coins would have been thrown at the screen in a Bombay theater by this point in the film.)

 Sadly, the brother is fatally wounded that night while fighting off the guy who thought he was going to marry Ganga, so there are no living witnesses who can vouch for Ganga's wedded status. And Naren, like Shakuntala's prince, waltzes back to Calcutta, promising to return for her with his grandmother's blessing.

Not to spoiler, but Granny dies before she can give that blessing, and guilt overwhelms poor Naren so much that he takes an awfully long time to come back for Ganga. An awfully long time. More than a year, in fact. When he does make his way back, he has run off without his father's permission, and the authorities are on his trail. This entertaining paagal subtitle shows one of the obstacles in his path: an outhouse.

In the US, an "outhouse" is an outdoor toilet, in case you're wondering why I find this hilarious.

Meanwhile, Ganga has grown tired of waiting for the father of her infant son (you knew there was a son), so she gets on a bus and starts her journey toward Calcutta. When she gets off the bus to transfer to the Calcutta train at her first stop, she lets a hard-looking beggar woman guide her to her destination, which is a big mistake.

Don't trust the beggar woman, Ganga!

The beggar woman takes her straight to a brothel and claims a fee from the evil madam for this luscious new girl, but Ganga flees. A bit later she asks a priest for help, and he takes her to his home and tries to molest her. I swear, every man in this film shows a psychotic lack of empathy, perhaps driven mad by the always-already-visible breasts.

At last Ganga catches the train. She's thirsty, but no one will give her water--a woman carrying a pot of water from the Ganges even refuses her a sip. A blind man offers sympathy for Ganga's starving child's dilemma (less coherent in the subtitle than in Hindi, but you get the drift).

We know he's telling the truth because we have just watched sadly as she tried without success to breastfeed her child. Raj Kapoor does an excellent job of getting the audience to empathize with the plight of this distraught young mother who cannot feed her hungry baby. No, that was sarcasm; Raj Kapoor instead does an excellent job of getting the audience to focus on Mandakini's almost entirely bared breasts. Alas, poor Ganga! Hubba hubba!

It turns out that the blind man isn't really blind, and he (like everyone else in the audience) has actually been staring at Ganga's breasts even when she thought she was unseen. He pretends to help her, then drags her to yet another house of prostitution. Poor Ganga. She doesn't escape this time because she knows there's nowhere to run. The people who want to make money off her bounteous breasts are absolutely everywhere.

(Ganga is the middle one.)

It's suggested that Ganga's singing is so lovely that the madam focuses on training her to sing and dance rather than calling on her to sleep with paying customers (at least at first)--so thank goodness she can sing. Therefore, in the end Ganga is sufficiently Umrao Jaan-ified to be called upon to perform at the wedding of a young Calcutta nobleman. Guess who? Yes, it's Naren! And there is something very familiar about that nautch girl. What is it? Neither her face nor her breasts are visible during the dance, so he doesn't quite recognize her at first. But he does finally know her voice. And so Naren and Ganga/Shakuntala are finally reunited, the baby boy gets to meet his daddy at last, and all is right with the world.

Happy ending. See how happy they look?

So Ganga finally gets to take her rightful place as an honorable married woman, which is what passes for a happy ending to the story. Now that she is safely ensconced in her husband's house, there will be no more public displays of cleavage, I'm sure. And we have all been sensitized to the plight of young women who find themselves on the road without male protection, haven't we? Haven't we?

Well, no, we haven't. In fact, I'm not sure that "we" have done anything, since as a non-male viewer I don't know whether Raj cared that I was watching. But I watched, and I wondered what on earth I was supposed to feel. Pity for Ganga? Disgust at the men (and women) who take advantage of Ganga's innocence and helplessness? Outrage that a young woman on her own is regarded as little more than a prize buffalo to be  milked (sorry!!) for whatever money she can bring in? Irritation about the "dirty Ganga" metaphor in the title? I'm terribly conflicted about being asked to stare and snicker while I'm supposed to be fearing for Ganga's safety, so I guess the answer is "all of the above."
 
I wish someone would do for Shakuntala what Anurag Kashyap did for Devdas. This woman needs to arrive in a new century.

*Go ahead. Titter.

TALAASH: Down and Out in Mumbai

Talaash ("Search") is a detective story that ultimately seems more interested in human drama than in whatever solution there is to the film's central mystery. While there are some thrills in this thriller, it's the hard-luck subplots that give it staying power--and although many of these stories get more "closure" than a strict adherence to realism would allow, that, too, can be satisfying for those willing to suspend disbelief.

Director Reema Kagti, who co-wrote story and screenplay with Zoya Akhtar, is careful to cast light on the people toiling in the shadows of the starstruck city of Mumbai even as she follows a high-profile police investigation. The chorus of the jazzy song playing under the opening credits says that "the smile is a lie" as it shows prostitutes climbing into cars and addicts drinking clouds of smoke. This beginning has a whiff of the stunningly fine opening credit sequence of Zoya Akhtar's own Luck by Chance, which also featured unsung, unglamorous people who don't often appear in glossy Bollywood films (and which remains one of my all-time favorite scenes), but Zoya's images of studio-set laborers show real people doing real jobs; in contrast, the hookers and junkies in Talaash look more like junior artistes wearing prop-room rags and glitter. Still, the cynical lyrics (by legendary film writer Javed Akhtar, who also happens to be Zoya's father) and moody look create an effective setup for the first scene.

Studio construction workers in Zoya Akhtar's Luck by Chance

The switch from languid addicts to action is sudden: on a deserted stretch of Seaface Road, a speeding luxury car makes a sudden right turn and plunges over the embankment into the water below. The car's driver turns out to have been fictional Bollywood hero Armaan Kapoor, and his high-profile death spurs a police investigation headed by detective Suri Shekhawat (Aamir Khan, in a dramatic moustache). Suri talks smoothly to the rich and connected, but he is just as sincere with the terrified peons--the star's driver and spotboy, inexplicably asked by the hero not to accompany him in the car that night--who have the worn-down look of people accustomed to serving the powerful.

Rani and Aamir falling apart

We get repeated reminders that the story's interest is held less by the flashy crash and more by the human-scaled tragedies that happen all around it. One subplot concerns the unraveling marriage of Suri and his wife (Rani Mukherji), who are grieving the recent drowning death of their young son. She's seeing a therapist, but he's the one who can't sleep, dozing off only to enter repeated dream-world replays of the minutes just before the boy's death, and to see himself preventing the tragic outcome. Then he wakes up. 

In another subplot, in a part of Mumbai that might as well be on

Nawazuddin plotting a way out

another planet far, far away from middle-class sorrow, lame Tehmur (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), the errand-boy of an abusive pimp, overhears things he's not supposed to know. Tehmur develops a brazen plan for working the angles and earning himself a chance for a happy-ever-after with the oldest of the prostitutes (Sheeba Chadha, also from Luck by Chance). Nawazuddin, who's been earning justified accolades in an amazing range of parts, plays the role as partly heroic and partly despicable, a character whose empathy for other miserable wretches goes only so far.

Connecting these miles-apart stories is the beautiful streetwalker Rosie (Kareena Kapoor), who spots the cop on his sleepless, aimless nightly rounds. She seems to be eyeing him as a potential customer, and for him she is, at first, merely a source of information about his case. But there's an underlying connection that isn't the one I expected. Rosie sees Suri as more kindred spirit and confidante than potential lover--and this is not the only parallel between their characters and Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam's Chhoti Bahu and Bhoothnath.*

Eena Meena Kareena

When I watched Talaash a second time knowing the all the secrets that the film reveals as it unfolds, I did start to notice a few ragged edges. The characterizations rely more on star-power than on careful writing; Kareena Kapoor is a bit too upmarket to disappear into the role of streetwalker Rosie, Aamir Khan's character is more interesting as a bereaved dad than as a rather movie-typical upright cop, and Rani Mukerji's wise, suffering woman might be generic in other hands. But star-power can put audiences in a mood to forgive a lot of sketchiness, and it's so megawatt here that it's often enough.

The music (by Ram Sampath, who did such great work on Delhi Belly) didn't wow me, but a creepy repeated three-note motif--I swear it's the creaky-swing music from the scene in Sholay when the thakur returns home to find his family murdered--got under my skin like a fragment of a dream.

And I also couldn't shake a couple of small, telling moments from Talaash's matter-of-fact depictions of life among the sex workers and pimps. In one scene, we get a casual glimpse of a group of prostitutes asking Tehmur the servant for a drink of water--and in response, he passes the water bottle to them through the bars of the jail-like cell inside which they are imprisoned. Later a young woman whose boyfriend has been killed is dragged, wailing and protesting, back to work for the madam the boyfriend had paid for her freedom. Such moments aren't belabored, but they still manage to reveal something about what the bottom rung looks like and why it's so hard to imagine a way out.

Talaash has grim moments, but it isn't a grim movie. It's exciting and twisty and mysterious and really quite entertaining. But even if a few of the characters end up with something that looks suspiciously like a happy ending, there's no denying that this thriller has a sad, sad core. The star presence and some only-in-the-movies plot devices reassure us: relax, it's only a story! But I'm guessing that the most depressing parts are probably true.

*No, I can't tell you any more than this.

RAAZ 3: All About Arth

Every now and then a film comes along that is so stupid that it's compulsively watchable. Being entertained by Raaz 3  was a little unsettling: who knew it would be possible to enjoy a film called [Anything] 3? But enjoyable it is, if only on a Showgirls level. Bipasha Basu throws herself with gusto into the role of an actress willing to go beyond mere negative roles to find success.

Let me first note that I haven't seen the other two installments in the Raaz series. According to Wikipedia, the omission is of no consequence, for the Raaz films neither build on one another nor feature the same characters. The name "Raaz" is purely branding--letting the faithful know that the Bhatt dynasty has released another supernatural thriller. (Hey, it's a living, though it's a stunning departure from the days when Mahesh Bhatt--now patriarch and producer--created works of Arth.)

I also don't know whether "black magic" is really a thing in Hinduism. This, too, is unimportant. When I first saw The Exorcist, I was ignorant of whether the Catholic church really had an official policy for dealing with demon possession, and I remain so today. The point was to creep out the audience and to buff the head-spinning, pea-soup-puking content with a veneer of seriousness. To that end, any religious ritual--even an invented one--would serve. Same deal here; Raaz 3 has a demon of uncertain provenance and scenes set in Catholic graveyards "on the threshold between life and death," but apparently there's a puja for that.

Not the major award Bips expects.

As Raaz 3 begins,  Bipasha Basu is a famous actress over thirty who is nominated for a major award. She consults her astrologer, who tells her that the stars are aligned for her victory. But when another actress claims the prize, Bips is humiliated--she even stands up before the winner's name is announced and then has to sit back down, the way people do in movies when you need to see them extra-embarrassed. (An aside: do awards shows actually exist that have the winner in one category accept his prize and then remain onstage to announce the winner in the next category? The Oscars should try this; at least then maybe Martin Landau would get to finish his speech.)

For a while Raaz 3 plays out like All About Eve, if Margo Channing were seeking demonic assistance and if Eve really were as innocent and blameless as everyone thinks she is. The younger actress (Esha Gupta) gets the acclaim and the parts Bips wants. She seems to be ascending as Bips falls.

A former servant tells Bips that her god wanted her to win the award, but that another, more powerful god was backing the other actress. Without a backward glance at poor Ganesh on her home altar, Bips waltzes off to a bad neighborhood to meet with a demon who agrees to throw Esha Gupta under the bus.

Poor Bips doesn't get much help from the demon; he provides her with a potion she has to put in the younger woman's drinking water, but getting access to her is Bips' own affair. So, speaking of affairs, Bips seeks help from the director (Emraan Hashmi) of her new film, with whom she has a past. He cares about her--so much that he idiotically offers to give her his own award statuette to make up for her not winning one, whereupon Bips quite sensibly breaks a window with it. Emraan Hashmi is shocked that Bips is considering poisoning Esha Gupta's drink, but he has no trouble believing that demons are cooking up potions for her, which tells us a lot about his critical thinking skills. (Well, we are talking about Emraan Hashmi.) Naturally, Bips wins his cooperation with her mad sexiness. The price of sleeping with Bips is poisoning Esha Gupta, and at the time Emraan Hashmi thinks it's worth it.

You won't be surprised to learn that later in the film, after some Exorcist-esque  shenanigans, "serial kisser" Emraan Hashmi switches his loyalty to the younger woman and sleeps with her, too. But she's still presented as untainted, while Bips becomes more and more monstrous--presumably because Bips had the audacity to be the seducer in spite of, you know, not being a man, and because Esha is (in contrast) just a pretty girl who is completely helpless in the face of Emraan Hashmi's he-man vibe*.

Compare Bipasha Basu and Emraan Hashmi kissing, in this shot

with Emraan and Esha Gupta kissing, in this shot:

Bips is so in charge of poor Emraan in that first shot that it's almost as if he learned something from her in the second one. Emraan isn't my cup of tea, but I enjoyed watching Bips wrangle him so efficiently.

After falling for Bips' nemesis, Emraan Hashmi still can't stop Bips from continuing her poisoning ways. This leads to Esha Gupta having the kind of breakdown that would only be a disaster in Bollywood: attacked by swarms of Exorcist II locusts, she rips off all her clothes and runs naked into a well-heeled Hindi film crowd. This is a problem--get this--because the filmi media print that it's a publicity stunt rather than a genuine disorder. (Really? Claiming it was all a publicity stunt gets you out of trouble in Hollywood; it's the mental issues that cause worry.) Thanks to the impromptu nude scene, Esha gets bumped from Emraan Hashmi's film and lurks weepily about, hoping people will believe she's sincerely disturbed and not just a nudist.

Then things get awesomely weird. Thanks to Esha's firing, Bips gets her career back, and the item number in her new film has her dancing in front of guys wearing silver lame pants and fringed eyewear that is proof that it's better to look good than to see well:

And then this shot, which was, for me, the turning point at which I began to root for Bips to fall for the demon and get to keep making creepy sci-fi song sequences forever:

Who are those people in the tanks? (The ones who aren't Bips, I mean.) How did we get from the fringed-eyewear boys to sensory deprivation? If you're like me, seeing this clip would make you would put the movie-within-the-movie into your Netflix queue, stat.

Soon Bips meets with her demon again and asks him to kill off Esha Gupta for good and all, and only then does he demand payment, which is that she has to have sex with him. Bips doesn't look thrilled or anything, but neither does she seem to think that this is too high a price to pay.

The rest of the film is kind of like a horror-movie version of Arth, with Bips' seething cray-cray driving Emraan Hashmi back into the arms of sweet, only-crazy-on-the-outside Esha Gupta. Emraan Hashmi regrets having helped Bips. He reveals to Esha Gupta that he made a mistake in putting poison in her drinks, and she breaks up with him.

But when he comes crawling back, she's in a coma and so can't shut the door firmly in his face the way Shabana Azmi would have. There's a morgue scene (said to be another place "on the threshold between life and death") with a Hindu pandit and Emraan Hashmi and a doctor who exposits a lot of deeply unconvincing X-Files-style nonsense about things we know not of, blah blah blah.

Then Demon Bips comes calling and must be destroyed, but not before being slammed into walls and required to crawl over gurneys with a seriously messed-up leg. By this point I felt that demonic Bips was well worth rooting for--was, in fact, the heroine of the film. In All About Eve, audiences are pulling for cranky aging diva Bette Davis, not too-good-to-be-true Anne Baxter. In Arth, we certainly didn't want things to work out fine for the philandering husband. (I hope we wouldn't have cheered if he had tossed Smita Patil across a hospital room.) I understand that horror-movie audiences are accustomed to the "women who seek sex must die" rule, so Bips cannot survive to the closing credits.

But the last shot of Emraan Hashmi and Esha Gupta enjoying their happily ever after made me hope that the next Raaz might bring Bips back to rampage another day.


*Maybe she's just too traumatized to figure out what she's doing, since Emraan seduces her right after they've returned from their first attempt at exorcism in the graveyard, during which Esha ends up tethered to a decapitated demon-hunter. It doesn't seem like a typical date night, so it's also possible they are both kinkier than the script otherwise lets on.