Meh.

Paheli (Amol Palekar, 2005)

"Whaddya mean, double Shahrukh doesn't mean double the awesome? SHAHRUKH IS LOVE!"

Maybe my expectations for Paheli were simply too high. I had read numerous glowing reviews, all the while being careful not to spoil the story for myself. I was aware that this was the film chosen as India’s official Oscars entry in 2006. I had even seen numerous comparisons made to Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, a film that I am apparently alone in enjoying (we’ll address that at a later date, because when I say enjoy, I actually mean ADORE, and from every other review I have read, this makes me possibly slightly insane or my taste QUITE questionable) – Paheli, I had heard, was a similar story to RNBDJ, but more coherent, better executed, an OSCAR entry, for crying out loud.

Plus, it has Shahrukh with a mustache! That’s got to be good, right?

Meh. I like the mo' in RNBDJ better.

Unfortunately, the only word that came to mind as I was watching was “underwhelming”.

It was just kind of…average. The story is based on a retelling of an Indian folktale called “Duvidha”. Lachchi (Rani Mukherjee) gets married, but the very next day her new husband Kishan (Shahrukh Khan), a trader who is more into money than love, has to go on a business trip that will keep him away for 5 years.  While he’s gone, a ghost falls in love with Lachchi, and assumes Kishan’s form, fooling everyone into thinking he is the real Kishan, returned early. When the real Kishan actually returns, confusion reigns until a shepherd devises a test to solve the puzzle of which Kishan is the real Kishan.

I know we're the same person an' all, technically, but CAREFUL WHERE YOU PUT YOUR HANDS.

Paheli starts out promisingly enough. The film is pretty, very pretty (but then, even bad movies can be gorgeous – Saawariya, anyone?) and Shahrukh is on form, SRK-rrific throughout, but especially when he is doing double time near the end as Ghost Kishan and Real Kishan.  Rani Mukherji is lovely too, though her chemistry with SRK is never ever gonna be as perfect as her jodi with Abhishek.

Rani and rose petals, you can't get much prettier than that.

There’s also enough spooky isolation established  in the opening of Paheli, at the place of “128 ghosts” to make me think that this would be a folktale with a nice edgy chill to it. See ghostly wet footprints appear in front of Rani at the Labyrinth/Escher-esque well. Hear eerie whistling in the middle of nowhere. See spooky puppets hanging, Blair Witch-esque off a tree and ‘talking’ in the ghostly breeze. SIGH. That awesome creepy flavour didn’t last long. At all.

 

Awesome Escher-esque well.

Spooky puppet tree.

On the whole, Paheli was just kind of…boring. I can’t really recall any particular high or low points, or anything that made me FEEL much at all. And that may be the MEH factor – the lack of any real involvement in the characters or the plot. At the climax of the film, when the villagers have to figure out which SRK is the real Kishan, the payoff being that the real one gets to stay with Lachchi, as a viewer I had absolutely no investment in the outcome. If they chose the ghost, events leading up to that point had led me to dislike him -  because although he was honest about who (or more specifically what) he was to Lachchi, he was lying to everyone else and using his supernatural powers to get his own way – even with Lachchi, who he claimed to love; if they chose the actual, real Kishan, he hadn’t been with his wife for 5 years, since their wedding night, and there hadn’t been a hint of anything in the film leading up to this point that Lachchi wanted to be with her real husband or that he was ready to step up and actually BE a husband to her. Oh wait. He brought her some berries. Not poignant enough to make me care. Moral of the story: by this point, I didn’t really give a shit who Lachchi ended up with, and for a love story, that’s kind of a bad scene. Like it’s lacking, oh, I don’t know, A BEATING HEART. Oh, a bit like Ghost Kishan.

(Contrast this, if you will, against RNBDJ – it is, I will admit, a flawed film in many ways, but from the outset of that film I KNOW that I want Taani to choose Surinder, and every time I watch it I am terrified that she will run away with Raj.  My heart breaks so many times in RNBDJ, and EVERY TIME I watch it I cry, because I fall in love with Surinder in the first 5 minutes and I want Taani to see him the same way. THAT is how a love story should grab you. It should kick you in the guts and terrify you and you should scream at the characters on the screen when they make stupid decisions, even if you’ve seen the film 20 times already).

Highlights and Random Observations

First song: Aadhi Raat Jab. I swear, Rani has the best smile in Bollywood. How can you not fall completely in love with her, HUH KISHAN?! This song is beautifully heartbreaking, all excitement about her wedding night, and then…yeah, sorry honey, I forgot to tell you, I’m going away for five years. So we might as well ‘not ignite passion when it’s only for one night”. What a burn.

Amitabh Bachchan’s cameo as the shepherd, booming phlegmy throat clearing and all. Big B strikes again! I was determined not to like this guy in the early days of my Bollywood obsession…but the more you watch, the more you realise there’s actually no getting around the fact that Amitabh Bachchan kicks some serious ass.

  Just try and hate him. HA! YOU CAN'T!

It must be written into Shahrukh’s contract that he gets wet at least once in every movie. I am not complaining.

...you are welcome.

And while we’re objectifying King Khan…HELLO!

And finally:

Why yes, you ARE the King of the castle.

Best SRK Moment:

The puppet dance over the end-credits: SRK and Rani start out as life-size puppets on strings, and end up doing an extended Bolly-robot dance. Super-duper cute and probably my favourite part of the entire film.

Geek Love

I love geeks.

I love Ranbir Kapoor.


I want to see this movie so bad.

This is gonna RULE THE SCHOOL

This makes me super duper excited. Especially coming on the heels of my newfound adoration for Akki, plus the fact that Om Shanti Om and Jaan-E-Mann are two of my favourite movies of all-time. Hence Shirish Kunder + Farah Khan + Akshay Kumar = TOTAL AWESOME.

My new favourite movie...stars Salman Khan?

Jann-E-Mann (Shirish Kunder, 2006)

I actually hate reviewing movies I like, because there are only so many ways to say “OMG AWESOME I LOVE IT”. Jaan-E-Mann is fricking glorious, an insane melding of Broadway musical, Hollywood screwball comedy and all the qualities you know and love from Bollywood . A postmodern take on a classic love triangle, Jaan-E-Mann is partly a film about films and the film industry, as well as being the eternal tale of two men loving the same woman.

See how pretty?

See how Broadway?

It is, you have to realize, completely and totally insane. Shirish Kunder – Farah Khan’s hubby – wrote, directed and edited the thing, and it does have a similar epic feel to Om Shanti Om – hubby and wife obviously share a sensibility related to “post-masala” films, reviving that feeling of seeing something epic and lavish and fantastic but with a modern twist. That means dwarves, astronauts, Broadway spectacles, hilarious parodies of Bollywood melodrama, flashbacks, creepy voyeuristic Rear Window-esque stalking, evil brothers, dreams of stardom, wacky costumes and so much more. I FRICKING LOVED EVERY SECOND OF THIS MOVIE. Seriously, it’s a new all-time favourite.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS AND HIGHLIGHTS

The music. Humko Maloom Hai has been on repeat in my head for a week now, it’s lovely. As is Ajnabi Shehar.

The narrative device is interesting. It starts with a voiceover from astronaut Agastya Rao, who is telling the story of him, Suhaan (Salman Khan) and Piya (Preity Zinta). This sets the film up a little bit like a fairytale, with a contemporary “once upon a time” feel. When we get to the part where Suhaan has to explain to his uncle what went wrong in his marriage (time for a song!) we have a screen appear magically in the uncle’s office. “What’s that?” his uncle asks as the first song of the film starts playing on the screen in his office. “That’s a flashback – so I can explain what happened to you!” says Suhaan.

The magical flashback screen comes down behind them.

It’s so po-mo, commenting on the actual narrative itself and also at pains to show how filmmakers tell stories. This sort of thing happens again and again in Jaan-E-Mann and the film geek in me LOVES IT. The song Humko Maloom Hai is like GEEK HEAVEN for references to the film industry and Brechtian-type references reminding us we are watching a constructed narrative.

Another intertextual reference! It's DARR-iffic.

It all makes sense in the internal logic of the film – if Agastya is telling the story, fairytale like, then ANYTHING can happen onscreen and be completely reasonable because it is after all just one guy telling a story. Maybe we should look at all movies like that. OOOH MAYBE THAT’S THE POINT.


Anupam Kher. As a dwarf. But actually, more specifically, as a dwarf imitating Preity Zinta, in the song Jaane Ke Jaane Na. Actually, the entirety of that song, which is utterly utterly mad and entirely hilarious.

Although my love for Shahrukh is, of course, eternal, I couldn’t help but be pleased when I read that the part of Agastya Rao in Jaan-E-Mann was originally intended for King Khan himself…and he turned it down.

Because if he had done the role, we would have been deprived of a major part of why I love this film SO MUCH: Akshay Kumar as a total dork.

Old school dork...

...scrubs up pretty well.

Shahrukh as a dork? Yeah, it’d be cute. Yeah, he’d dimple it up and be SRK-riffic. But he’s done it before (and I’m thinking that’s why he turned it down, since Don: The Chase Begins ended up coming out at the same time as Jaan-E-Maan…bit of a meatier role there for the Baadshah). Let’s face it: as much as we love him, SRK IS kind of a dork. It wouldn’t be as totally awesome as seeing Akki, the macho man’s man who pretty much always plays the cool action guy, completely nerd up, and in the process reveal that he can be funny without being all “I’m gonna bash you over the head with my next slapstick gag” and completely, utterly, heart-meltingly adorable. And HOT.

So yes. Jaan-e-Mann took my Akshay Kumar fandom level from oh, like say, level 5 to level BAJILLION. I LOVE THE MAN. I LOVE HIM.  Everything about him in this movie is WONDERFUL, from the cute geeky laugh he nervously does, to the scene where he approaches Piya in New York for the first time which makes me laugh SO HARD (PIYAAAAAAAAA!) to the way he can’t cry and freely express his angst without ripping his clothes off.

Cry more in movies, Akki. CRY MORE. LET OUT THAT ANGST.

This is kind of disturbing: Jann-E-Mann cured me of my irrational Salman Khan repulsion. Sure, he is a bit plastic looking, often looks like a thug on his way to pound someone (or eat the heroine's soul)

 LOOK OUT, PREITY!

and his accent seems to change at whim, but I went in this determined to merely tolerate his presence for the sake of my beloved Akshay, and ENDED UP ACTUALLY KIND OF LIKING HIM.  Maybe it was his willingness to be a bit silly and seemingly take the piss out of himself, maybe it was the wacky costumes (I’m a sucker for Elvis)…

...I’m not sure how exactly, but the thug wormed his way into my heart and I alternately laughed at and felt sorry for him. DAMN YOU JAAN-E-MANN! My irrational Salman hatred was the one constant, the thing I thought I could always rely on. Sure, my whims could change daily in regards to everyone else, but I would always regard Salman, COMPLETELY WITHOUT BASIS, with fear and loathing. Now I don’t even have that, because I ACTUALLY LIKE HIM IN THIS FILM.

Wacky AND badass!

Amar Akbar Anthony (Manmohan Desai, 1977)

There is only one thing wrong with this movie, and that is that there is not nearly enough Vinod Khanna in it. Vinod Khanna, I have decided, is The Man. In fact, going back to Amar Akbar Anthony to get screencaps, I may have gotten a tad…distracted…so here. Feast your eyes on the true, masculine glory that is Vinod in all his 70s wonder.

Swoon.

Double swoon.

 

Swoonier. 

Swooniest.

Ahem. Now that we have that over with, all that is really left to say is OH MY GOD(S), AMAR AKBAR ANTHONY is PURE UNADULTERATED CRAZY-GOODNESS, pretty much everything you could ever IMAGINE wanting in a movie distilled into three or so hours. I believe this, my friends, is what they call a true masala film. I want more. This stuff is like a drug.

So, the story goes something like this: the film starts with poor downtrodden Kishinlal being released from prison after serving time for a crime he did not commit, having taken the rap for his boss, evil Robert, because Robert promised to pay Kishinlal’s wife and three sons thrice Kishinlal’s wages as compensation while he was in the slammer (who could refuse a sweet deal like that?). But evil Robert is a promise-breaker and when Kishinlal gets out of jail he finds his wife destitute, suffering tuberculosis, and his kids starving. CONVOLUTED SERIES OF EVENTS LATER involving smuggling gold bars, flaming car wrecks and a suicide attempt (seriously, the prologue to the film is like 25 minutes long) and Kishinlal’s wife ends up blind thinking the rest of her family is dead, Kishinlal is on the run, and his three sons are separated from each other and their parents, and end up being raised by a Hindu policeman, a Muslim tailor and a Christian priest (hence Amar, Akbar and Anthony. While the alliteration is pleasing, I had initially wondered what their parents were thinking. Now I know). 22 years later, the three sons all meet when they give their blind mother (who has miraculously not died of TB yet?) a blood transfusion – all of them at this point strangers to each other – and CUE TITLES (finally!).

The madness is only beginning, obviously, since there is still 3 hours of the movie to go and that’s just the PROLOGUE. There’s the ongoing battle of Robert versus Kishinlal, which actually got quite confusing since they both seemed pretty evil and I frequently forgot which side I was supposed to be on; murder, kidnapping, double crossing, double-double crossing, long lost identical twins, dressing up in ridiculous disguises, three brides for three brothers (of course), and naturally the question of how and when everyone will realize how they are related to everybody else. Oh how I laughed. But also: oh how I cried (which was actually quite painful given I broke my nose on Monday).

This movie is like all of Days of our Lives or The Young and The Restless crazy plot twists boiled down into one glorious melodramatic movie, COMPLETE WITH SONG AND DANCE. Can you IMAGINE what would happen if someone pitched a Hollywood remake? (They would wreck this wonderful film, is what would actually happen. But what if there was some visionary in Hollywood, prepared to preserve every implausible plot twist, every wacky turn of events, and most importantly, the poor stricken mother melodramatically wailing NOOOOOOOOOOOO?

Nahiiiiiiiiiiiiin!

 I’ll tell you what would happen: the Hollywood remake would be a critical flop but would make a bajillion dollars at the box office, because THIS IS PURE ENTERTAINMENT).

 Plus look: Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Singh:

 if they didn’t already rock hard enough, they totally spawned Ranbir for us, just another reason to adore them.

 Plus Amitabh Bachchan pops out of a giant Easter Egg

with secret codes attached to his clothing:

 Apparently 420 refers to the section of the Indian penal code relating to thieves and conmen. Implying Anthony is taking the good Christian folk for a ride, as opposed to simply being a stoner.

and he also punches a guy through a wall, proving you can be wacky AND badass!

Plus did I mention Vinod Khanna is super duper hot and totally The Man?

This is a totally legitimate move to pull in a fight, when you're hot like Vinod.

The. Man.

Big B as a gangsta rapper? SOLD!

Bunty aur Babli (Shaad Ali, 2005)

So it was a long weekend, and I was sick with a horrible virus, and all I wanted was a bit of comfort viewing. So, out of the vast and ever-increasing pile of unwatched DVDS on my shelf I pulled Bunty aur Babli, because I figured: this must have awkward Abhi dancing in it, and if awkward Abhi dancing doesn’t make me feel better, then nothing will.

Did this film succeed in the goal I loftily set for it? OH MY GOD YES.

1. Bunty aur Babli INDEED has awkward Abhi dancing. For this alone, I love it.

In fact, it has one of the most enthusiastically attempted but not quite ‘hit’ dance sequences I have ever seen Abhishek in: Nache Baliye. OH MY GOD. THIS SHIZZ IS AWESOME.

a.    It’s a dream sequence. ENOUGH SAID. Nothing says “This is going to blow your mind but we couldn’t figure out how to put it in the movie without everything completely retardedly not making sense so GENIUS SOLUTION: make it a dream sequence” more than…a dream sequence. Ultimate glorious parody of this technique: Dard-E-Disco in Om Shanti Om. The hero of the film wants to sing and dance in a item number about…yes, the pain of disco. “But how can the character sing and dance? He is deaf, blind, mute, in a wheelchair and has no hands?” cries the director. “Easy! We’ll make it a dream sequence”. PROBLEM SOLVED.

b.    It starts out with Abhishek sort of artily doing slo-mo jazz-dance. What is he wearing? An all black ensemble complete with studded wrist cuff? TICK! Later this will become bright blue shiny something paired with jeans…JEANS ?!?(and Rani too – despite EVERYONE ELSE being in sequinned spandex) before he is transformed into my favourite incarnation: Shiny Elvis. Shiny Elvis is where he really hits his stride, and I like to think it’s because of the outfit. (Actually, Rani hits her stride here too, as Shiny Priscilla, I guess. It’s the power of her proximity to Shiny Elvis).

I love him even as a weird modern jazz dancer...

...jeans were an odd costume choice.

SHINY ELVIS!

c.    They do…something…with what appear to be giant rubber bands.

d.    I couldn’t capture them fast enough, but one of the many reasons to love Abhishek’s awesome awkward dancing is the hilariously intense and enthusiastic faces he makes. In this number he is concentrating so hard at times on the moves that he obviously forgets to lip synch. ABHISHEK: NEVER STOP TRYING. The difference between the effort you put in (++++) and the natural talent you possess (-) is why I love you.

2. Maybe I spend too much time reading Bollywood blind items but my first reaction to Kajra Re was to be utterly CREEPED OUT. You either know what I’m talking about or you totally don’t want to. TRUST ME – YOU DON’T WANT TO because it will wreck a LOVELY item number for you.

 *Shudder*

Luckily, I got over that, and on subsequent viewing could appreciate the cute references to Devdas, Abhishek’s manic dancing and gurning, and even how pretty and natural Aishwarya looks (because she did used to look less like a woman with a plastic face and more like a woman even remotely deserving of the oft-repeated “Most Beautiful Woman in the World” label). I read something the other day suggesting that it was during the filming for this song that the sparks of love between Abhishek and Aishwarya began to smoulder…it’s not readily apparent, but maybe he won her over with the crazy flailing limbs dance he does near the end of the song.

3.  Oh, actually it occurs to me now I should maybe mention the plot: Bunty aur Babli ("Bunty and Babli") is basically a caper movie. Rakesh (Abhishek Bachchan) and Vimmi (Rani Mukherji) are two small-town dreamers desperate to escape the claustrophobic confines of their humdrum village lives. So when they meet, it's like fate brought them together to become their alter egos: Bunty and Babli, an Indian take on Bonnie and Clyde, only less (as in, not at all) murderous and with a bit of a Robin Hood-esque "steal from the rich, but give to the poor" vibe. And of course, they fall in love...

Why are you not married to Rani? WHY? LOOK HOW CUTE YOU ARE TOGETHER!

I don’t think I have ever seen a movie where the lead couple have better chemistry than Rani and Abhishek. They are super cute and natural and for serious, when Aishwarya appeared I was like “ARE YOU KIDDING ME? RANI STEAL YOUR MAN BACK!” It makes me want to watch Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna again soon because it will be even sadder to see them as a dysfunctional couple compared to their cuteness in this.

4. I don’t think it was just because I was sick, and thus my defences, or something, were weakened, but when Abhishek dons this disguise to sell the Taj Mahal:

Is it wrong?

he became ONE BAJILLION times more attractive to me. And I ALREADY thought he was cute. It’s not just the mustache. It’s the voice and accent he puts on, and the funny little gestures he does with his hands. Oh god, I DON’T KNOW WHY but skeezy Taj-seller Bunty is super-duper hot. I know. I too, am somewhat disturbed by this development.

5. OHMIGOSH Amitabh Bachchan as gangsta-rapper (the lesson – always watch the end credits). IMPOSSIBLY (and IMPROBABLY) cool. This made me breathless with the glory of it. Plus, this whole movie (according to imdb) is a homage to the glory of Big B’s oldskool greatness itself. I picked up the cute-cute Sholay nods, but I haven’t watched any of his other movies yet to get the apparent references that abound (my copy of Parvarish arrived yesterday, SQUEE! and am eagerly awaiting Amar Akbar Antony…and have decided at some point I will HAVE to get the original Don, as much as I love the remake, to quote Jack from LOST: “We have to go BAAAAACK!”).