NEW: Don 2: the Slick, Cool and Action-Packed Return of the King

I think Bollywood saved the best for last this year.

If we could have skipped all of the Ra.One buildup and gone straight to Don 2, I would have been happy. Although, as you know, I didn't hate Ra.One as much as most people seemed to, Don 2 is all that it promises and more (including some of what Ra.One promised!).

There are sexy foreign locales (from Thailand to Switzerland to Germany), hot women (Piggy Chops and Lara Dutta), flashy cars (lots of Hyundais), car chases through great locations, spectacular stunts (base jumping from buildings, anyone?) and explosions and guns a-plenty. And, of course, tons and tons of SRK acting like a total badass. And then the plot has drugs, bank robberies, jail breaks and assassination plots — all major action plots in one.

And Don 2, I thought, did all of these things even better than the first film. If Ra.One was shooting for Hollywood's level, Don 2 reached it. It's so cool it's ridiculous. It's slick, glitzy and so action-packed you never have a down moment. The stunts and special effects really are Hollywood caliber. And the camerawork (which film classes have taught me to notice) is really brilliant, including the quick cuts and slow-pans.

36 China Town (2006): A Bollywood Whodunit

Synopsis: In Goa’s flashy China Town, a motley crew of folks ranging from a struggling actor, a scorned bride, a gambling-addict hotel owner and his wife, a would-be Romeo and a couple on vacation get embroiled in a murder mystery when casino owner Sonia Chang turns up dead. Hard-nosed Inspector Karan (Akshaye Khanna), who seems to fancy himself a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, then goes on a quest to sort out the tangled web and find the killer.

Picked this up from the DVD store because Shahid Kapoor was on the cover and also Kareena Kapoor and Akshaye Khanna. I’d never heard of it, but seeing those three, I was like how could I not have?

I didn’t know what to expect (36 China Town is a kind of vague title), but when I realized it was a murder mystery, I braced myself for the worst and prepared to just enjoy staring at Shahid.

And then it didn’t happen. The film was pretty solid. I actually felt suspense even though I pretty much could guess what was going to happen (I have a rather uncanny knack for predicting “twists”; writers everywhere are not as clever or original as they think). I mean, I wasn’t terrified or anything, but I held my breath when certain characters were unknowingly trapped in a house with a murderer and gasped a little when a dead body fell out.

And then on top of it, it wasn’t just a suspenseful murder mystery. The story is about a whole bunch of innocent, well-meaning folks who are connected in some way to the murder but keep lying about their connection so as not to seem guilty. And it’s hilarious. There’s antics about bodies being stuffed in suitcases (kind of gruesome)...that a couple then tries wildly and fails to get rid of on a train (hilarious). In a way, it reminds me of Clue, more of a whodunit than anything else. (Like bodies being stuffed in suitcases can go one of two ways: Law & Order, where it’s, “Eek there’s a body in a suitcase!”; or Psyche, where it’s like, “OMG, I can’t believe this; there’s a body in a suitcase!” This film is a mix but mostly the latter.)

And the slate of characters that runs through this one... Man, it’s crazy. There are so many quirky people, and the cast gets more and more entangled with every passing moment. If you’ve seen Welcome and you know how the plot gets increasingly more complicated in that crazy way that makes you go, “Oh, God... This is so... convoluted!” every couple of minutes... You should have a good idea of how 36 China Town operates. Everybody and their brother gets mixed up at least once with everybody else in this film.

My favorite set of characters are Raj and Priya, a struggling actor and a scorned would-be runaway bride who find Sonia Chang’s missing son and set out to bring him home for a reward. Shahid and Bebo had such lovely chemistry. It makes me somewhat sad that they aren’t together anymore (no offense to Saify-poo). This wasn’t perhaps on par with Jab We Met (which turned out fascinatingly well since they broke up in the middle of filming) but it’s still up there pretty close. And again Bebo didn’t get on my nerves!

Oh hai cuteness.

Akshaye Khanna did, though. I will say that I love Rahul much more than his younger, fairer-skinned less beautiful brother, but I usually like Akshaye. Loved him in Dil Chahta Hai and Tees Maar Khan (Osssccaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar!), even liked him fairly well in Mere Baap Pehle Aap, which I despised as a film. I think it was more of a seeping annoyance with the character of Inspector Karan and the poorly arranged deductive reasoning a la pseudo-Sherlock Holmes (I have a very deep love for the original Sherlock Holmes), but for as many of these annoying cops as there are in film, this is the first one I’ve been so thoroughly annoyed with. Every time he showed up on screen, I groaned.

I'm afraid the logic of your deductive reasoning is elementary, my dear Akshaye.

 Another groaner is Upen Patel playing Rocky. He kind of annoyed me in Namastey London (although a lot of things kind of annoyed me in Namastey London), but he definitely annoys in this film. He plays a playboy who repeatedly uses the same lines but gets no good results. AND they're the most ridiculous lines too! "Your dad must have been a terrorist because he sure knew how to make a sex-bomb." SCUSE ME, WHAT?! And still he goes on his way, thinking he’s all good. Oh, also, he’s a playboy but can’t defame women in public -- as in he can sleep with them behind closed doors, but he won’t tell about it. The assumption is because he respects women (though by his lines he obviously doesn’t); these folks need to see Thank You and Akshay Kumar’s Kishan, a reincarnation of Lord Krishna who loves women in all ways.

Tanaaz Currim as Ruby and Payal Rohatgi as Gracy play the wives of two gamblers -- one poor and the other (formerly) rich -- who are controlling and keep their men in line. Ruby also wins tons of money and puts her husband to shame with it. Here, the ladies rule the roost.

Their poor can’t-keep-on-the-straight-and-narrow husbands K.K. and Natwar are played by Johnny Lever and Paresh Rawal respectively, who are always welcome comedy schlubs as far as I’m concerned. Johnny Lever has amused me since Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (my second film), and despite what others say, I’ve honestly never not found him less than amusing. Paresh Rawal is also always fun as the poor schmuck who gets all kinds of crap done to him (see: Ready, Welcome, etc.). BUT there is one major drawback of Paresh Rawal being in this film.

Paresh Rawal in a speedo! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK! I think my eyes will never recover! (And now you must also suffer with me. Mwhahahhahaha.)

To maybe help you recover from that (maybe), Piggy Chops makes a cameo.

One thing I will say that kind of perplexed me about this film was its setting, which seems to roughly translate to a version of Vegas. I didn’t know until this film that Goa had a China Town, and personally no Chinatown that I’ve ever been to is even remotely like the China Town of this film. I actually find it somewhat funny considering India’s proximity to China.

But something else bothers me about this setting. In my literary study of colonialism, I’ve also learned a great deal about literary tropes and practices like exoticism and, a particular form of exoticism, orientalism (especially as defined by Edward Said). Exoticism in its most simplified form is using something foreign for the sake of using something foreign or exotic, basically reducing the culture to a distinct foreignness and not much else. Yes, there is a fine, fine line between being influenced by a culture and reducing it to exoticization, and I feel this film steps somewhat into the latter.

This film engages in exoticization of China Town; China Town is foreign and Other (set apart from regular Indian Goa), swathed in bright colors and druggy, dreamy sequences, oversexed and embroiled in all forms of sin (drinking, gambling, etc.). The “foreign” place is full of intrigue and it cannot be fully understood simply because it is foreign; rules of decency common to the civilized and dignified homeland of the exoticizer do not apply, so murder is allowed to happen. (Perhaps the classic literary reference I can point you to is Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone; historically, exoticization is a colonial practice often applied to India.) In these ways, the film engages in exoticization (of Chinese culture), a form of racism historically descended from colonialism. Ever since taking a semester course on exoticism, I see it everywhere (I’ve written an essay about its prominence in the space-western TV series Firefly) and it bothers me.

I think I first noticed it in this song, touting the “unique” nature of China Town.

And speaking of songs... The choreography and dancing for this film – superb! Shahid’s always a brilliant dancer, and Upen Patel’s not shabby as a dancer even when he is a frustrating actor. Watching this one really made me realize that the last few films I watched before this were really not well-choreographed. But the sets for the songs – ridiculous! Someone was on crack! Case in point:

But then, this is a zany Bollywood whodunit. Maybe insane song sets were called for. 

NEW: Ready (2011): Hilarious, top to bottoms!

So I’m actually now stranded up in New York for the summer, away from my beloved Florida and my fellow fruits. But despite a lot of aggravations that have set my relationship with this city as rocky already, I have found a serious redeeming factor:

INDIAN FILM CINEMA! Specifically, Big Cinemas Manhattan.

Tonight, I was able to go to a theater and see the much-anticipated Salman Khan film Ready on the day it was released – which is pretty much unheard of for me! I had to catch a late show because of work, but it’s OK because YAY, I got to see a film right away!

So I’m now still awake at 3:30 a.m. my time because I want to be one of the first to chime in on the film.

Synopsis (of which there are NO good ones yet on the net): Prem Kapoor (Sallu) has made a habit out of helping couples in love to have their happy endings but is meticulously avoiding love himself. When Sanjana Singh (Asin) sneaks her way into his heart by conning him and his family into believing she’s a potential bride come from America, Prem is reluctant but of course falls anyway. Then reality strikes: Sanjana’s uncles are two feuding dons who are each out to marry her to their choice of man so they can lay hands on her inheritance. Prem now has his hardest case of stealing the bride yet.

Going into it, I read a couple of the very mixed reviews, but as usual, THE REVIEWS MEANT NOTHING. I laughed HYSTERICALLY throughout the entire movie! It was that fantastic! Yes, parts of it that I’m sure were meant to be serious were so absurd to be laughable, but when a movie has the dialogue and antics generally geared to make you laugh, how else can you take the over-the-top serious stuff? (Also, many people were saying it was too close to Dabangg. Not having seen Dabangg, I can't be a fair judge of that, but hopefully that won't be problematic for anyone else.)

Yes, it’s true, this film has no great substance to it, no overwhelmingly great message, but he bhagavan is it entertaining! I took four friends with me to the theater who had NEVER seen a Hindi film before, and most of the inside jokes and nuances of puns were lost on them, but they all thoroughly enjoyed it anyway. It was that universal.

My Bollywood-virgin friends couldn't appreciate the long line of cameos, including these. But the comedy... That they could. Definitely.

The movie was full of more crude humor than I've ever seen a Hindi film have. There was peeing (intermission is referred to as "Pee Break" while Salman urinates on a haystack), farting and lots of bad things happening to butts (sitting on hot pots, getting a fork stuck in a cheek, etc.). Now that may not be your cup of tea, but there's plenty of other humor to go around -- witty dialogue, absurdness, those deft inside filmy jokes, lots of innuendo (see below) -- there was a dash of every kind of humor.

 I’ve heard Ready pegged as masala, which I’ll take. It’s a dash of romance, a dash of (sometimes painful) action, a little family drama and a whole lot of comedy. On top of that, it has a plot! One that gets crazy and out of control, of course, but it does have a definite and distinct plot.

The other thing I’ve seen Ready called though is a family film, which I will NOT agree with. There was more innuendo (some of it RIDICULOUSLY blatant) than I’ve ever seen in a Hindi film. For a genre that manages to skirt the sex issue even when hookers are around, this one really lays the references on thick. (Almost as many innuendos as this Weiner scandal going on in the U.S. right now.)

Sallu does have the tendency to get on my nerves with his attitude as you might have gleaned from my previous posts about him. Yes, there are moments when Salman’s attitude made me roll my eyes, even during songs (especially when he takes off his shirt in a fight scene because someone says he won’t because he’s gotten fat; sorry Sallu, you’re not fat by general standards, but you’re definitely getting older and pudgier). But for the most part, he’s so caught up in making you laugh that you don’t have time to be PO’d at his attitude.

I have kind of a love-hate relationship with Sallu. Sometimes I wish he'd just be less full of himself.

Asin also brilliantly pulls off a witty, spunky girl who’s willing to give Prem his what-for. I honestly don't see why some people said they had no chemistry. The jodi worked just fine for me. The cast of supporting characters likewise has all of the quirks and character you could hope for, including a couple of poor schlubs who become the butt of SO MANY jokes.

Yeah, these two schlubs.

In essence, yes, this film has no enduring message quality, but PLEASE don’t tell me you go to all films purely for the message. There’s a reason it’s called entertainment, people.

(Also, apparently this film is a Tamil film remake? I really want to see the original.)

Mujhse Shaadi Karogi (2004): Beachy and Bonkers

Let me preface this post by saying SORRY we haven't posted in a while. I was caught up in the mess that was final exams and final papers, and I haven't been able to watch as many films, much less post about them. That being said, I've gotten backlogged and have posts in the works for Bachna Ae Haseeno, Vivah, Devdas and 3 Idiots (probably in that order) and will be watching Mere Baap Pehle Aap tonight and Chalte Chalte, Action Replayy and Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai within the next couple of days. So! Hopefully plenty of posts soon. :)

Without further ado, onto Mujhse Shaadi Karogi (Will You Marry Me?).

Synopsis: Since childhood, Sameer has had problems with his temper, even punching the principal at school. As an adult, it’s about to send him to jail, so he relocates to Goa where he works as a manager at a resort and meets beauty Rani Singh, who he instantly falls head over heels for (pretty much literally: He falls from a balcony when he first sees her). But then Sunny comes to town and begins making Sameer look bad to everyone from Rani to Sam’s landlord. Let chaos and rivalry ensue.

Watching this movie was stressful. Everything that COULD go wrong DID (on purpose, of course) and it was enough to drive you crazy. Overall, the point of the film is that Sunny aka Sameer's childhood pacifying friend Arun in disguise (Akshay Kumar) is trying to teach Sameer (Salman Khan) to not get angry by, well, doing things to infuriate him. Despite the fact that this whole premise is pretty much pointless because Sameer never really loses his temper and all it really does is confuse Sameer’s girl Rani (Priyanka Chopra)… In the process, Sunny pretty much infuriated me and brought up my blood pressure! Forget Sameer, I wanted to choke Sunny.

Despite that, I still can’t help but love him at the same time because I freaking love Akshay Kumar because that man is HILARIOUS. Completely and totally. Don’t think so? Watch this song. Yes, he enters riding a boat like a horse. Yes, he and Sallu are dancing in grass skirts that are obscenely short.

I decided after watching Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam that I like watching Sallu be… not Sallu-like. Like I said in my post about that film, I’m so used to Sallu’s current image as some bitter, quiet, angry bad boy (who also paints beautifully… maybe “angry, tortured soul” is a more apt description). And I love seeing him be NOT that, even though it makes my head spin. He had his angry bad boy-ness in this film, but he also had his humorous, lighthearted adorableness.

Sallu as Sameer is some weird hybrid of bad boy with a vicious temper and complete dork with social awkwardness issues. He’s also a violent man who beats his way into biker gangs but a strictly religious fellow who saves all of his money and puts it aside for his grandmother’s eye surgery and sister’s wedding. Oh, and he's a lifeguard who plays guitar and rides a motorcycle and paints. Can they make up their minds about this guy? For that matter, he seems to have Hindu gods set up on his mantle, but he prays to Jesus later in the film. I don’t think they could even make up their minds on Sameer’s religion.

Sameer's savings pots for his grandma's eye surgery, his sister's wedding and his sister's education vs. angry Sameer...

No offense to my dear Kiwi, but Piggy Chops is not my favorite heroine. Does she hold her own in this film? At points, I want to say “yes” – she does a good job of “do I love Sunny or Sameer?” But at points, I want to say “no” – did her character stick with me? …not much. I think I may consider Rani a bystander caught up in the Sameer-Sunny feud more than a full-fleshed character in the story. I don’t know whether it was Piggy Chops herself or just the role, but Rani doesn’t feel like a very mature, rounded character.

I don't feel like Priyanka really holds her own. Although sandwiched between Akki and Sallu... What is there to do but debate your choices and enjoy the man candy?

 

Speaking of characters, the supporting characters run the gamut. Sameer and Sunny’s landlord Duggal is probably a little preposterous but hilarious – after sustaining a head injury, he alternates between being blind, deaf or mute depending on the day. Rani’s father the Colonel is frightening like crazy (although Amrish Puri always ALWAYS scares me… See DDLJ and Karan Arjun). But the astrologer Raj who tags around after Sameer… I was kind of wondering the whole time what purpose he really served. Samir’s grandmother also felt a little thrown in, barely used.

And the clothes in this film… Ay. I look at pictures of myself often and think, “MAN, clothing from 1997 to 2005 was ultra tacky! What was I thinking?!” Um, well, this film assured me that I was certainly not alone. Despite the fact that Rani is supposed to be a designer, the clothes are pretty horrendous! Very bright, and not in a good way. I know this is Goa, the beach, but come on. This is a little much, people.

Sallu, please don't wear outfits like this again.

But if the clothes are frightening, the music is great. I feel like I’m paying attention to the quality of music in the films I watch more and more, and the music in this film… All good! From the title track (above) to Lal Dupatta… And despite the frightening shortness of Sallu’s shorts/sarong thing in this song, I think I adore this song the most. (And think this song, about the shortness of youth, was a little truer than Sallu realized.

Oh, and something else great about this film… Cameos from these people!

Cricketttttttttttt.

The climactic scene takes place at a cricket match (a “friendly match between India and Pakistan”… I’m not convinced that ever exists) where, well, actually cricketers are. Kapil Dev, Navjot Singh Siddhu, Harbhajan Singh, Irfan Pathan, Parthiv Patel, Srinath, and Ashish Nehra make appearances. As Papaya can attest to, I actually shouted with delight when I recognized Harbhajan and Ashish. (Sorry, I forgot to screencap the actual cameo before sending the DVD back to Netflix.)

But anyway, overall, I enjoyed but wasn’t wowed by Mujhse Shaadi Karogi.