NEW: (Goliyon Ki Raasleela) Ram-Leela: Every bit the beautiful tragedy you expect

Synopsis: In Ranjaar, a gun-laden “town like no other” in Gujarat, the Rajadis and the Saneras are feuding like it’s 1500 and they’re the Capulets and Montagues. Except, you know, with more guns and cellphones. But amidst the feud, there is Ram (Ranveer Singh) the Rajadi and Leela (Deepika Padukone) the Sanera — who must, of course, fall in love and work to end the feud even as it threatens to swallow them.

Let me just start my review by saying much of this movie is completely and totally Sanjay Leela Bhansali. As one might expect considering the man himself wrote, directed, produced and composed for this one. The film is gorgeous (evidenced by this image-heavy post), apparently painstakingly crafted frame by frame — and then SLB takes that pain out on the viewer in the storyline. He’s one who really knows how to make it hurt, most of all by letting you hope at certain moments. More on that later.

But just as you might expect, the music resonates (dammit if dhols aren’t ringing in my head all over again), the cast members are pushed to excellent performances, the symbolism is very prominent and even the most common of things are laden in detail and opulence. And also true to Bhansali form, despite all of the many, many things that happen, the film has its dragging moments.

NEW: Chennai Express has its bumps and slowdowns, but it's a fun ride

Synopsis: 40-year-old Rahul (SRK) has cared for his grandfather much of his life, so much so that he wishes the old bugger would just die already. But then dadaji does bite the dust (“out on 99,” just like his hero Sachin) and Rahul is tasked with taking his ashes to Rameshwaram — but newly free Rahul would rather go on a holiday to Goa instead. Unluckily, however, he ends up missing his stop and getting stuck on the Chennai Express — with don’s daughter Meenamma (Deepika Padukone) as she is being kidnapped by her father’s big fat goondas.

Before even going in, Chennai Express combined two of my favorite things: Rohit Shetty and Shahrukh Khan. The combination could not help but thrill.

Coming out of it, though, I did wonder whether it really lived up to all it could be.

Bachna Ae Haseeno (2008): Curse thee, second half!

Bachna Ae Haseeno (2008)

Essentially, this film is a three-part look at different love stories in the life of one guy, Raj Sharma (Ranbir Kapoor), who goes from using and completely wronging the first two to getting wronged by the third and trying to turn himself around at that point. First, you have Mahi (Minissha Lamba), an idealistic Punjabi girl; then Radhika (later Shreya) (Bipasha Basu), a model in Mumbai; and finally Gayatri (Deepika Padukone), an Indian student in Australia.

Even though Ranbir Kapoor plays a complete douche in this film, it’s hard not to love him. That man is just way too freaking adorable not to forgive his doucheness (even before he wants you to forgive his doucheness) and love him.

And trust me, there’s a lot to forgive, because he does some really, really terrible things.

In the first storyline, Raj meets Mahi, an idealistic young girl obsessed with DDLJ, on a Eurorail train. From there on, Raj basically apes DDLJ to get with Mahi. As someone who thoroughly adores SRK, I love watching other people imitate his roles, especially Raj from DDLJ (although watching people do Rahul from K2H2 is also a fave), and I’m thinking of even dedicating a whole gallery to these imitations.

Ranbir doing Raj is hilarious awesomeness. (It’s also funny to me on another level because Ranbir’s nose reminds me of SRK’s.) But even though it’s hilarious awesomeness, he’s doing it for jerkish reasons, and you can’t help but feel bad for the girl – because who could resist Ranbir Kapoor as Raj?

What woman in her right mind could resist this man?

 

But just wait, it gets worse. Then Raj moves to Mumbai, where he meets Radhika, an aspiring model, who subsequently becomes his live-in girlfriend for something crazy like three years. Then Raj gets a job offer to go to Australia, which he thinks will put an immediate stop to the relationship. To his surprise (and mine), Radhika immediately starts making plans for their wedding so that she can go with him, including setting up a small ceremony at the courthouse. It seems a little contrived to me that after three years as a live-in girlfriend who’s never mentioned marriage, Radhika decides they have to get married just because they’re moving. But then again, maybe that’s just me.

After trying to indirectly weasel his way out of the wedding in a hundred different ways, Raj ends up deserting Radhika without a word and going straight to the airport. I think the scene of her sitting on the courthouse steps in her wedding dress and mehndi while the rain pours down on her… One of the saddest things I’ve ever seen. (Not necessarily in the cripplingly depressing way that Devdas is, but in the “oh, God, that’s so horrible, I would freaking kill that dude!” kind of way.)

Left at the altar (or registrar's office) by that adorable dork above. SO SAD.

 I can’t say I’m much of a fan of Bipasha in this film, but that scene was completely brilliant. If a character I haven’t particularly cared for during most of her part in the film can bring me to tears in one scene… You know it’s brilliant.

And that scene made me want to KILL Raj, as said before.

That’s probably why once he gets to Australia and actually falls in love with hard-working Indian student Gayatri only to propose and be completely shot down… You feel a sense of satisfaction because Raj has finally gotten what he deserves. It also helps that it comes from a woman who knows what she wants – a career, not to be tied down, so on – and is turning him down for personal nondouchey reasons.

You, master of heartbreak, should have known better than to fall in love.

And yet you can’t help but feel bad for Raj because, well, he has actually fallen in love for the first time (albeit kind of dumbly since Gayatri told him not to) and, well, it’s Ranbir and you love him anyway. Up to this point, I think the film was great. You had great acting and got to watch a real pain in the you-know-what get his just desserts.

And then finally, Raj gets it and realizes what a douche he’s been to other people and how they feel. So he sets off on a quest back to India to make things right. Even that is great, in theory. The film had a pretty unique and valid premise in a changed man looking for redemption by trying to make old wrongs right in love.

In practice, the Mahi closure was the only one that worked for me. When Raj gets around to Radhika-turned-Shreya, now a famous supermodel, it really falls apart. For her “forgiveness,” she makes him work like a dog as her personal assistant, which he agrees too. Finally, after months with no break, she tells him how horrible she felt waiting for him to come and marry her and refuses to accept his apologies despite the months of slaving. THEN, after absolutely no previous hint of breakdown or giving in, she shows up at the airport to make up.

Forced much? It really didn’t work for me there.

Not buying this brand of forgiveness.

 

After this downward slump, we get the epitome of cop-out endings. Raj returns to Australia to find that Gayatri has been writing him emotional letters apologizing pretty much every day since he’s been gone. So basically after being resolved not to get married and be tied down, Gayatri decides right after Raj leaves that she actually loves him and so goes to write a letter and stick it under his door every day? When did such a strong woman suddenly become so pathetic? So quickly? And yes, she was probably wrong to discard him out of hand, but since when was wanting her independence so wrong? I felt like the apologies were too one-sided when she really didn’t have that much to apologize for.

Oh, hai, you. I'm going to meet you after six months of leaving love letters on your doorstep and cry...

And forget all my misgivings and independence awfully fast...

Then kiss you (yes, kiss you) and agree to marry you.

 

Basically, this movie starts out great and they give some great potential for strong female characters, then cop out at the end. Radhika/Shreya keeps a certain level of her power because as she tells Raj, she puts on Shreya’s (pardon my language but there really is no other term) bitchy diva, “I am in charge” attitude to keep people at a distance and keep from being hurt and even after she apologizes, the attitude is still there for the public at large. But at the same time, a woman who was resolute against forgiving the man who left her at the altar… melts. Too quickly. And Gayatri’s complete reversal is an utter cop-out. There is absolutely no other explanation. A woman intent on independence and her own goals suddenly decides, eh, Raj is more important. Ultimate, ultimate death blow to what could have been a fantastic character.

So if you can handle not finishing it (I know a lot of people can’t; sadly, Papaya and Kiwi are such people), I’d only watch this film up to intermission and make up your own ending from there.

Love Aaj Kal (2009): Bad music, excellently different story

So I actually wrote up this post a while back when I first watched this movie (as in, before we even started the blog), but I just now realized that I never posted it! Whoops!

So here we go: Love Aaj Kal (Love These Days).

Even though both Papaya and Kiwi will drastically disagree with me, I really enjoyed this movie.

It’s sort of a double movie, happening on two timelines at once. One story revolves around British Indians Jai (Saif Ali Khan) and Meera (Deepika Padukone), a ‘modern’ couple who fall in love but agree to keep cool and not be too over-the-top; it’s supposed to be all carnal. The move is pure logic, because Meera wants to go to India to work on restoration projects and Jai wants to go to America to work on bridges. But the pair agree to remain friends and keep on talking to each other once Meera moves to India.

Then Jai, who’s dealing with missing Meera even if he won’t admit it, meets Veer Singh (Rishi Kapoor), an older man who owns a café. The second timeline then appears when Veer begins recounting to Jai the story of his youth in 1960s Delhi, when he crossed India for Harleen Kaur (played by some random Brazilian actress), a woman that he never spoke to but loved anyway. (In the flashback timeline, Saif also plays the young Veer and does a good job of switching back and forth between the two.)

Overall, this film was really Westernized for Bollywood. At least in the modern-day timeline of Jai and Meera. Lots of kissing, talking about sex, the whole storyline… I know Bollywood movies are increasingly set abroad, but this one really could have been a Hollywood movie if it wasn’t in Hindi… Well, and if there weren’t songs and dancing. Those don’t really happen much in American movies.

Which brings me to the foremost thing I learned from this movie: Saif Ali Khan cannot, cannot dance. When I saw Kal Ho Naa Ho about a month ago, I thought, “Maybe it’s just because he’s next to SRK and you can’t really compare them.” Like seeing Shahrukh Khan and Salman Khan dance next to one another in Karan Arjun – Sallu just moves so differently than SRK that you can’t tell anything about either one’s dancing with them next to each another. But after seeing this movie, my theory is confirmed: Saif cannot dance. (I know, let she who has rhythm cast the first stone… I can’t dance, but I’m a darn good stone-caster!)

The other thing this movie confirmed about Saif? Even if there’s no way he could ever be a young Rishi Kapoor, he looks better as a hairy-faced Sikh. I’m often a fan of facial hair on guys though not often a fan of facial hair on Indian guys, but I have to say, it’s becoming on Saif.

Anyone else think Saif needs to keep the facial hair?

But back to the music – I’m pretty sure I could have done without all of the music in this movie. That silly “We Twist” song annoyed me to no end. It served pretty much no purpose whatsoever. That being said, I don’t mean it would be fine without the songs (well, except that one). The placement for songs was fine. Just the quality of the songs themselves had me retching.

But overall, I really loved the movie. I thought it was of great quality and quirky to boot. It was distinct, which I feel is a quality that Bollywood movies (and also a lot of recent romantic Hollywood movies) struggle to achieve.

It also felt like a good dip in the darker, more complicated side of love – and mixing love and logic – that still has that wildly romantic, satisfying Bollywood happy ending. For the Veer-Harleen timeline, Veer shows up to thwart Harleen’s wedding after being beaten by her family, and Jai finally realizes what an idiot he is and leaves San Francisco to come to India for Meera. That doesn’t mean along the way there isn’t a chance for heartbreaks: It takes Meera actually marrying someone else for both Meera and Jai to come to the realization that they love each other.

The scene where Meera leaves her new husband (yeah, plot aside, leaving Rahul Khanna should be a crime!) in order to be with Jai and calls him just to have him announce that he’s moving to San Francisco? Probably one of the most heart-rending scenes ever.

SO SAD. And so brilliantly acted by Deepika.

But ultimately, it’s all OK in the end because Jai comes to his senses and comes after her. Like I said, it’s still got the happy ending you’re looking for, even if it explores a lot of pain along the way. Ultimately, it’s the pain that stretches across most of the film that makes the happy moments – and especially the ending – feel so much more powerful and worth it.