Continuing Imran Week, we come to what was supposed to be the highlight of the week (that has been less than expected because of certain bloggers' slowness; they swear posts are still coming). Well, it's unlikely to be quite so climatic as we predicted, so this is likely to be brief.
So, I don't know what we expected from Delhi Belly, even knowing it was rated R, but let's just say we were all a mix of over and underwhelmed.
Even after hearing that the language of the film is rather colorful, our poor ears were quite offended. We read that the Hindi version was "less offensive" and we probably should have seen that one. (We weren't in love with the idea of an English-language film in the first place for many reasons.) There's an obnoxious amount of F-bombs in this film. An obnoxious, awkwardly placed amount. The number of times that F was forcefully crammed into the dialogue detracted from everything else. The sex scenes were also mostly just awkward and nothing but that. Both the vulgar dialogue and the vulgar sexual stuff just felt like the film was trying too too hard to be edgy.
The film also has a lot of lead-in that's just obnoxious language and bathroom humor. Seriously, I sat through the first 45 minutes of the film wondering if anything was ever going to happen and where the humor was outside of the bathroom. (And if the bathroom humor could even be called humor; we usually find a certain amount of that hilarious [see: yours truly laughed at every single pee joke in Ready] but this... didn't make us laugh.)
For a stretch, once the plot got kicked into gear, it was really moving along. There was less cussing, more of substance happening and more actual subtle humor that drew laughs.
We appreciated getting to stare at Imran, who was looking mighty fine and mighty scruffy. We weren't overwhelmed by this performance from him, though, even if it's nice to see him branch out a little bit. But maybe branching isn't necessarily a good thing: He mostly felt like he wasn't a fit for the role.
And for a film with a premise essentially based on bromance, there was surprisingly little palpable bromance (compared with other great male-trio films like 3 Idiots, Dil Chahta Hai and even kind of Thank You). And there was also not nearly enough chemistry flowing between Imran and Poorna Jagannathan to win us over. (And for that matter, I was kind of annoyed with the idea that wealthy, prissy Soniya was so in love with the idea of marrying Tashi, who was basically a slob fruitlessly chasing a serious journalist's career.)
Oh, and as a journalist, I have an ever-increasing thing about the portrayal of journalists in film (sleazebags or crusaders; most of us are neither) and this one SUPREMELY bothered me. It's a horrible representation of our profession, way of life and codes of conduct (for example no self-respecting newspaper would let a journalist who went through all of that personally and committed crimes, etc., in the process write an article, especially of that magnitude, due to conflicts of interest). Oh, and on the note of Tashi being a slob, journalists are often known for being a bit lax, but anyone chasing the career of "serious" journalism doesn't seriously pursue it being a slob. (Another note being that I hate the stereotype of the writer pursuing being a "serious" journalist; most reporters honestly aren't like that and being a "serious" reporter is essentially a soul-sucking job.)
I've been told this film is a realistic portrayal of Delhite bachelorhood, which is perhaps a way of ripping the glimmering "Bollywood" sheen off of things. But then, to me, this begs the question... Is a comedy really the way to go with that? If you're trying to make a serious point, make a serious point.
Honestly, this was the best part of the film for us. (Also randomly note that we rather enjoyed the music.)
And we'll end it, like the film, with Aamir.
And on a note of things to come, despite our disappointment with Delhi Belly, Imran week should continue. Papaya and Kiwi promise me their posts are in the works and will be done around Monday. We'll see how that goes.
So it appears that our Imran “week” will be something more akin to an Imran “days” as we’ll probably pack in our posts within the next two days and then have something on Delhi Belly after we see it Saturday. We just have ambitions that are greater than our free time at the moment, it seems.
Of course, it appears to be only fitting that the film reviews of Imran Appreciation (insert word for short timespan here) starts with Imran’s first film as an adult: Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. (And as probably could be predicted, it’s by yours truly, the Mighty Mango, because the others here are notoriously hard to get in gear.)
Synopsis: On the cusp of graduating and learning to make it in the real world, best friends Jai “Rats” Singh Rathore (Imran Khan) and Aditi “Meow” Mahant (Genelia D’Souza) face a lot of choices. They’ve been so close through school that everyone has assumed they’re together as a couple -- Aditi’s parents even ask seriously when the wedding will be. But Jai, who’s a pacifist, and Aditi, aggressive and impulsive, are convinced they’re all wrong for each other and each sets out to pick the perfect mate for the other, not realizing, of course, that everyone around them was right all along. Meanwhile, Aditi grapples with chasing a dream in America, and Jai unknowingly struggles to suppress a violent family nature that would fill his late father’s conditions for him becoming a man. The narrative is framed as a story recounted by Jai and Aditi’s group of friends -- Bombs, Jiggy, Rotlu and Shaleen -- to their new friend Mala.
Speaking of groups of friends, I feel like that’s a good place to start. This is a great movie about friendship and love. In case you haven’t already figured this out, I’m a big fan of fun friendship movies. I just feel like friendship is such a universal concept that an audience can connect with, and when real friendship works among the cast, it creates real chemistry that gives a film a firm foundation to build on. When you create that kind of atmosphere around a set, the film attains a smooth feel that almost guarantees a success.
And this film has a great bunch of friends who are the right mix of zany and serious. While I will say not all of the characters were necessarily deep enough to stick in my mind (had to look up almost all of their names for the synopsis), they were a delightful cast of supporters.
Of course the main feature of the film is the complicated friendship-relationship between Aditi and Jai. I think one of the big reasons that I like this film is that it plays with the dynamic of a friendship-relationship really well. Jai and Aditi understand that they love one another as friends and just don’t understand that they really love one another more than that. The film plays on the theme that love is based in friendship (Shahrukh is in my head right now saying, “Pyaar dosti hai: Agar woh meri sab se acchi dost nahin ban sakti toh main us se pyaar kar hi nahin sakta” [hopefully I said that all correctly]) but with the idea that they’re too confused by that love to chase it outright. It’s love and friendship with a twist.
For example, take "Kahin To Hogi Wo." That whole scene just about makes me want to cry because poor Jai and Aditi are both hopelessly in love with one another, but they’re confused and with other people and both jealous...
But before we get to this whole mess, we have a bunch of wonderful friendship moments. Like, and sorry I’m going to refer so much songs here, but "Kabhi Kabhi Aditi," where Jai tries to cheer up Aditi and we’re treated to plenty of adorable Imran, and "Pappu Can’t Dance," which is a fun group song.
Speaking of people who can’t dance... I’m afraid I must add Imran to this list. I know I’m probably getting a reputation as a dancing critic after mentioning Abhishek Bachchan’s gangliness, Saif Ali Khan’s stiffness + lack of rhythm and Salman Khan’s infuriating lack of motion or enthusiasm, but when you have to watch so much dancing... You notice these things.
Imran’s lack of dancing prowess is much milder than those mentioned above, and it’s often well-hidden. I cite this film as an example. Imran doesn’t actually dance-dance very often, if you pay attention. And when he does, it’s in a group or goofing off, so you don’t really notice. Like, again, if you go back to "Kabhi Kabhi Aditi," Imran is just having fun through the song, being adorable. And honestly I’m convinced the fact that he can’t dance doesn’t at all detract from his appeal, either.
Instead of dancing, we get lots of this dramatic arm-fling during songs.
Now if I can refer back to the post I made earlier this week, you’ll remember I said while Imran lacks in overwhelming star power, he has instead a cool, relaxed demeanor. This film pretty much capitalizes on that in a way I don’t know that I’ve seen another film do. For most of the film, Jai is just kind of cruising along, all passive. But by the end of the film, Jai finally gets worked up enough to punch Aditi’s fiancé Sushant in the face and you get to rejoice that he finally got fed up enough to do it.
Speaking of that, the storyline about pacifist Jai and his true heritage -- as a member of the violent Rathore clan in which you must hit a man, go to jail and ride a horse to “become a man” -- was just about the strangest, most ill-placed element I’ve ever seen in a film. (Well, perhaps it’s second to the headless horseman pot-growing detour in Tees Maar Khan. Perhaps.) Apart from the fact that the name Rat-hore made me laugh every two seconds, IT WAS SO WEIRD and had nothing to do with anything! In a film dealing with the complex line between love and friendship, there’s a dead dad painting that has arguments about manhood with Jai’s mom (who oddly never does much but lay around the house reading). There’s also Jai’s random cousins -- ironically played by two of the other Khans, Sohail and Arbaaz -- who have been obnoxious the entire film, that he meets up with in jail. They seem to have been chasing what it means to be manly in their family with little success.
Three Khan I mean Rathore jailbirds.
Oh, and one more thing about that -- after getting out of jail to go after Aditi, Jai has to fulfill the third part of being a Rathore: riding a horse. So he rides a horse (quite well, might a person with some riding experience say) down Marine Drive (how epic would that be?!) at night... And has no problem with cars or people! Come on!
And then the film’s story (not the film because it has that convoluted framework) culminates in what has to be one of my favorite love-professing scenes of all time. Jai-Rats frantically runs from airport security to the terminal where Aditi-Meow is boarding her plane for America, gets tackled and still manages to both sing and meow (yes, meow) at her, much to the confusion of airport security officers. And, you can probably guess what I’m going to say about this scene and Imran in this scene. That’s right. It’s adorable. He’s adorable. It’s sweet and cute and a million other things. And I loved every second of it.
Another thing, I really like Genelia D’Souza. She’s cute but a kind of off-the-wall, atypical girl with some edge (like in Chance Pe Dance, where she sports multicolored hair). I love it when we get to have a girl like that who’s off-beat; it makes things so much more fun. She also just seems to radiate energy to me, especially in this role, which I think balances perfectly with Imran’s coolness in this film. And there, I will end this review on a positive note instead of going into the reasons that I think Meghna (Jai’s other love interest/the peepeewoman) is the most annoying character ever.
So! That's it. The debut of Imran, the debut film of Imran Week. Hopefully we'll have more for you soon. :)
In honor of this weekend’s release of Delhi Belly, we bring you a mini Imran Khan Appreciation Week, complete with a post each from the three bloggers here, including (HOPEFULLY) my lame co-bloggers who rarely show themselves these days. If anyone wants to join in, that’d be more than welcome. We plan to cover Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na, I Hate Luv Storys and Break Ke Baad (we have yet to see Kidnap, Luck, and Imran’s roles as a young Aamir in Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak or Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander).
To kick off the week, I want to talk about some of the reasons we just love Imran.
But before I get into the specific reasons that we love Imran, I want to take a look at a larger sort of trend about our blog. I’ve noticed so far that an overwhelming amount of our blog thus far has focused on films from the 2000s, particularly on new films since 2010 (eight posts on films from just the last 18 months). Part of that is ease of access through Netflix, part of that is probably attributable to our age.
Yes, we have quite fervent attachments to Ranbir Kapoor, Shahid Kapoor and particularly Imran Khan, probably more than we’ve seen from other bloggers. To be perfectly honest, I attribute it to the fact that these guys are the stars of “our” generation. We’re all quite young (I won’t go into exactly how young, but let’s just say even these three youngsters are older than us), and while we all adore Akshay Kumar and the three seemingly ageless Khans, these men are older than our fathers. Despite their youthful appearances (really really youthful), they aren’t young. I also admit I think I developed a strong like for Shashi Kapoor in the 45 minutes of Kabhi Kabhi I watched, and Shashi is roughly the age of our grandpas. Obsessions like that just get a little weird at that point.
So it’s really nice to have some younger fellows on the platter as well so we can feel slightly less creeped out by our obsessing.
Maybe part of it is also that with the basis of our movie-watching experience formed by Hollywood, it’s refreshing to see the films of this younger generation step out of traditional Bollywood boxes and take on some more globalized film elements. I think it's an effect one of ever-growing globalization (with technology, the world keeps getting smaller, folks) and an audience that is globalized. In fact, I get the impression that with several films of the younger lot that they could, with minor adjustments, take on a Hollywood audience. If you cut down or out the songs, shortened the runtime and spoke English, many of these films could be on the clean side of Hollywood. And all of this is perhaps pushing further and further all the time, like with the fact that Delhi Belly is in English (which we all actually have mixed feelings about); I know lots of Bollywood folks want to be able to capture the American-film audience. (Which is particularly interesting because our dear Imran is actually Indian-American; love you, brother!)
For example, I’ve noticed that an increasing trend with the younger set is they’re much freer with kissing and talking about sex. The dynamics there are certainly shifting. There’s also been a healthy dose of skepticism added to the normal love story (see I Hate Luv Storys) but without changing the basic message of all-conquering love. (And it’s a healthy skepticism too; not the mess that Hollywood has.) Then there’s also the fact that these films increasingly take place partially abroad (Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na has its protagonists fly off to America, I Hate Luv Storys has a jog in New Zealand, and Break Ke Baad is set primarily in Australia).
Call this change what you will, but it’s nice to enjoy a younger, more globalized film once in a while; some of the obvious points that other films ignore are getting easier to tackle for the younger, less-established set. (Not that untainted, pure, classic Bollywood cinema isn’t fabulous itself; we obviously love Bollywood more than Hollywood for many reasons. Trust me, we get tired of the unrealistic sleazy sex-fest that is Hollywood all the time.)
*ahem* Anyway, proceeding off of that... One of the reasons that we love Imran is that he’s, well, sexy. Like really. (Even though the poor fellow cannot wow with his dancing skills.) Photos say it all when words can’t.
But Imran’s not just a sex symbol either. The man, like his Uncle Aamir, is completely adorable in the most basic, unmanly, cheek-pinching way. Maybe it was growing up around Aamir because sometimes Imran is almost frighteningly like him. And hate to break it to you, fellas, but an adorable man works his way into a woman’s heart much faster than a hot one.
And Imran works both sides of that coin flawlessly.
The man can even do both hot and adorable with just his eyebrows!
And as part and parcel of his being adorable, he can make us laugh pretty easily.
He’s so likable, in fact, that you like him even when he’s a MEAN pain in the you-know-what like in I Hate Luv Storys. (This is a quality he shares with his buddy Ranbir, as seen in Bachna Ae Haseeno.)
Do I think Imran has potential for leading-man status worthy of the surname Khan? Sometimes I doubt he has the full-power impact of the elder Khans, and instead of Aamir’s perfectionism, Shahrukh’s charm and Salman’s badfannyness, Imran has a chill, relaxed coolness instead. He has less of an immediate knockdown-powerful presence. But even if he doesn’t, I’m convinced he has the subtle likableness to be just fine without it.
