R[edacted] Rajkumar

I still really want to call this Rambo Rajkumar, because R...Rajkumar is a really dumb title and if nothing else, this movie needs a bad-ass title, because it doesn’t really have that much else going for it. But apparently they got in some sort of hot water about using the name Rambo, so Shahid's character became Romeo Rajkumar and the title became. . . that. As far as the movie itself, I’m not sure I was disappointed, since it was a timepass in the very best sense of the word. But, well, I’m not sure it’s worth watching more than once.

The beginning was promising. Shahid Kapoor (as the titular whatever-you-want-to-call-him Rajkumar) beats people up and dances in fantastic Prabhudeva fashion. We first meet Chanda (Sonakshi Sinha) breaking bottles over the heads of some obnoxious men, and Angry Sonakshi channels Madhuri from Beta in a great way. Sadly, we don’t see much more of that, although Indignant Sonakshi (as Rajkumar stalks Chanda) is almost as good.

Love 86 (1986)

Left to right: Leena, Omi, Vicky, and Esha. Now what does that spell?

I will admit that I don’t expect a lot from unsubtitled 80s movies, but this was awfully sweet. I can’t pretend that I understood everything that happened, but the basic plot was standard, and sound effects alerted me if anything dramatic was happening. Leena and Esha (Neelam) are sisters, whose mother, Lakshmi (Tanuja) wants them to get married to rich men with prestigious jobs. She isn’t interested in anything irrelevant like her daughters’ happiness and she’ll stop at nothing to get them to do exactly what she wants. She’s just a wonderful evil bitch, I loved it.

Even her dog doesn't like her!

Phata Poster Nikla SHAHID!

SHAHID! You’re back! Finally! This movie is a beautiful thing for any Shahid Kapoor fan who has been waiting years to see him in anything good*. It’s completely his movie. It’s Sashapalooza. He’s in almost every frame, making faces and emoting and I laughed my pants off.

*Are there any other kinds of Shahid Kapoor fans? The lucky ones who don’t know he did anything besides Jab We Met?

I have no idea why this is getting bad reviews. It was hilarious. There wasn’t a big crowd at the theater, but everyone seemed to be really enjoying it, so it was a lot of fun. I’m still confused by their trend of showing a post-intermission trailer-- I’m not sure if that’s an Eros thing or what, but we got Krrish 3, which was cool on the big screen. At least it wasn’t the horrible mood-killer that the Bajatey Raho trailer was in the middle of Lootera.

Shahid Kapoor plays Vishwas Rao, whose widowed mother Savitri (Padmini Kolhapure) has only one dream: to see her only son become an honest police officer. Vishwas, naturally, has only one dream as well-- he wants to be a film star. Despite this, they are close and their relationship is very sweet. (They have a song!) Padmini has the filmi maa thing DOWN, by the way. She has all the appropriate feelings, all the right dialogues, everything turned up to 11, but she’s still a unique character with backstory and everything. Plus she’s always ready to tuck in her sari and go after thugs when necessary. When you come down to it, their relationship is what drives the film and both Shahid and Padmini are excellent in portraying their slightly silly, but ultimately good characters. Honestly, it’s one of the most enjoyable family dynamics I’ve seen on screen in a while. Savitri has dreams for her son, but really she just wants him to be happy. Vishwas isn’t a mama’s boy, but he’d still do anything for her just because she’s his maa and he loves her. This does mean that the romance track in the movie kind of takes a backseat, but that’s okay. It’s a lot more satisfying to see the hero in emotional turmoil over the plight of the mother instead of the girl who randomly jumped on the back of his scooter at the beginning of movie.

Dulaara, or, that sexy pants guy

Dulaara is why we have Meri Pant Bhi Sexy.

I can’t find a subtitled version on youtube, but the primary lyrics go something like

“I am so irresistible, all the girls love me, etc. etc.,”

“BECAUSE. . . My pants are sexy, my shirt is sexy, my hair is sexy, my walk* is sexy, my handkerchief is sexy toooooo.”

*so far as I can tell, whenever a Hindi song rhapsodizes about the qualities of anyone’s “chal”, they do in fact mean the person’s butt.

Also, you can’t tell from the youtube version, but Govinda’s sexy shirt has little mesh cut-out panels for extra sexy.

Anyway, this song is reason enough to watch the movie. If you haven’t seen it yet, you are MISSING OUT. It’s Govinda-riffic. It’s 90s-tastic. It is spectacular*.

*My roommates, who were alternately horrified and amused by this movie, complained, but since they kept coming back to see more, it’s hard to take them seriously.

Wanted: not even trying to review this

Sometimes, I watch a movie with lots of expectations, and it falls short. Sometimes, I don’t expect anything, and I’m pleasantly surprised. And sometimes, all I want is a movie where there are female characters who exist for reasons besides being constantly threatened with rape. This was not it.

See all the awesome in this picture? It lies. Don't watch this movie. 

Wanted seemed like just the thing. Salman, beating people up! Something flashy that did well at the box office!. The song after the opening fight scene is an energetic, silly dance number, with special appearances from Anil Kapoor, Govinda, and Prabhudeva (who directed).

Wanted is a remake of the Telugu movie Pokiri, which I have absolutely zero interest in seeing now. Salman Khan plays a generic badass-for-hire, who frequently and dramatically beats people up. Ayesha Takia is the love interest, who has her own problems with a creepy-ass policeman stalker. The characters have names, but I don’t remember and I’d rather not watch the movie again to find them out. Ayesha and Salman are pretty adorable together. It’s hilarious to watch her get more pushy and outspoken as she spends more time with Salman’s bad-ass character. It’s just too bad it’s so rapey. Go watch Bodyguard instead. It’s also terrible, but much more watchable and plus Salman loses his shirt to a fire hose.

Also, Ayesha as Madhubala in an appliance store. Honestly, the first 20 minutes are worth it for the fight scene, this meet-cute, and the Jalwa song.

Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani

Style: Fantastic! Substance: Meh.

I mean, it was still completely worth the ticket price. I really enjoyed it. But it ended up being a lot more pedestrian than I had been hoping. I watched Cocktail in April, and I was so impressed by Deepika that I really started looking forward to this movie, but she didn’t have a lot of room to do much. Post-interval it was all Ranbir, Ranbir, Ranbir. He got all the good choreography, all the montage songs, and all the backstory, but it didn't really make me like his character any better.

I don’t want to discount the flashy stuff, though. Most importantly, MADHURI ON THE BIG SCREEN!

I’m not sure why they stuck the song right at the beginning of the movie, or why Farah Khan couldn’t come up with something a little fancier for Madhuri, but that’s not important. This and Balam Pichkari are my runaway favorites, but the entire soundtrack is great, all the dancing is flashy, and all the outfits are glamorous.

Pyaar Dewaana Hota Hai (2002)

(Translation: Love is Crazy). And crazy it is, man. I didn’t know anything about the movie before I watched it. It had Rani and Govinda, and "pyaar" written in pastel colors of the cover. For the most part, it's what it says on the tin: sentimental romance, unabashed filminess and some great dancing. Then it gets a little weird. More on that later.

Sunder (Govinda) is an artist who moves to Delhi from the country and his friends make fun of him for being naive and uneducated. He gets a job painting billboards and meets Payal (Rani Mukherjee) who’s visiting from the US. There’s a misunderstanding, she thinks he’s mute, and he keeps up the charade so he can keep seeing her.

And who can blame him? I really liked Payal. She does classical dance, she climbs up scaffolding to meet a sign painter, she drives herself to Agra in the middle of the night. When she’s struck with pity for a beggar, she sets him up with a telephone stand, and when she finds out he’s faked his disability, she has him tossed in jail. She’s the one who decides that what she feels for Sunder is love, not sympathy, and calmly tells her family of her decision to marry him.

Plus, Rani is peppy and gorgeous and has great chemistry with Govinda.

This review just descends into self-indulgent screencapping from here.

Teri Meri Kahaani (2012)

Just another to add to the list of crappy movies I watch because Shahid Kapoor is in them. Shahid and Priyanka Chopra play triple roles of 3 different couples in 3 different time periods. The problem, of course, is that there’s no actual plot, or anything linking the three stories. They get together for no discernible reason, and then something stupid happens to keep them apart. The songs are good, and everything looks really nice, so it's not a complete loss, just a disappointment.

We start with 1960s Mumbai. Shahid is a musician, Priyanka is an actress. She’s very pretty.

2010s London. They are young, and hip. They drink beer. They text, and tweet, and facebook.

I feel embarrassed to even own a cell phone 

Yeah, this was a song where the text-speak lyrics go dancing across the screen. It was pretty awful.

The 1910s segment is this close to actually having a plot, and was the most fun besides. Shahid looks just as realistic as the muscle-bound casanova of Lahore as Priyanka does holding a goat and swinging around her hair extensions, but you know, they’re pretty, so who cares. We aren’t in this for the story at this point. 

Besides horrible poetry, Shahid finally gets to dance, and we can spend an enjoyable five minutes watching him waggle his pelvis all over creation.

This is where I thought we would find some sort of theme for the movie, some connection between the three stories. We don’t. Their reunions are just as contrived as their separations, and I didn’t see the universality in their relationships that I assume the director intended. It's really disappointing that the script gives us no reason to care about any of the 6 characters in the movie, because I would have really enjoyed a grand love story with Shahid and Priyanka. When they have the right material, I really like them. This movie is just so shallow, and not in a fun, Dostana way. Just a wasted potential way.

Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu (2012)

I don’t have a lot of patience for the stories about self-centered young men being adrift and confused and having themselves a quarter-life crisis. I’m not sure why-- I totally did the quarter life crisis thing too. Right on schedule at 25, I packed up all my things, quit my job and moved 2500 miles away. But did I meet Kareena Kapoor and have wacky adventures? No. I drove across rural Canada with my mother.

Apparently this movie got a lot of praise for being “fresh” and “different”, but I must hang around the right parts of the internet because all I heard was “meh” and “bleh” which was my reaction as well. The slightly unconventional ending doesn’t really make up for the self-indulgent paint-by-numbers effect of the rest of the movie.

Rahul (Imran Khan) is depressed, his parents are overbearing and he won’t admit to them that he lost his fancy job. He meets Riana (Kareena Kapoor) who is your standard issue Manic Pixie Dream Girl but since this is Kareena, she is actually fun and I would totally be her friend. She, in typical MPDG fashion, convinces him to get drunk and somehow they end up getting accidentally married by Elvis because this is Las Vegas and that’s what you do. This whole thread was actually pretty funny, Kareena is great and Imran makes hilarious faces so their comedy works pretty well together.

As they do the paperwork to get their marriage annulled, Riana wears straight-laced Rahul down until they become friends, like you have seen in every other movie like this ever. You can almost see the director going “You were such a hit in Jab We Met! Just be Geet again!” Of course, things happened in Jab We Met, we are not so lucky here. As she tries to cheer him up, he falls for her, because she’s Kareena, who wouldn’t? This part dragged, a lot. I don’t know if it was the script, or the (lack of) chemistry, or that they didn’t bother to give Riana any character outside of her relationship with Rahul, but it was just boring.

Look familiar?

What I'd rather be watching.

It picked up again when they went to India and met Geet-- I mean Riana’s-- family. Sure, they were a total cliche, but I’d rather spend New Years with them than Rahul’s character. Then there was “Aunty-ji”, which was adorable.

Lyrics translation here.

The ending might have redeemed this movie, but it didn’t quite work for me. Summary: it did nothing to change my mind about wanting to throw Rahul through a window. Spoilers, but, you know, rom-com, not that many options here.

While they’re in India, Rahul finally makes a move on Riana, but she rejects him. She just wanted to cheer him up and get him to have some fun, like friends do. I know this scene worked for a lot of people. Imran and Kareena do it well, but I have very little patience for “You’re not in love with me so now I’m mad”, as realistic as it was. Then Rahul finally stands up to his parents at a dinner party, because nothing displays maturity and independence like screaming at your parents like a 13 year old. Emboldened, he makes up with Riana, they stay friends, and he goes on to live a happy and mature life pining after Riana.

Yeah. The romantic comedy genre is pretty formulaic: there are two people, who according to the script, ought to be together, but are not, due to either interpersonal issues or external factors. This gives the opportunity, even to lazy script writers, for either character development and/or plot. If you are going to deviate from the formula-- that’s great! But then you really do have to think up your own story to tell, and that’s where this movie didn’t deliver for me.

Mere Brother Ki Dulhan (2011)

I don’t know why I watched this movie again, but I’m glad I did. I didn’t like it last year, because I went in expecting Ali Zafar and instead it was all Imran Khan and Katrina Kaif. This time around, I wanted a mediocre rom-com for some background noise, and I ended up really enjoying it.

I’ve decided that I do like Katrina in this movie. It’s comfortably within her skills as an actor (unlike, say, Jab Tak Hai Jaan) and you have to admit she’s pretty adorable.

The plot is pretty standard. Kush (Imran) and his family are arranging his brother’s (Ali Zafar) marriage to Dimple (Katrina), but Kush and Dimple fall in love instead. They hatch plans, hijinks ensue, you get the idea. It’s not a deep movie with character development or anything, but it doesn’t have to be. I’m generally unimpressed with Imran’s ability to emote and romance, and there were parts that seemed a little forced, but I thought he and Katrina were able to pull off the proposal scene, it was pretty sweet.

There was far too little Ali in the movie. His reactions during Do Dhaari Talwaar were my absolute favorite part of the movie.

It’s a good movie for what it is: a shiny Yash Raj romance about rich people with plot holes large enough to drive a bus through.