Dhadkan - monitor your heartbeat and contact your doctor.

I am not sure who told me or where I read that Dhadkan was quite a lovely romantic movie. It's not. It's the kind of clichéd, semi-tired (although in an amusing way) melodramatic film that we don't really see much of nowadays because I think after the early 00's most of Hindi film industry decided that after the likes of Lagaan and whatnot, they could probably do better than this. And they did! Well, some of them did.

To be fair to whoever planted the idea in my head that Dhadkan might be worth my time, it's not totally without merit. Melodrama, even less-than-average quality melodrama, is after all pretty entertaining. The tropes are all here - poor and rich, evil in-laws, crying maa.. But perhaps because of the tropes, the film ends up being pretty forgettable.

It's a story of Anjali (Shilpa Shetty), a daughter of a rich man, who makes the devastating mistake of falling in love with a poor man named Dev (Suniel Shetty). Actually, no, her only mistake is falling in love with an incredibly creepy man, nevermind the fact he's poor.

It's hard to pin down what makes Dev such a creepy, strange guy. He's a typical crazy-in-love Bollywood hero, extremely devoted to his love, nothing can break it, he'll die without the love of his life and all this nonsense but what really makes him strange and unbalanced is his over-the-top reactions to everything. Suniel barely has time to act from all the shouting he does.

Look, nobody's ever said Bollywood heroes can't be emotional - by all means they should be. But not emotionally unstable or completely unhinged, like Dev comes off as.

So needless to say, this love match doesn't quite work out as when Dev goes to Anjali's house to ask for her hand, he ends up shouting at her father and obsessing about his sandals (to paraphrase the dialogue, "YES MY SHOES HAVE HOLES, I AM POOR BUT I WILL MARRY YOUR DAUGHTER ANYWAY BECAUSE I LOVE HER NOW AND FOREVER."). Anjali is brokenhearted but tells Dev she will marry who her father asks her to. Dev shouts at her that this is not the last she'll see of him. Oh, goody.

So Anjali is forced to marry the rich, handsome and courteous Ram (Akshay Kumar). What a terrible fate! To marry this ...perfect stranger who doesn't shout at her! Ugh!

Naturally she angsts a bit. But it doesn't take long for her to find him quite a lovely man to be forcefully married to - he's nice, respectful, devoted, hard-working, insert every possible positive adjective you could think of, because that's how good Ram is. Forget seeing the softer side of Khiladi, this man is practically marshmallow.

And of course, he is much better when in comparison to his awful family who hate their new daughter-in-law and even hate Ram. But he knows they hate him! But he loves them anyway! (Yes, it's that kind of a film.)


But sometime after Anjali and Ram's marriage has gone from forced to blissful, guess who's back? Dunh dunh dunnnnn!

Thankfully the film seems to recognize that Dev is hopelessly unhinged and does not portray him as Anjali's perfect man. He's just there to set the final melodrama into motion and boy, does he ever.

So that's kind of Dhadkan for you, right there. Lots of melodramatic twists, okay songs that look more 90's and 00's, a truckload of make up on Shilpa's face, and tons of Akshay looking dreamy. If you think you might be into that, well, I can't recommend this film but I can certainly let you know it exists.

IFAC #16: Youtube gem re: best film ever.

Yes, it is indeed a Making Of/promotional interviews for Main Khiladi Tu Anari. I remember watching this and trying to decipher the Hindi in it. I think at some point Saif says a film like this has never been made before. Correctomundo!

Darna mana hai? Darna mushkil hai, yaar..

(With my barely existing Hindi skills the title of this post is supposed to say "Fear is forbidden? To fear is difficult, man..")

Last night was another NIF movie night. For those of you unaware, NIF is a term originating from the Bollywhat? forums, where it was decided that N(on-)I(ndian)F(ilm person) would refer to those who primarily consume non-Indian entertainment and aren't familiar or (yet) keen on Indian films in general. I have two friends who are still NIFs essentially but we've formed a habit of meeting up with me coming to their apartment, a handful of Indian movies in hand. Altogether we've matched tens of Indian films from my collection, and while some haven't been successes, I'm clearly doing something right; one of my friends bought Rang De Basanti for herself earlier this year.

There's also another, less clearly defined group of NIFs I'm semi-regularly showing Hindi films to; some friends from university. Attendance was high on the first meeting when we watched Lage Raho Munnabhai, but low on second meeting when only three guys made it. To cater to stereotypical "guy tastes", I didn't shove Hum Tum into my DVD player, but we instead watched Sholay, which was a tad too long for their attention span, but they liked it. So much can be said for that classic - it might be alien to those unfamiliar with Indian cinema, but dammit, it simply works!

But now I throw this to you? Since I do a lot of rewatching with my NIF buddies, even during the dry periods when I tend to not watch much new stuff myself, I tend to want to write about them, as I have in the past, but are they interesting for you all to read about? My blog is essentially for my own views, and it can be weird to read those of total strangers, but naturally during these rewatch posts I'll also shed light on how the rewatch changed my view on the film, or if it did at all.


So since it was so close to Halloween - though we Finns don't celebrate - I picked the only horror-esque/scary-ish Bollywood film I had in my collection (unless scary means really, really bad, in which case I have more than this one) and through the luck of a random draw, this became the film of the evening.

I suppose it deserves a mention as I discuss the RGV-produced Darna Mana Hai (Fear is forbidden, 2003), which I saw around three years back during my biggest "I must see everything Saif Ali Khan was in!"-phase, I bought it simply because Saif looked hot on the cover. To be specific, Ek Hasina Thi-esque. Yes, that hot. For that reason, I only really have screencaps of his and Boman's bit of the story.

I warned my friends, "This is not a scary movie. This is a freaky, hilarious movie." DMH has six separate ghost stories wrapped in a framework of a stereotypical slasher plot of a story; seven friends get stranded on a road in the middle of nowhere after their car breaks down. They make a bonfire and start sharing ghost stories to each other. Naturally a killer creeps in the forest around them.

The first story, starring Sohail Khan and Antara Mali, is actually a tiny bit creepy. The direction varies from story to story, sometimes rather radically. Salim-Sulaiman's music composition for the movie is appropriately freaky, but a little too much so - it just seems like they went a bit too crazy with it. Since the movie really isn't scary at all, creating jump scares with weird sound effects just comes off as goofy.

But while the first story might actually have some hope as to this being a scary movie, the second story shatters all such illusion. The story of Anil, a photographer spending a night in a remote hotel run by a peculiar character (Boman Irani), starts out with some tension but ends up just being hilarious in its exaggerated nature. Both actors do a fine job, don't get me wrong - I quite love them in this - but the story itself is just quite something else. You have to see it to believe it.

But here's a hint for you.

Around this story my friends began realizing this really was a movie to be enjoyed in a less serious manner. The story of Raghuvir Yadav as a teacher haunted by the fact a little girl does her homework is probably the weakest of all the stories, but the next story, with Shilpa Shetty and co-starring apples, saves the film by being a total riot (somewhat intentionally I would hope!).

Vivek Oberoi and Nana Patekar's story about a midnight hitchhiker probably delivers the best twist out of all the stories, and the last one starring Aftab Shivdasani getting weird powers from a god began to test our collective patience with the movie. The worst part? It wasn't over yet! Still tens of minutes to watch Sameera Reddy try to escape the hands of a demented killer in the middle of the forest. At least the other crappy actors they got to the framework story were out of the picture at that point (not really a spoiler, you figure so much out from the get go).

The film ends on another twist, naturally, and then we get credits along with some more badly mixed dance music. These factors made one of my friends announce, "This is probably the worst film I've ever seen. And that includes Twilight." I replied, "Oh come on, you can't possibly mean that!". She immediately backtracked, "Okay, maybe not. But out of the ones we've seen so far.."

It's true, Darna Mana Hai is quite possibly the most mediocre out of the films I've provided them with so far. But it has its charm, for the mini-stories, the goofy twists, the scary apples! And if the tag line of the film is, "jo darr gaya, woh mar gaya" (he who fears, dies) then shouldn't we just be glad there's no way in hell we're going to be scared during this film?

So that's my non-pick for the Halloween. Happy Halloween to all those who celebrate. Those who don't, enjoy the weekend!

Introducing .. the best movie ever! Main Khiladi Tu Anari.

I'm going to be moving which means a blogging pause for exactly how long, I'm not sure. To bear you over this terrible time, I thought I'd
a) finish up the Introducing Sakshay series
b) plug my favourite bad movie
and c) picspam the best movie ever. <sup>1

1</sup> ..according to a youtube comment.

Main Khiladi Tu Anari - what is there to say about this brilliant piece of celluloid history. How to do justice to such a legend with mere words?

Perhaps in order to dissect this mythical creature we need to start with the basics.

Saif Ali Khan, in the most retrospectively ironic role perhaps ever, plays Deepak Kumar, a super-star who is sick of lover roles in romantic melodramas. He's looking for a role with edge, sensible movies, angry young man, or as he puts it here: "A storm!"

Just as he speaks those fateful words, who should walk in and by walk in I mean kick the door in and enter but Karan Joglekar (portrayed by none other than Akshay Kumar), a cop who is determined to fight crime, especially now that some crooks killed his brother (look, it's the plot reminding us of its existence! hello plot!). Karan happens to be exactly the kind of storm Deepak is looking to play, and impressed with what he sees, he strikes a deal with Karan's boss to tail the badass cop in order to learn some style from him.

I know, method actors in Bollywood, how outrageous is that? But bear with me, the beautiful lack of logic can only lead to good things.

Karan is not happy but agrees to let Deepak tail him on one condition; Deepak has to teach Basanti (Shilpa Shetty), a girl who dances on the street and looks after a bunch of orphans (why of course!), how to act like the night club dancer Mona, who worked alongside this bad guy before agreeing to testify against him, but of course the villain killed her and now Basanti magically appears and looks exactly like Mona. Phew. The complexity of this plot is mind-boggling, I'm telling you. So anyway! Deepak agrees, Basanti turns into Mona, Basanti gets to meet her orphans again and Deepak gets super-emotional like the girl that he is:

Heart-warming, hai na?

What follows is various scenes where Akki is a complete badass, and Saif is a total goof, and a bunch of really wtf-inducing weirdness (the romance in this film is ..well, let's just say the Saif-Akshay relationship is the most normal one in it). There is a lot of corny dance moves, and vague gayness and it all adds up to class A entertainment.

No one in this world should be so cynical as to not enjoy movies of this kind. MKTA practically defines "so-bad-it's-good" in my books. Of course, there can be arguments regarding on how great it would be if it was better, or had a little less WTF-ery, or contained a little more logic, but at the end of the day, it is what it is and what it is, is sheer genius.

You've got Saif in one of the few successful roles he had during the 90's, showing that the man did have a smidgeon of talent even back then; his comic timing is occasionally very good here. You've got Akshay in what is probably the best Khiladi role of them all, kicking ass and taking names, and then kicking ass with said list of names. You've got old-nose-Shilpa, delivering those gyrating-hips-type dance moves with the kind of grace you'd expect from a movie this subtle. Shakti Kapoor as the villain, Anu Malik in charge of the music and the singing on the absolutely worst Hinglish song ever, "My Adorable Darling", the list is as long as the crimes 90's Bollywood commited against humanity.

But of course, in here somewhere, there is a message, a profound teaching to the great masses, a story of love, and of friendship; a story of acceptance, and understanding; a story of how a badass and a wimp can join hands in holy celluloid matrimony ... but you know, even if there is no great message here to take home, you should watch this movie.

If you won't, I'll gladly watch it for you.