Maha Badmaash. Is. Awesome.

Maha Badmaash is a 1977 masala extravaganza that's kind of bad, but also kind of amazing. When a film begins with some rather unfunny, yet simultaneously ludicrous anti-black racism (with the "African" in question being an Indian actor in blackface) I was ready to hate-watch the damn thing, but then the film proceeds to become a Vinod Khanna & Neetu Singh swimwear catalogue photo shoot, tops that up with the most ridiculous villainous plot I've seen in a while, and gives me Neetu Singh's version of Seeta aur Geeta. First I'm conflicted, then I'm completely charmed.

There's so much goodness in such a dumb wrapping, yet I can't pretend I didn't enjoy all of it.

So - big bad Mogambo, a villain who prefers to remain unseen, comes to Hindustan, and blackmails the local crook Ratan (Vinod Khanna) into his nefarious plans, with the help of Pinky (Neetu Singh), who's also being forced into a life of crime because her dad is being held hostage by Mogambo. Unbeknownst to Ratan, however, there is another plot happening - Pinky gets replaced by her twin Seema in contact lenses, all to take down Mogambo once and for all.

Like Gaddaar, this was initially recommended to me by Beth, and based on some other things I read about online I thought this movie would be a pretty dumb masala flick, which it certainly is, but hot damn how it makes up for the lack of wit and complexity with gallons upon gallons of pure fun. Admittedly, you may have to be biased towards the two leads to be able to relish in the fun. Vinod is a blast here, but Neetu particularly, from the flirty and brash Pinky to the (literally) blue-eyed Seema. It's not a very subtle performance, but it's also not as over-the-top as I expected. 

Plus her chemistry with Vinod, as either character, is so precious.

And with gun-wielding hijinks, too? What more could you hope for? Gratuitous swimwear?

Got you covered right there, as well.

Of course, there is that all-important context for everything - a cheeseball plot in which they train for the big mission by having Ratan stay underwater for ridiculous amounts of time, and then for him to stay in ice-cold temperatures for another long stretch of time. Because mission. The ice training in particular was special. The choice to just cut between the trainers' shocked faces as various meters are going up or down or whatever, meters, who cares, made for a truly memorable scene.

Meters! Oh my god!

And then there's Mogambo's lair, which is a truly futuristic piece of set design. Doktor Kaligari called, you know, just to say hi.

There are a number of other awesome things, such as: 

1. Neetu's cuteness.

2. The fight choreographer pulling out all the damn stops in the final fight sequence. Head-scissors take-down!

3. Vinod dealing with it.

4. Seriously, though, the swimwear...

5. Everything about this screenshot.

6. Twin goodness. Better yet, twin goodness with Neetu Singh! 

Also, as sillydumb as this movie is, the female characters are kind of on fire here. Besides Neetu, there is a sort of airheaded, yet kind of perceptive Reena (Bindu), whose dad owns the hotel they're cooped up in throughout most of the movie. She is the only person who figures out the twin confusion before anybody else. Then there's this lady:

..whose actress name or character name I can't find or remember. She works for the good guys and is constantly aiding Seema in their plans to take down Mogambo. It's a delight.

There isn't really all that much to say about Maha Badmaash in terms of plot or characters, because it's all pretty flimsy. Yet there's a certain sort of B-movie style charm to all the proceedings, the funky 70's sets and music and style, the undenial chemistry between the leads, the typical tropes (family lost and found for the twin sisters), the gross baddies and all the rest of it.  Or maybe I'm just really deeply biased towards Vinod & Neetu cuteness.

It could very well be just that.

70's week: Music and song picturizations.

Some of the first Bollywood music I ever heard was from the groovy 70's, when my friend gave me Rough Guide To Bollywood, about the only Bollywood music you could find at a Finnish store. Since I was such a newbie at that point, I hadn't heard any of these songs apart from DDLJ's Tujhe Dekha To and embraced this new music. And so I grew to love the classic 70's songs. Dum Maro Dum... Roop Tera Mastana (oh Kishore Kumar in this track!).. Chura Liya Hai Tumne.. Great stuff.

But of course, besides having the luscious vocals of Asha Bhosle, Kishore and Lata, and many great soundtracks composed by my favourite oldie composer R. D. Burman, these great tunes also have context.

The first song of Parvarish has our heroine sisters Neetu and Shabbo pocket wallets and watches from various people, while singing that everything belongs to the public ("Sab janta ka hai"). Shameless, you might think, but curiously both the lyrics and picturization elude to societal issues, like the rations where the government had grain behind locked doors but it didn't trickle down to the people who needed it the most (I may be over-simplifying this due to my shoddy understanding of Indian history - feel free to correct me).

The next song, Jaate Ho, is if at all possible even more brilliant. The girls have one-upped the guys by plotting their own marriages but the when the guys refuse, Neetu and Shabbo melodramatically decide to kill themselves. The guys show up to tease them, as each of their suicide methods go stale, and then offer them help. "Don't light yourself on fire with those matches, have this lighter!" I am hysterical watching this song but not laughing at suicide; I think at the core it is the heroines' over-dramatic behavior that elicits the laughter, and of course the fact they never really want to kill themselves - it is an act that the guys are participating in by teasingly offering them more efficient methods. And it is hilarious.

Every so often you encounter people who fast-forward songs in movies and think the songs offer absolutely nothing to the overall plot. Very well, I say, they have a point about some films, and with some songs. But sometimes, the song is a scene like any other, even with the song-and-dance, and it contributes to the logic of the film just as the scene that preceeds it and the one that comes after it.

Such is the song Hum Premi (dreadful quality on the youtube video, my apologies!), which at face value is a typical love song. In context of the movie, however, it becomes an incredibly clever dialogue between Amit and Kishan, heavy with dramatic tension as Amit suspects Kishan of being a crook. Even in terms of acting, the scene is fascinating, to see how they react to each other. Naturally, the DVD subtitles probably don't capture half the poeticism of the original lyrics, but even in their blunt form they make this a great scene to watch.

One of the best scenes in the movie, easily.

There are some other utterly fun songs in the film certainly worth discussing - like the qawwali of sorts with the heroines - or the utterly fun Neetu-in-a-maid's-outfit song as Amitabh harrasses her - but I think I'll skip ahead...



..to plug this brilliant fanmade video that takes the best bits of Parvarish and sets it to the Neetu-maid-outfit-song (Aayiye Shauk Se Kahiye). It's definitely spoilerous because it has all the best bits, pretty much, but nevertheless, well worth checking out if you need to refresh your memories of the film.

Friday's post will be about villains, action and all things badassery.

70's week: Romance and awesome heroines.

Sometimes, perhaps unfairly, I contribute most of my initial interest in 70's Hindi cinema to the Veeru-Basanti storyline of Sholay. I saw it and just like when I first saw K3G and Kajol-Shahrukh, I thought, "This? I really like. I want more of this." If I hadn't had that initial overwhelming interest to see more of the two actors, I might've never explored 70's films as much as I have so far. So in the humble beginnings of my golden oldies watching were these two things: romance and awesome heroines (because Basanti certainly is that).

I took a class on Bollywood cinema once and even though I'd seen nearly 200 films when I took it, it really helped me see some of the broader lines of Hindi cinema history to this day. One thing our teacher (very sweet female filmi fan who had majored in Hindi/Urdu, not Film Studies) brought up about heroines when we discussed character archetypes was that the heroines could be seen as corresponding to the hero character. When the hero is an angry young man type, this active hero of the 70's, the heroine must be an ally to his cause. (As opposed to being the indignant young lady who gets teased by the Krishna-type hero, or the independent woman who deserts the tragic hero.)

The girls in Parvarish wield guns, have plenty of wit to themselves (I mean, they are thieving sisters who sing about everything being the public's property!) and seek revenge the same as any hero would. They do have their share of damsel-in-distress type moments, but it's clear that often they're the ones running the show.

Consider first meetings, for example. Kishan (Vinod) runs into Shabbo (Shabana), who pretends to be blind to lift his wallet. She spins a tale about a tragic life, along the lines of the one she later tells Kishan's mother at the temple, and the one Neetu (Neetu!) recounts to both Amit (Amitabh) and the family's father. The beginning of the movie where the girls shamelessly steal is an absolute riot.

Of course, Neetu gets caught by Amit and placed in lock-up, where she tries many a strategy to talk her way out of behind the bars. Including one where she hilariously suggests marriage to Amit, because, as she tells him "When girls get spoiled, they should be married. Why don't you try to find somebody [to marry me]? If you can't find anyone, marry me yourself! If the law embraces crime, then crime can be eliminated forever!".

Flawless logic there, Neetu. Unfortunately this tactic doesn't bear fruit ..at least in this scene.

The glitch in the romances for the guys seems to the girls' thieving - which is pretty rich on Kishan's part, considering he's leading a double life as a crook smuggling diamonds in toys and god knows what else. But once the girls promise to correct their ways, this problem is out of the way.

This post would be incomplete without the mention of Seeta Aur Geeta, in many ways the heroine film of the 70s, starring none other than Hema Malini as two sisters. If you're a newbie when it comes to 70's cinema and want to start with something that has awesome heroines, go for that one.

Tomorrow's post will be about music!

Beginning the year with a superficial thought.

This is going to sound awful whatever way I put it, but I watched Saawariya (on Region 2 DVD because it's one of the three Bollywood films that has been granted that pleasure) last night and ...

... Ranbir Kapoor looks a lot like his mother, Neetu Singh. Only Neetu is gorgeous and Ranbir just looks funny.

Hmm.
He may be the only guy who I approve of the emo look for, though.

Review later.

A dog named Remo; stories of rewatching.

I have these friends who, bless their hearts, are very easy to talk into watching Indian movies. Maybe it's that using my DVD collection is cheaper than going out to rent a movie (and might include arguments over which film to go for), maybe it's that watching something is better than watching nothing, or maybe, just maybe, the wonderous world of Indian films is little-by-little creeping into their hearts.

So I've made them sit through the likes of DDLJ, Sholay, Dil Chahta Hai, Hum Tum with varying results, but I guess it's a triumph in itself that they are always keen to see more. They still confuse actors with one another, and have a decidedly "Western" perspective on some things (getting hung up on continuity errors is not something a seasoned Hindi film fan does!), but at least they're willing to see more, and I'm more than willing to provide more.

In the past two weeks, we've watched three films together and all of them are well worth talking about.


First up it was Anniyan, which I intuitively selected to introduce the crazy world of Tamil mainstream films to my friends. And say what you say about the shortcomings of this epic masala film, directed by S. Shankar, it simply never fails to deliver and even though it is completely and utterly over-the-top in every way, the core story, the characters and especially Vikram's acting seemed to make this nutty movie approachable to even complete beginners. They were aww'ing at Ambi, the by-the-book lawyer, and his total failure to capture the heart of his beloved, Nandini.


I once called Anniyan the most entertaining movie ever, and I stand by that to this day. The action scenes, the comedy, the social message - even when it all becomes a rather illogical mess, it doesn't get boring. My friends did start to get a little bored as the end was approaching - when the song "Andakaka" arrived, they wondered out loud about Shankar's style of loud visuals. "Why?" was a question on one of my friends' lips. I shrugged. "Because it looks good." I suppose it's the sort of perspective they still haven't quite embraced.

The real winner of the evening, however, was Remo, one of the characters Vikram plays in the movie, a rocking super-model, so hip and modern and ultra-cool it hurts. I like to think of him as mocking the "Western" life-style worship, though at the same time a very loving parody. Whatever he is, he's absolutely hilarious and after the initial shock my friends couldn't help but love him. So over-the-top and ridiculous and yet somehow, absolutely amazing.

This picture says it all.

After the movie, my friends sent me a message that the next male pet they get, will be named Remo. Whether they ever keep this promise or not, I'm more than glad I introduced them to this film.

A bit later my friend saw the gorgeous Mughal-e-Azam poster in my room and since I wanted to rewatch the film, I suggested we watch it together. It's been a while since I saw this classic, even though the DVD is the first Hindi one I ever bought. I believe I'd actually only seen it once up until that point. I warned my friend it would be a lengthy historical love story (set in the Mughal era for those three of you who weren't aware), not quite as cheery as the films I usually show her, but we ended up watching it regardless.

Sometimes the flaws of DVD's can truly ruin a film experience. I never realized the subtitles on my DVD lag. Severely. And so as if it wasn't already difficult enough to keep up with the going-on's in a film largely centered around people arguing in hyper-poetic language, we had the lacking subtitles to deal with. It's probably because of this I never warmed up to the characters on this watch - I felt very distant from them as did my friend, and our concentration was slipping dangerously. The movie bore on, scene by scene (arguing in highly poetic Urdu), song by song (singing in highly poetic Urdu about how miserable everything is), I found myself asking my friend whether we should skip some scenes. She insisted we not fast-forward a single minute, and I relented, as boring and futile as the watching seemed like.

Don't get me wrong. I love the visuals of this film. I adore the songs. When we finally see the sets in colour, their glory takes my breath away. The battle scenes are good for their time. But it was simply hopeless to get into the story when you had to wait 20 seconds for the subtitles to appear. It got to the point where, if I understood a sentence or even a bit of a sentence, I would translate out loud for my friend as we waited for the correct subtitles to come on.

As it stands, we got to the end and I walked home, thinking about the MeA poster on my wall. I do like the film, still. Just wish I had a better copy of it so I could sit down with it and see if I'd get into it with subs that do not lag. The Mystery of Dilip Kumar for me personally is still unsolved; in other words, I've not yet understood why he is considered such an enormous acting talent of his age. But perhaps one day I shall find out..

Realizing I better keep the films masala from now on, I brought over my Amar Akbar Anthony DVD the next time I visited my friends. The story of three brothers separating and re-uniting in harmony of three faiths and three professions seemed like a nice way to reflect the friendship of the three of us, and even though the wonderous masala recipe from the 1970's didn't quite fully win over my friends (the variety of characters and plot twists left them a bit confused at times!), at the end of the film, they enjoyed it a lot!

This is Pran, or as we called him during our viewing, "Daddy'O".

Amitabh Bachchan as Anthony was another star of the evening. His signature song was both mind-boggling and amazing according to my friends and especially during the penultimate scenes, they found him a riot.

Thankfully my own favourite, Vinod Khanna as Amar, did not go unnoticed, however. My friend's verdict? "Cute."

Out of the three couples, my personal favourite is Rishi-Neetu, without a doubt, but as his storyline was the least featured in the movie, my friends might've not caught onto their cuteness that much.

I'm glad to say the fight scenes got the 'oooh's they deserved (70's masala action = insanely awesome fight moves!) and since we all began humming the last song as the movie wrapped up, I'd consider the evening a success. Masala might be a little tough on the beginners, but they handled it well.

The ride of your life. Dharam-Veer.

Parvarish is the most delicious Manmohan Desai movie I've seen so far, and Amar Akbar Anthony is the best. But the most memorable? Dharam-Veer without a doubt.

The film takes a standard plot, turns it upside down three times, places it in a weird, alternative universe type of historical setting where 70's fashion, Ancient Rome and Rajput kings live in perfect Technicolour harmony. From samurais to horses to gypsies to Dharmendra in a leather mini-skirt, this film has quite simply got it all.

It's an undoubtedly whacky ride all the way through. Dharmendra and Jeetendra play the friends who sing about the glories of their friendship, and the film juggles the story of their pasts, about five villains, and love stories with Zeenat (cruel and cold princess of sorts tamed by Dharmendra's goofy hijinks and love!) and Neetu (bold, awesome gypsie girl who Jeetendra falls for).

It's a film you probably shouldn't miss.

PS. It has pirates in it, too.

Something new, something old. Khoya Khoya Chand & Parvarish

Khoya Khoya Chand is one of those films I find it very hard to phrase my thoughts and feelings about. The story is unique; a young actress Nikhat's (Soha Ali Khan) tale in Hindi film industry of the 1940's and the various stages of her love story with the writer-cum-director Zahar (Shiney Ahuja). It's realistic to the point that it hurts, a tragedy but not quite in the full sense of the word.

Perhaps KKC is just a film where the good doesn't shine bright enough to make up for the flaws. Soha is gorgeous and delivers wonderfully, various other cast members do a great job (Sonia Jeenah stood out for me), the music is lovely, it's full of nostalgic mood and color and the way it looks at the industry is refreshingly realistic. These types of portrayals of Bollywood by itself are rare occurances. The flaws, however.. Shiney once again fails to convince me with his performance, and overall the story drags slightly. In the end nothing seems to fall into place, and as a whole it doesn't really hold up nicely like a movie perhaps should.

I guess one could view it as a fictional documentary of sorts. Maybe there is even some criticism of the current industry hidden in the milieu of history - but this is pure speculation. Just for seeing Soha get to dance, though, I have no regrets, even though this is definitely not a must-own movie for me.



If I tried to have a proper theme to this post, I clearly failed, seeing as how Parvarish is not a 1940's or 1950's - and thus a 'proper' golden age oldie, like the era KKC portrayed - but a 1970's superfun masala alá Manmohan Desai (aka the man behind such brilliant masterpieces as Amar Akbar Anthony and Dharam-Veer - and I say this without a hint of sarcasm, you should know). Parvarish released the same year as the previously mentioned Desai films, and is just as wonderful, if slightly less crazy.

If you've never seen a 70's masala film, here's the 101: there's always somebody whose father or mother or grandfather isn't who they think it is. This movie's title translates, "upbringing" (this I learned thanks to Carla's review), which will reveal enough about the plot than I need to explain here. With these kinds of films, you know you're in for a fun time no matter what happens.

And oh, this film is delicious. Amitabh was fun, the girls (Neetu Singh who never fails to bring it and Shabana Azmi in her gorgeous young avatar) nutty in the best sort of way, then we have older Shammi Kapoor and the legendary Amjad Khan, peculiar but entertaining songs, submarines, diamonds, guns ... Did I mention submarines?


And last but so not least, Vinod Khanna whom I adore a bit too much at this point. But him, his character's grey shades, the brief flickers of manpain he gives in this movie, and oh god, so many things, just completely made the movie for me. Excuse me the fangirlism.

I strongly recommend this to anybody who can cope with these insane(ly amazing) 70's rides. It might be a bit of an undiscovered gem, as I suppose people usually opt for AAA when they go for a Desai film. But yes, see it! Go!