Supercop ACP Jai Dixit is back, and this time he's after a renowned thief known only as Mr. A, a criminal so devious and ridiculous that he parachutes out the sky, dresses up like an old lady, and then beats people up with a yo-yo snowboard.
While the original Dhoom was stupid, Dhoom 2 catapults the franchise into a world of cinematic hurt even I wasn't expecting. What did I ever do to you to deserve this, Bollywood?
When a band of fast and furious (or at least disgruntled) bikers get tired of their day jobs waiting tables at a pizza place, they go on a robbing spree that has the entire Mumbai police force up in arms. Only supercop ACP Jai Dixit (Abhishek Bachchan) and his shades can stop them before they rob again, and again. And again, because it takes him a quite a while to stop them.
It's easy to see why the 1996 Bollywood movie Papi Gudia has enjoyed some minor interest among English language movie review sites this year. The synopsis is the stuff that bad movie dreams are made of: remake Child's Play as a Bollywood musical.
Some descriptions practically beg a person who likes bad movies to watch the movie involved. Such is the case with Taarzan the Wonder Car, a film about a car designer who is murdered and comes back as a vengeful car.
Taarzan is like a psychotic Herbie the Love Bug gone completely off his medications. But don't let the movie fool you into thinking it's a bizarre automotive remake of Death Wish. In between car-delivered-justice sequences, large sections of the movie are devoted to light-hearted romantic comedy.
Sholay is a famous "curry" western, India's answer to the spaghetti westerns of Italy. A rousing combination of action, romance, drama, comedy, music, and revenge, Sholay is a western that is epic in the best sense, and it deserves to stand alongside other classics in the genre.
If there's one thing Bollywood does better than any other movie-making industry, it's excess. Colors, music, dancing, clothes, sets, melodrama—they love to take things to the next level. Sometimes they take it to such an extreme that a western sense of style or good taste just can't be applied. Western sensibilities are as likely to fit within some Bollywood movies as moon ponies and unicorns are likely to be found frolicking in Dick Cheney's back yard. Things that could never work in a western film sometimes work in Bollywood.
Disco was already all about excess and poor taste, so when Bollywood does disco you'd better be prepared for a double-barreled blast of dance inferno madness.
ZsaZsa Zaturnnah Ze Moveeh is about a gay gender-changing superhero that fights giant frogs, flying exploding zombies, and hot alien women that are out to destroy all men. Or at least change them into women. And there will be musical numbers along the way.
If that doesn’t sound interesting to you, run away quickly.
Continuing my exploration of Bollywood, I came across Main Hoon Na. This movie has been described (fairly accurately, as it turns out) as a cross between True Lies, Grease, Never Been Kissed, Toy Soldiers—with a little bit of Matrix-style action and the requisite singing and dancing— how could it not be terrible beyond belief? Obviously this required investigation.
Krrish is a Bollywood superhero movie—the sequel to a movie I haven't seen. You don't need to see the original movie to enjoy Krrish, either. The story is your basic superhero tale. There's not much that's highly original about Krrish, but when you get down to it, how many superhero movies are original? Does it really matter as long as you're having a good time while eating popcorn?
