Welcome (2007)

Welcome has the dubious honor of being the only film the PPCC walked out of in the theatres last year. But wait, we should qualify that: we went to see it knowing nothing of the plot, actors or genre, dragged into it by a pair of Bollywood virginal hard-sells who had just seen Om Shanti Om (their first Hindi film) and decided that all Hindi films must be the same. When our friends starting fidgeting during the whole arranged marriage comedy antics, and when we heard one more goofy "comedy whistle - tooot!" sound effect, we suggested sparing everyone further pain, skipping out during intermission and grabbing food instead. So the PPCC was left with only vague memories of Welcome as being goofy and incomprehensible and bad.

But recently, in the all-forgiving haze of post-Yuvvraaj Anil Kapoor pyaar, we were feeling a lot more... welcoming (COMEDY WHISTLE - TOOT TOOT!) to the film - especially after our reliable taste-sharer Filmi Girl gave it a positive review and we started listening to the soundtrack. Honestly, guys, the soundtrack is so fun - it's like a party in our ears and EVERYONE'S INVITED! "INSHAAAAAAA'ALLAH!" So we decided to give it another shot.


And the movie really works because of the most excellent bromance between our most lovable pair, Anil Kapoor and Nana Patekar.

And we're happy we did! Maybe it's our state of mind - rock bottom expectations, intense devotion towards Anil Kapoor, a long-simmering interest in Nana Patekar, and delight in cameos by Asrani (!) and Ranjeet (!!?!) - but we totally gobbled it up. If liking Anil Kapoor isn't a choice but a life philosophy (post coming soon to a PPCC near you), then Anil's "villain of old tradition" line that "furst impreson ij lasht impreson" can be extended to secund impresons bhi - ek dam jhakaas!

The film's two acts are distinct enough that many of our filmi-friendly work friends commented on the post-intermission decline, and we approached with temerity. Yet they really are equally ridiculous. The first act follows the antics of the sweet, sensitive Rajiv (Akshay Kumar) falling in love with the gorgeous Sanjana (Katrina Kaif). Rajiv's family - headed by his uncle (Paresh Rawal) and aunt (Supriya Karnik) - is obsessed with finding a "decent" family for Rajiv to marry into. Meanwhile, Sanjana's family - headed by her older brother Uday (Nana Patekar) and his dimwit buddy Majnu (Anil Kapoor) - are, of course, mafia dons. The first act's torturous narrative follows the various separations and reunions of the lovers as they try (and fail, repeatedly) to overcome these seemingly irreconcilable differences between the families so that they can get engaged. Much hilarity of the extreme slapstick variety ensues.


Some really OTT slapstick. Though when Akshay shrieks, "My whole family will be wiped out!" with the steering wheel in his hands, we laughed.

The second act begins with a new tack: since the differences between the two families are impossible, the lovers decide that the easiest task would be cleaning up the mafiosi Uday and Majnu from violent goons to upright citizens. To do this, they go for each mafioso's hidden "sensitive artist" - Uday's childhood obsession to become a film hero, and Majnu's passion for painting - meanwhile sending Rajiv's sister-in-law, Ishika (a very funny Mallika Sherawat), to stroke the mafiosi's egos and con them into pyaar.

The first act is therefore for fans of your standard, vanilla, comedy courtship between cutesie Akshay Kumar and Katrina Kaif, where everyone who is less than pretty is relegated to a comic caricature in the background. The second act instead lets Nana Patekar and Anil Kapoor take center-stage and relies on the kinda-painful, kinda-sweet and very funny ridiculing of the first act's increasingly incompetent-seeming villains. Watching the volatile and violent Uday and Majnu become slack-jawed, cooing fools was oddly cute - and this relies entirely on Nana Patekar and Anil Kapoor, who dispense with all macho strutting and jump arms wide into some very silly antics (fearful Nana in a cowboy hat! Anil reverting to "HAH HEY! AW HYUK!" mode!).


Whadda pair a putzes, these two. And Mallika was hilarious and underused!

The dennoument devolves into a silly crisis surrounding the ultimate godfather, RDX (Feroz Khan), and his undead spoiled son, Lucky (???), and it seems the film's writer, Anees Bazmee, is fond of ending things on a cliffhanger (COMEDY WHISTLE TOOOOOT) - as in the previously PPCCed No Entry - though in this one he ups the ante by adding KILLER, RAGING BEES and everyone getting Morteined in the face. Nothing was making any sense anymore, but that's okay - we were already grateful for the occasional chuckles this silly, blameless film yoked. Plus, it had Om Puri as a narrator! Huzzah!


The random "AAAAH!! I'M COVERED IN BEES!!!" moment. A gem.

Anyway, while this film made us note how sweetly silly Akshay Kumar is (and how hard it is for us to reconcile his bespectacled goof persona with his buzz cut macho persona), we liked it because of Anil and Nana's excellent jodi power. These two were like aging Wayne and Garth or Bill and Ted, both more than a little ridiculous and completely, unabashedly in love with each other. They also played the excellent Apollonian vs. Dionysian card, with the Apollonian Nana Patekar a straight-laced, repressed nerd with pent-up rage ("Control, Uday! Control!") and perfectly aligned tuxedo jackets while the Dionysian Anil Kapoor is instead the type of guy who wildly bobbles his head while he talks and wildly swings his jacket while he dances. These guys need to hire themselves out for weddings! Or SEQUELS!


They even coordinate their outfits, CUTE. Side note but Anil wears a shark tooth necklace throughout the film that the PPCC also owns. He shops at Urban Outfitters too?! *PPCC glows*

We would recommend this, though only if you're in a particularly silly, tolerant mood. It's a low-brow populist comedy that doesn't aspire to much, and generally succeeds in being bubblegum nonsensical. Now can we get back to more serious discussions? SUGGESTED TOPIC: Are Anil Kapoor and Gary Oldman long-lost kin of passionate melting down and zany characters? We're not the first ones to think so. Mischief managed!

Yuvvraaj (2008)

It's a little disconcerting how often we've tagged films with both the "trash" and "transcendental aesthetics" labels. But just like Arun Krishnan astutely remarked, Bollywood movies have that strange ability to swing from ridiculous to sublime at the drop of the hat.


Following on our trend of being super timely!

Now, don't get too excited. The sublime moments in Subhash Ghai's latest film, Yuvvraaj, come few and far between. In fact, we can count them all on two fingers. And they both involve Anil Kapoor, who was SO FREAKING AMAZING OUR DIL PRACTICALLY EXPLODED WITH LOVE. But more on that later.

Yuvvraaj follows the trials and tribulations of three alienated brothers as they fall out of and back into brotherly love. Eldest is the autistic Gyanesh (Anil Kapoor), a musical mastermind described as suffering from "genius disorder" (AKA Williams syndrome?). OK, we'll buy that for a dollar - but only because Anil is so good. Next in line is the proud, turbulent-with-a-heart-of-gold Deven (Salman Khan) - he is ostensibly our hero. Third and last is the spoiled, cruel Danny (Zayed Khan). When the three brothers' ultra-billionaire father passes away, there is a scrambling within the family to see who has inherited all the wealth. Unsurprisingly, the father has left everything to Gyanesh, and filled his will with caveats that it's basically Gyanesh's or charity's. To ensure that no foul play occurs, the will entrusts Gyanesh's safety to two men whom we will call Evil Uncle (argh, we don't know his name, but he was Meena's uncle in Mississippi Masala and SRK's dad in Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa and he was fabulous) and Good Uncle (Mithun Chakraborty).

At first, there is indeed a lot of foul play. Danny, motivated by pure evil, tries various methods of getting the money out of Gyanesh - manipulating, harassing, slapping. Deven is likewise trying to pry that cash free, though his motives are marginally more acceptable: he's in love with the serene cellist, Anushka (Katrina Kaif), but he can't marry her until he proves to her father (Boman Irani) that he has the means to support her rich-girl lifestyle. Deven hatches a great scheme: get close to Gyanesh, butter him up with affection and convince him to hand over the cash willingly. Predictably, the three brothers are on the road for some masala-style dil-squishing reconciliations. We get the usual satisfyingly juicy melodrama and sweeping shots of European country roads (this time, near Prague!) on our road to a very Aa Gale Lag Jaa-esque ending.


The sets were totally stolen from Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Black.

So our thoughts? Well: it is a horrible, poorly-made film with wonderful music. The finale was terrible, yaar, and we cried a little too. Hence the trash/transcendental problem. It was bad. Terrible. And yet, for a few brief moments, it all came together perfectly and moved us tremendously. But no! No! Our intellect couldn't handle the badness. And Subhash Ghai is supposed to be one of the best?

Because the problem, as far as we could tell, was really the direction. The pacing was all wrong. The emotional tone of many scenes was mishandled or jumbled up. It felt Sanjay Leela Bhansali-esque: ridiculous and falsely over-the-top emotionalness, bordering on the farcical. (Indeed, we spent most of the first act thinking this film suffered from the SLB Devdas effect: that is, a series of amazing and poignant song picturizations linked by cringe-worthy scenes.)

And yet, some things were so well-done that they lifted us momentarily out of the trash: in particular, A.R. Rahman's divine music and Anil Kapoor's performance. Just earlier today, we were speculating with optimistic curiosity about Anil's role over at Filmi Girl's. Well, Filmi Girl, get thee to the cinema! And Rum, you too - tum bhi jao! Because Anil delivers, and how. Where do we sign up for the fan club?

Indeed, it's the combination of Rahman's music with Anil's performance which brings us to sublime moment #1: the picturization of the song, Manmohini Morey. As soon as this gets up on YouTube, we're adding this to our Moments of Transcendental Aesthetics series. Because this scene was so good it made our guts churn (as Suketu Mehta described good Bollywood... or was it Anupama Chopra?). We're not kidding. We haven't felt so moved, in such a raw way, in a very long time. And it was the memory of this scene which made us cry when poor, poor Anil suffered all that emotional violence later in the film. And what's even crazier - this same scene is played for laughs in the trailer we saw last week! Ah, but it was so freaking good. We won't tell you much, since that'll spoil things, but suffice to say that it was perfect - the awe of Prague's music scene, his piercing joy which visibly frightens him, his growing crush on Anushka.


OMG, Anil, don't cry, we'll protect you forever.

Yeah. He did it. Anil Kapoor delivered the equivalent of a Raj Kapoor in Awaara type of performance. The type of performance which not only forgives past sins but all future ones too. And he did it in a terrible film, too! While everyone else floundered amid the crazy direction and odd cuts - Salman Khan, Katrina Kaif, Boman Irani, even Mississippi Masala Uncle! - Anil knocked it out of the park. Just amazing.