Armaan (2003)

The unexpectedly true-to-life "It's midday and I've had 2 glasses of wine and you're looking pretty fly" scene. When did we fall into a French sex drama!?

Armaan (Desire) could have comfortably been many other films. It could have been a film from 1956, starring Prithviraj Kapoor and Raj Kapoor as the father-son duo. Or it could have been made in 1977, with Sanjeev Kumar as the patient and put-upon Akash Sinha and maybe Shashi Kapoor as the dallying pediatrician Sanjay - Rekha could have been the crazy lady, and Jaya Bachchan the sane one.

It's already been made in Japan by acclaimed director, Akira Kurosawa, where all the same themes - the wise, humanist pater familias doctor, his team of doctor underlings, the romance, the melodrama, the sweeping shots of mountain vistas - were present. And we got a distinctly European vibe from the movie too - maybe something French and a little family-unfriendly. No wonder they sent it to Cannes.


This is my empowered female gesture. I will bare my shoulders. I will kick your ass, professionally.

A little bit all of these things, with a dash of filmi masala, Armaan is a very familiar story. Elder Dr. Siddarth Sinha (Amitabh Bachchan, in a terrible wig) is the standard kind-hearted, humanist country doctor. His adopted son is Dr. Akash Sinha (Anil Kapoor), who shares basically all the same qualities - good heart, good work ethic, pure vanilla inside. These two bachelors live and work in their beloved country hospital and, when not saving poor little old ladies, they like to jam on the violin and - BANE OF ALL INSTRUMENTS - saxophone.

One day, the cute new anesthetist arrives, Dr. Neha Mathur (Gracy Singh). Neha and Akash butt heads for a bit, but quickly fall in love. They are, after all, carbon copies of the same, personality-less being. Their romance, which begins to look more and more like a heavily Photoshopped L.L. Bean catalog, features such vanilla courtship rituals as: watching waterfalls, examining flowers, having picnics on blankets and wicker chairs. YAWN. (What? After the drug-addled Anil and Rani licking cream off each other's faces in Nayak, it's a bit hard to see the two doctors as anything more than incredibly, tortuously dull.)

The random agent arrives in the form of spoiled, OTT rich girl Sonia Kapoor (Preity Zinta) - daughter of tycoon Gulshan Kapoor (a sweetly elderly Randhir Kapoor). Sonia is introduced to us as bored, Westernized and a little crazy. She immediately takes a fancy to Akash - is it the mustache? his studly righteousness? who knows! - and proceeds to pounce him.

We'll stop there. Something then happens - which, if you know movies, shouldn't be very surprising - and, as has happened before in other Anil movies, Akash ends up whoring himself out for his ideals. Tears flow, etcetera.


Awww, Randhir! So gosh-darned adorable and paternal!

This film is unique for having a distinctly non-Hindi feel to it. The first act, especially, could have been a British doctor drama. All the actors were subdued, nuanced and highly naturalist. It wasn't until the token vamp, Sonia Kapoor, showed up that things went a bit more masala. Even those early songs, like we said, were less Swiss-top romp, more Abercrombie & Fitch ad. We were really impressed with the performances - especially, of all people, Amitabh. Yes, Amitabh! Amitabh is such a force of personality that we always feel the weight of his superstardom in all of his films. In his recent attempts to go a bit off-beat - Black, for example - he always came across as a bit self-indulgent. Instead, in this film, he is a pleasant surprise - subtle and natural. His performance reminded us (indeed, the whole film did) of his work in H. Mukherjee's Mili - another "middle-class" Hindi film.


The Scene of Maximum Awkwardness. Nota bene that the guy on the far-right is the modern-day masala Shashi. We kept waiting for him to wobble his head slowly and croak, "Arreeee...Baaaaaat kya hai, yaar?"

Anil is, again, incapable of doing any wrong. Although in the end, after all the drama had resolved itself, we realized just how incredibly dull his character was, we still enjoyed watching him work his usual magic. And we are once again impressed by his choices - every film we've seen this week has been a distinctly different role and context, and he's thrived in all of them. Vah! Preity Zinta did very well considering her thankless role. She did the thing that everyone went crazy for Ellen Page doing in Juno - that is, she used the spaces between the beats to paint her picture. It was a very "read between the lines" performance - a pained glance quickly smothered by another forced, evil smile - stuff like that. Gracy Singh, unfortunately, couldn't revive her character from the depths of dullness in the same way Anil did his. Aamir Bashi, as we said, was basically playing a late 70s Shashi Kapoor... which only made us miss late 70s Shashi. (SHAAAASHIIII!!! KAHAN HO TUM!?!) Actually, speaking of the khandaan, Shashi's nephew Randhir was nice to see. Like brother Rishi, we prefer when that Kapoor generation plays paternal, 50+ roles. They're just so gosh-darned cute!

There were some things we liked a lot about the film. We liked the easy, taken-for-granted non-filmi-ness of it. Good girl Gracy wore jeans and tank tops, wasn't pressured to get married, shed only minimal filmi tears - she even gets a self-reference, "Oh gosh, I thought they only do that in Hindi films!" Ha! There were more hyperrealist touches: the doctors' on-going cricket commentary in the washroom, for example. Another thing we liked was Honey Irani's direction; her use of lighting, while stark, was very impressive at times (e.g. the soft glow of lanterns and the distant twinkle of soft-focus fireworks in this song (which has some spoilers)). Also, sometimes the acting was re-eally real. The scene when Sonia comes onto Akash at the party was surprisingly true-to-life, with that vibe of semi-tipsy flirtatiousness.


This is the lighting we're talking about.


And here. Gosh, that's lovely. Impressionist!

However, there were some things we didn't particularly like. Since the film seemed to start on an intentionally un-filmi route, every sign of filminess - things we usually tolerate with benign, knowing patience - became a flaw. The fact that Amitabh apparently has no idea how to play the violin. The fact that Anil Kapoor removes his mask in the operating room when brains are still exposed to bellow something (doesn't he worry about spittle, for the love of God?!). The fact that Sonia is such a shamelessly shallow vamp. The glaring plot holes, inconsistencies, and needless drama. Gosh darned it, Honey, if you wanted something un-filmi, you should have made it all un-filmi! For example, leave out the songs. With the exception of Preity's excellent come-on "love me or I'll kill myself" song, most of the other songs - especially the boring people in boring love one - were forgettable throwaways that made the narrative stutter and clunk around. The film could have easily dropped them, to its benefit.

Jhoom Barabar Jhoom (2007)

The PPCC has now seen approximately 60 Hindi films, and it has never seen anything quite like Jhoom Barabar Jhoom. A frantic, carefree comedy with the stereotypically big, warm Hindi heart, its uniqueness resembles the singularity of films like Dil Se, its style is like Farah Khan if she revelled a bit more in the trashy, and its general funness is matched only by the original Don.


The title song.

It's a film where almost all the characters wear extravagantly tacky outfits, to the point that even the protagonist is compelled to exclaim in one scene, "God, what a cheesy crowd!" The camera angles are frequently 90 degrees of the horizon, or floating above the car. And it features one of the most realistically screwball fantasy sequences in film - at least, the PPCC certainly daydreams about potential mates like that: inventing romantic yet illogical scenarios with narry a straightforward step to be scene, extended daydreams that usually end in marriage, kids and old age.

The plot: NRIs Alvira Khan (Preity Zinta) and Rikki Thukral (Abhishek Bachchan) bump into each other at Waterloo Station in London. Both are waiting for someone on the incoming, delayed train from Birmingham. Out of obvious self-defense against "dodgy" come-ons, both invent elaborate stories of fiancees in the wings: Rikki's multicultural lady love from Paris, Anaida (Lara Dutta), and Alvira's power lawyer slash stud muffin, Steve (Bobby Deol). As the two leads wait for a few hours for their "fiancees" to arrive, a bond forms and soon both are regretting the fake ball and chain. Yet both, of course, are too proud and embarrassed to admit they were lying.

In the meanwhile, Amitabh Bachchan appears during brief intervals, dressed as a pimp straight out of Kojak, crooning, "Heee-eee-eeey!" as the leads' feelings become obvious to everyone but each other. The Big B does little more than appear throughout the film like this: as a sort of wailing, inarticulate Puck or Greek chorus. Interestingly, he is only a spectator and, if anything, serves to embody the film's style: tacky, surreal, and incredibly entertaining.


The screwball fantasy love song. Love it!

Anyway, it takes faux fiancee stand-ins - a foul-mouthed prostitute (also Lara Dutta) for Rikki, and an anal retentive friend-of-a-friend (also Bobby Deol) for Alvira - and a Grease-style dance-a-thon in our beloved Southall to wake everyone up to the comedy of errors.

Actually, now that we bring up Shakespeare, this film could pass for a loose adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream - the mixed up couples, the deception, the glitter and rhinestones standing in for Oberon's fairy glitz. Hey, we already said Amitabh was like Puck. He can be Oberon too.

The performances were uniformly charming, all of them falling on the wrong side of the ham scale but since they seemed to be enjoying themselves so much, we as audience members enjoyed it too. Abhishek eerily channelled his father's "paan-chewing voice" (as deemed by BollyBob and as featured prominently in the original Don and Namak Halaal). Preity seemed to have regained all her lost zest and personality which propelled her to stardom after Dil Se but slowly gave way to blandness in things like KANK and Veer-Zaara. Also, Bobby Deol was a revelation. This is our first Bobby Deol film and we absolutely loved his anxious, baby-faced waif who speaks only in his mother's aphorisms but seems to enjoy dancing. Some details were particularly endearing and hilarious: such as when the nervous nail-biting Steve spits out a nail after Rikki threatens him. This is the same type of nerdy charm SRK also usues to excellent effect in things like the first act of Om Shanti Om.

Indeed Jhoom Barabar Jhoom resembles Om Shanti Om in its inspired naach-gaana, sweet and silly comedy, and being self-referential to the point of breaking the fourth wall. For example, when Rikki lists all the Indian wax figures in Madame Tussauds, ending with, "...Amit ji, our good ol' Bachchan." Or when Sholay's Yeh Dosti plays when Abhishek and Bobby Deol ride through London on a motorcycle - much as their fathers did back in Sholay itself. Or when Huffy Bhai (an excellent Piyush Mishra) drives a car with the license plate reading 786 - the number of Allah, and also Amitabh's lucky badge number in another 70s classic, Deewaar.

Along with Farah Khan, the PPCC thinks that this movie is part of that brave, new world of Hindi cinema - this is the direction things should be going in!

(Many apologies for lack of caps, but our computer refused to play the DVD. Perhaps out of jealousy.)

Koi... Mil Gaya (2003)

OMG his muscles ripped through his shirt.

The plot sounded too awesome to resist: somewhere in the Himalayas, a happy-go-lucky man-child encounters aliens and is given super strength and super intelligence. Hrithik Roshan, the ultimate pretty boy of Bollywood, stretches some acting muscles in the title role. We get a big fat view of his third thumb. Even Rekha is in it!


Damn, but Hrithik is a fine dancer.

Koi... Mil Gaya (I Found... Someone), like Rakesh Roshan's previously PPCCed film, Koyla, is entertaining enough, though also a little superficial, a little trashy. The influence of Hollywood blockbusters is heavy, and once again, as in Koyla, we have snatches of Hollywood soundtracks: in KMG, music from Lord of the Rings can be heard as characters first comes upon the spaceship. The second half of the plot follows E.T. very closely, and there are some visual homages as well: for example, Rohit bicycling through the forest with the alien sitting in the basket.


Roshan also mimics Star Wars.

The plot: back in the day, Rohit's Dad (played by Hrithik's Dad, Rakesh Roshan) used to play Om Om Om Om on a child's keyboard and beam that music into space. Aliens responded and yet no reputable scientist believed Rohit's Dad. One evening, Rohit's Dad and Rohit's Mom (Rekha) are driving along and, stunned by the lights from an alien spaceship or something, get into a crazy car accident. Rohit's Dad is killed, and Rohit's Mom suffers an injury to the abdomen, hence explaining Rohit's mental disability. Fast forward thirty years, and an adult Rohit is struggling to pass sixth grade. Affectionate, wide-eyed and innocent, he is the archetypal man-child, towering above his much younger friends. His arch-enemy is the bully, Raj (Rajat Bedi), an idiotic muscle man who picks on people with disabilities. His love interest, after some confusion and a few songs, is Nisha (Preity Zinta). One day, Nisha and Rohit are messing around with his father's computer and they accidentally beam the Om song into space again. The aliens respond and, after wreaking havoc on the Himalayan power supply, accidentally abandon one of their own (a la E.T.). Unfortunately, Jaddoo the Alien, as he is called, cannot phone home and so tries to make friends. He is soon revealed to have super healing abilities and, after healing Rohit's scratched arm, he notices that Rohit's got bigger problems - namely, the cruel teasing of his disability. Jaddoo helpfully fills Rohit's muscles with super strength and Rohit's brain with super smarts. Rohit is pleased. But unfortunately evil scientists are coming to get Jaddoo, and so Rohit must call back the mothership for a pick-up. Much sadness ensues, but there is promise that Rohit's super abilities may yet remain for a sequel.


Whoa, aliens!


Whoa, acting!


Whoa, jerk!

Say what you will, but Hrithik is impressive in this, if only for the choice of role. For an industry that seems to encourage it's superstars to shy away from non-conventional roles (we're talking about you, SRK), Hrithik has thrown himself all three thumbs into this role. He even has a characteristic high-pitched laugh - I mean, for the love of God, he's developed a unique trait for the role! This is so refreshing after watching Amitabh's well-worn slyness and SRK's well-worn furrowed brow for the millionth time, endlessly repackaged into their stock characters: Vijay, Vijay, Vijay... Rahul, Rahul, Rahul... Oscar winner he may not be, but Hrithik still tries hard. Similarly, he seems fully aware of his almost comically pretty face, and he uses that to wonderful effect as well - passing himself off as the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed kid (something, again, that the Big B or the Badshaah could not do). Also, the PPCC must appreciate his fiery dancing skillz. I mean, damn. So lithe! So limber! Praise praise.

Everyone else in the film plays to their stereotype, though interestingly director Roshan manages to pull out some of Johnny Lever's humanism again. Preity Zinta has little to do, and she likewise shies away from the obvious hairy bits of her character: namely, does Nisha like Rohit for real or is she pitying/patronizing him? We don't know, because Preity shows us no conflict - she's all diplomatic smiles. Rekha seems more woeful and aging than she should be, though we suppose she was never really very upbeat. Rajat Bedi as Raj was despicably villainous; we had no Pran-like love for him.


Even aliens drink Coca Cola.

The songs were generally forgettable, apart from Hrithik's phemonemal dancing skills, with the exception of Idhar Chala Main Udhar Chala. But we always love magical realism in dance, especially when dancers can lean to improbable angles. In fact, the song is much like a cross between Gene Kelly's Singing in the Rain and Justin Timberlake's Cry Me a River.


It's also a bit like Namak Halal's Aaj Rapat, which, yes, is the sexiest song evarr.

Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003)

What Kal Ho Naa Ho (Tomorrow May Not Be) lacks in subtlety or believability, it makes up in charm and emotional gimmicks. This fun and indulgent film is quick on its feet and shamelessly manipulative. In the end, you may cry - but you may also feel a bit cheated. Whereas director Karan Johar's later venture, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, was emotionally overblown but with an ultimately believable core, KHNH is sugar-covered fluff.


One of the big songs.

It comes complete with all the usual trappings of a Shah Rukh Khan/Karan Johar venture: super-pop dance sequences in unlikely night clubs featuring uninspired music, ample tears, emotional triangles and quadrangles and pentagons, many very famous Bollywood stars, New York City, and a Punjabi wedding. It also, like KANK, seems more geared towards the diaspora audience - this is another movie well-integrated into a multicultural, modern New York City, where the romantic ballads may just as easily feature multiracial or same sex pairings as the Desi hero-heroine.

The plot of Kal Ho Naa Ho is pure deep-fried Mars bar, yet - as with many mainstream Bollywood emo fests - it does contain a sincerity of heart which renders it appealing rather that torturous.

The setting is New York City.


New York City.

Bookish Naina (Preity Zinta) lives in a high-stress environment. Her mother (Jaya Bachchan) is constantly fighting with her paternal grandmother. Her younger brother is disabled. Her younger sister is adopted, and despised by the grandmother. Her father killed himself. There is religious dischord. It would really make anyone a bit upset.


Naina and her mother and the ever-present tears.

Things look grim, and one night, after a particularly nasty fight with the grandma, the rest of the family gets on their knees and begs God to send an angel who can save them from this mess. With no narrative shame, a sunny neighbor, Aman (Shah Rukh Khan), moves in before the prayer is even finished.


Aman moves in.

Aman takes it upon himself to improve Naina's situation. He teaches her to smile again. He sings in the street. He cooks. He even reconciles their familial troubles. Everyone is taken in by his charms.


Reconciling other people's problems, no problem.

It's not long before Naina falls in love with this ray of sunshine. But Aman knows he can't let himself love her, and we are left with only ambiguous hints as to why. Everything is very vague until the pre-intermission scene, where a tearful Aman declares to his mother (Naseeruddin Shah's ex-lover from Naajayaz!) and, helpfully, to us, the audience, that he doesn't have long to live. But he can't tell Naina this, as it will crush her.


He can, however, cry.

Instead, Aman is a generous soul and thus works to get Naina together with her best friend, Rohit (Saif Ali Khan), who presumably has a longer lifespan. Rohit has been in love with Naina for a while, but is romantically inept. In a series of wonderful scenes, Aman and Rohit conspire to get the girl. But everything resonates with that bittersweet core, as every success for Rohit is an arrow to Aman's fragile heart.


Successful arrows.

Eventually, the boys succeed (with some emotional ambiguity on Naina's part, but the movie doesn't worry too much about what she thinks - it's a surprisingly passive role for Preity Zinta!) in seducing Naina, and Rohit and Naina marry. There is bhangra music, and a fun Punjabi-Gujarati cultural clash. Saint Aman cannot hide his tears; he is human, after all.


But mostly saintly.

Because the true lovers of this film are the doomed Naina and Aman, who cannot even touch (let alone nuzzle on any piers!). So Rohit will just have to do, what with him having the longer longevity and all. That he is Naina's friend and a genuinely Nice Guy is a plus, making the match tolerable and the film sweet, rather than ubertragic. As the film winds down with the inevitable bedside hospital scenes, everyone weeps over Aman's pale form, and then, in a moment of privacy between Aman and Rohit, we have the best lines of dialogue:

Aman: Rohit, Naina is yours in this life. But in every life after this, in every birth, she will be mine. Promise me. Promise me.
Rohit: I promise.

Inevitable bedside hospital scene. Wobbly, sorry.

OK, we gave it all away, but so what? The fun of Kal Ho Naa Ho certainly isn't in the plot, it's in the fast takes, the divided screens, and Bollywood self-references (including a wonderful one to Devdas's Maar Daala). There are some moments with troubling undercurrents, such as the scene where Aman teaches Naina's family that the only way their restaurant business can thrive is if they give up their half-hearted integration into American culture and turn the restaurant into a super-Indian restaurant instead. Only then will they be able to compete with the Chinese restauranteurs across the street (to whom they often shake their fists). While we're all about preserving cultures, this just seem to be handled somewhat bluntly and simple-mindedly. Similarly, Aman, who is presumably very emotionally intelligent, rejects Naina with all the sensitivity of a jack-ass.


A sweet song between Rohit and Naina, dancing through the streets of New York.

There were some good gags, however, such as the series of scenes between Rohit and Aman wherein Rohit's maid, Kantaben, becomes convinced that they're having a gay affair. Aman cheerfully plays along, with one of the best scenes being his enraged, "Kanta! I will die before I let Rohit go out with another girl!"


We love the music that accompanies her scenes: "Heee-eee-eeeey Kantaben!"

The acting is predictable for a post-2000 Shah Rukh, a little disappointing for Preity Zinta (probably because she's playing such a passive character this time around and we like our Preity as a strong, independent woman!), and surprisingly appealing for Saif Ali Khan. But Saif already impressed us very much so in the Othello adaptation, Omkara, where he played the Iago character with much intelligence and sneering malice. Comparing his role in this and his role in that shows that he has quite a wide range. And yes, he can dance, too. Huzzah!

Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna (2006)

The best scene in the 3-hour soap opera, Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna (Never Say Goodbye), is the classic train station finale. You've all seen it. It was in Reds. It was in Dor. It was even already an hour earlier in this same movie. With sweeping choral voices to accompany the slow-motion chase, Maya (Rani Mukherjee) races through the station, saree flowing behind, searching frantically for her love, Dev (Shah Rukh Khan). Quick! The train leaves in one minute, and if you don't catch him now, YOU'LL NEVER BE ABLE TO TELL HIM YOU LOVE HIM! (Mobile phones and Hallmark cards don't have quite the same effect.) Thanks to some tragic misunderstandings, Dev has actually seen Maya and is quickly limping away, trying to avoid her. The camera swoops, we see Maya running while Dev hustles through the crowds. The camera zooms, we see Dev stop in his tracks while Maya asks someone for help. The music climbs to a climax: Dev dodges into the train, sits, and then -


COME TO MY BOSOM, DEV BABU!

Admittedly, you have to wait three hours and five minutes for this piece of conventional cinema gold. Since we watched this movie in half-hour snatches throughout an otherwise busy but boring day, we would say it was digestible. It was like having the Friends season finale, going on and on and on... Bored with work? Turn on KANK for a few minutes. Tired of KANK? Back to work.



Meh, why not?

Maybe that's being a little cruel. But we had prepared ourselves for the worst: one of those multi-starrer post-2000 Bollywood extravaganzas that hide a vacuum behind a thin shell of tears, bad jokes, and unsatisfying songs. We were a little surprised then: the story is presented with sensitivity and a light, deft touch (rather than overbearing melodrama... well, it's not that overbearing), and Shah Rukh Khan's powers beat us again, for we cried. (For you at home keeping score, that makes Shah Rukh Khan - 5, PPCC - 0. Curse those dimples!)



Oh, those dimples!

The story is this: Rishi (Abhishek Bachchan) is a happy-go-lucky guy who loves life and loves his wife, Maya (Rani Mukherjee). Maya, however, is Frosty, Queen of Ice, and interminably dour. And also infertile. And shrewish. Meanwhile, Rhea (Preity Zinta) is a go-get-'em fashion magazine queen; she's a sunny, successful businesswoman, a model for us all. She is, like Rishi, in a bit of a lopsided relationship, as she's married to the man-shrew, Dev (Shah Rukh Khan), who, after a spectacular car accident early in the film which ends his dreams of becoming David Beckham, hobbles around like Gregory House, hating the world and himself.


From David Beckham...


...to Gregory House.

Interestingly, rather than the sunny Rishi and Rhea falling for each other, the movie shows us the blossoming love between the depressed Maya and Dev. With the pretense of being 'friends' who want to 'help each other save their respective marriages', they are, of course, clearly on the road to a little some'n some'n. Tears ensue. Fights. Dramatic scenes where lovers lie to each other, their spouses... and themselves!

Love is in the air for the senior citizens as well. Samarjit (Amitabh Bachchan), known to some as Sexy Sam, is Rishi's dad and a man perpetually handcuffed to anonymous call girls. Yet despite his boozing, libertine exterior, in his chest beats the heart of a sensitive soul; it's all mourning for his late wife, you see? (We don't see...) But Dev's mom sees, and how! Who can resist Amitabh's powers, anyway? Especially when he does that dance of his.



And furs! He'll even match your outfits!


The director was big on split screens, which made everything feel a little 1960s human drama-esque.

The movie is a long series of light-hearted and genuinely funny moments à la Sleepless in Seattle punctuated by the requisite tearful arguments, reconciliations, and dizzying dance sequences. The viewer certainly feels for all the couples, even if they are all just stylized archetypes: Dev the Byronic Hero versus Rishi the Too Perfect Man. The acting was fine, in that it was about as good as if we had used puppets with funny voices.

We could not help, being native English speakers, noting with amusement the liberal use of English when needing to punctuate an emotion. Behold Dev's Han Solo-esque demands, "I love you and you love me too." Dammit.



Step back everyone: Shah Rukh is Acting Now.

The portrayal of Americans was also quite funny. It seems we'll never shake that alternatively obese or steroids-pumped look nowadays, complete with shrill voices and ultra-casual garb. There is a children's soccer match scene which teases these stereotypes particularly well. The New York Times notes that this may be payback for Hollywood's portrayal of non-Americans. Err... Apu, anyone?



Oh dear.


Oh my.

But the influence of America is not just in the presence of a lot of non-Indian faces. This is a movie deeply enmeshed into the multicultural, globalized view of an NRI; marvel at how the Bachchans call each other dude (one of the best lines of dialogue, in English, goes:

Amitabh: Dude, what's up?!
Abhishek: Dude, I'm nervous!

This is the "Dude! DUDE!" scene.
Shah Rukh gets the chance to tease this Americanissimo behavior by mimicking Abhishek in one scene: "Yeah, 's cool, totally cool, man."). Marvel at the explicit mentions of homosexuality (never seen that before in a Bollywood movie!), the cell-phone-flipping, Armani-wearing, Hinglish-speaking, completely integrated and yet uniquely and forever Desi NRIs. The plot itself - failing marriages, adultery, even a sex scene (with no kissing, of course) - was also clearly part of the integrated, modern outlook of a global India. And the music! Don't get us started, we generally didn't care for it, yet it was interesting to note the fusion of bad American pop with more standard Bollywood fare. Par example:



The Bachchans kick butt while a House-ian Shah Rukh can't join in. Damn.

A note on the Bachchans: When we began this journey deep into Indian cinema, we decided to be anti-Bachchan on instinct. That was before we saw Don, Kasme Vaade, and Parvarish, and now we have come to accept and love Amitabh as if he was our own Big B. (And he is, of course, for he is everyone's Big B.) We still maintained our bias against Abhishek, because while Shah Rukh hauled himself up from middle-class unconnected beginnings in an industry more nepotistic than British royalty, Abhishek was just born into the lap of fame. This is our first Abhishek film and we must say, OK, he's not terrible. He was actually quite cute and cries much more convincingly than Shah Rukh's purely movie, albeit effective, Tears of Manly Restraint. This was reason enough to put Abhishek on our good list and, after booty-shaking with as much panache as his dad, we decided he is there to stay.



One of the most oddly touching scenes. Dev and Maya check into the hotel. Finally.


Oh, you may as well watch it for yourself. Dev and Maya get tragically jiggy with it while their respective spouses dance to bad techno. No kissing allowed, sorreeee.