I have been told my multiple people since I have arrived that I must see a Bollywood movie while in India, otherwise, my adventures will be incomplete. Well today I arrived back in Bangalore at about 7:30 in the morning, with no plans till I leave tomorrow, at 10:30 at night. Basically, I have two full days of just chilllin. I have grown to love the days where I have no plans, and just kinda wander, taking up opportunities as they arise, plan out more of my trip, and just kind of do some general maintenance stuff, such as much needed laundry.
Since I had so much free time, and since I am back in Bangalore, I figured today would the perfect day to catch a flick.
Two reccomendations have been made to me for Bollywood movies since I have been here, "Bang! Bang!" Which is the Indian remake of the American movie, "Knight and Day." Apparently, this is pretty usual here, Indian remakes of American films. The second is a movie called, "Happy New Year." This one I believe is an Indian original.
(By the way, for those of you who know grammar too well, I realize these blogs are not the most clean and neat, as far as essays go, and I often notice where and how I could make them shinier and clean-cut, but honestly, I'd rather spend more time exploring then going back to fix things up and make them pretty.......soo deal with it.)
Anyways, I really had no basis by which to choose which movie to see, given my lack of background knowledge and understanding, as far as Bollywood movies go, so I look up show-times for both. Luckily for me, "Bang! Bang!" is no longer playing in theaters, so my choice was made for me....."Happy New Year." (From here on out referred to as HNY)
The description of HNY suggested that it was a action, comedy, and romance film, and honestly, you could probably throw drama in there as well, for good measure. This movie literally had a little bit of everything. It had the the outright silliness of an old Adam Sandler movie, the over exaggerated effects of children's movie (think Space Jam), the slapstick of Charlie Chaplin, the revenge and drama of a mexican day-time soap-oprah, the music and dancing that come along with any Bollywood film, the action and criminal mastermind of Bourn Identity meets Oceans Eleven, and the romance of Grease. It was literally a 3 hour crazy hodge-podge of everything. The production quality was on par with any major american film, and albeit it being in Hindi, it was really entertaining.
A couple of funny things. TONS of american pop culture references, honestly, probably far more than what we would ever consider to be appropriate in an american film, even in a dumb comedy. But given that this was an Indian movie, I thought it was hilarious. Also, they'd have smatterings of english throughout. Typically this would happen when they were using\saying an american phrase or saying, something that probably just doesn't hold the same meaning when translated. In general, they seemed to lift a lot of material from american films, in general, but they way the glued it all back together could, truly made it their own, and could only be described as India.
Now for the story. It really seemed to follow the same premise of Oceans Eleven. Starts with the main character, who has some grudge, and wants revenge, against a very wealthy individual . He collects a well thought out team of criminals for various aspects of the revenge motivated heist, and the vast majority of the movie is about their putting the plan into motion. One interesting twist is in this flick though, is that a vital element to the plan, or perhaps its more of a restriction, or perhaps best described as an externally imposed requisite for the plan to work out, is that they must enter and become a finalist in a world dance competition.
Again, all of this is going down in Hindi, so I'm sure some of the specifics were lost on me, however, I was actually able to follow the movie quite well based on the visuals, the mood set by the music, and the actors reactions to each other and the situation. Here is what I was able too collect.
The antagonist (from here on referred to as the jerk) of the movie is a wealthy ass-hole, his wealthy having nothing to do with the fact that he is a jerk, these two things just happen to coincide. The protagonist's father build the jerk a custom and state of the art safe, which it seems he uses to project other people's valuables rather than his own. Given that the protagonists father has a detailed understanding of the vault, the jerk sets him up and blames him for stealing valuables that were being kept in the safe. The hero's father goes to jail, and having been disgraced kills himself.
I guess the father tells the hero that he was set up by the jerk, and thus the hero is out for revenge, otherwise I don't know how else he would know who set his father up.
The hero recruits an old army buddy, who is an explosives expert, one of his fathers old colleagues, who has some knowledge about this vault and who is also skilled at breaking into safes, a young man, who is an expert hacker, and drunkard, who will play the roll of a look-alike of a key individual. Later in the movie, they also recruit the drunkards sister, who dances at a burlesque type club, and is their dancing coach. At first she doesn't want to help, but once she meets the hero, she is love-struck and goes along. This is where the romance aspect of the story starts up.
The plan is pretty much organized prior to the recruiting, and while parts of the movie show them preparing for the actual heist of the diamonds, that will be kept in the vault during the dance competition, most of the movie is them getting ready for the competition and their performance in it.
One thing about their dancing though. The girl is not particularly successful in making them good dancers, in fact they suck. Thus they must hurdle this barrier as well. First they must pass the auditions. Again, they are horrible, so they somehow get their hands on a video of the two judges in very compromising and career devastating positions......with each other. So they blackmail the judges. Next they must get India to vote for them to represent India in this world dance competition. At this performance they literally get booed off stage and have all sorts of stuff thrown at them. But they hack the system that tallies the electronic votes and flood it with phony ballets in their favor, they end up winning by a narrow margin of less than 0 votes. Again, people are outraged that they won. But they get what they need, and that is to to move on to the world finals, hosted at the hotel where the vault is located.
They reach the hotel where the finals are and continue to receive the unwelcome greeting they get everywhere. Their first dance at the competition is against a reigning campions, the south koreans, in a dance off. But at this point, team India has embraced their sub-average dancing, and seem to theme their routine around mocking their bad dancing, and embrace their being the underdogs who dance like the average joes and janes of the world. During the first dance off, the hero sacrifices their routine, when he see's the sole child on the korean team is about to fall from a giant human pyramid, in order to catch him. The crowd, the world, the judges fall in love with him and team India.
After they perform, they are suppose to carry out the heist, but they find information that the diamonds had not made it to the vault yet. Counting on th fact that they won't make it past the first round, they are devastated. But, give the hero's act of self-sacrifice to save someone n the other team, they make them a wild card.
They carry out the heist, win the competition, and the jerk is blamed for stealing the diamonds he was suppose to guard. And of course, the girl and the hero end up together. It was actually kind of a heart-tugging ending. It was thoroughly enjoyed, even though much I couldn't understand exactly what was being said. One surprise was that I could often understand what was generally being said, such as when someone was mocking someone, what people were arguing about, when people were coming to terms over something and what they were resolving, etc.
Being in a trendy area of Bangalore, and it being peak hours when I got out, I decided to try out a bunch of the street eats close by. I am careful about the street eats here, especially when it comes to meat. Basically, if its meat, and its not cook in front of me, I won't touch it. But as I made my way back toward my hotel I noticed this one guy cooking up a bunch of chicken. He had a small crowd in front of him, and it looked delicious, so I stopped by for a chicken kabob wrap. It was AMAZNG. I don't know what the chicken was marinated in but it was dankity-dank-dank. it was wrapped up in a freshly fried flat bread and served with pickled red onion. It was perhaps one of the greasiest things I have ever consumed, but it was wonderful.
Another thing you will notice in India, there is a lot of chinese food. I walked past another stand serving steamed dumplings, with again, a small crowd in front, so I figured it was a safe bet for good food that wouldn't make me sick. Not as crazy delicious as that chicken wrap, but still quite tasty. I continued on and stopped at a place serving indian street foods. I see these places all over, serving these crunchy puffed balls, stuffed with a potato based filling and dunked in broth, but had never tried them, so to keep the trend up, I order some. Again, bomb. They could tell I had never had them, and they ended up giving me a few free one's of difference varieties.
Continuing on my street/trendy food binge, I stopped into a fancy donut shop. You don't see donuts everywhere in India, but Bangalore is pretty international, and you can find pretty much everything here. It's not always exactly the same as home, but still good for being abroad. If you know me, you know I have a sweet tooth. I can't eat sweets all day, but I gotta get something sweet pretty much everyday. Donuts are one of favorites. I pick one out that has dark chocolate gnash frosting with coconut. Funny thing here, they microwave their donuts when you order them. I don't know how I feel about that, but it was nice to have something that was similar to what I have at home.
To finish off my night I stop at a three story bar, the top leveling being open air. The only had Fosters, oddly enough, and they played classic rock. Its funny, this whole classic rock thing seems to be something of a trend here. Again, it was nice to listen to something familiar while enjoying the roof-top view.
All in all, it was a great little night. I really enjoyed just wandering around, checking out the area, and seeing how they do things here in a big city in India. I wasn't thrilled with Bangalore when I first showed up, but honestly it is beginning to form a special place in my heart. It's no Chicago, but urban life here has a lot of the same stuff, just carried out differently.
