My favorite and least favorite SRK movies
Once again, apologies to all the non-BW folks on my flist. It will be back to normal soon.
After seeing the lovely Paheli this weekend, I decided to make a list (compulsive list-maker) of my favorite Shahrukh Khan movies. This is a rather biased list: I prefer serious movies to comedies and no matter how excellent the performance, if I didn't care for the film itself, it's not on the list.
Shahrukh Khan has been in 54 movies (Bollywood is notorious for cranking out an insane number of films each year), and no, I have not seen them all. I have seen 37 though. *blush*
So, here are my Top 10:
1. Veer-Zaara: Star-crossed lovers don't come much angstier than this. Shahrukh plays Veer, a former Indian Air Force officer, now a nameless prisoner in a Pakistani jail who has not spoken for over 20 years. Involved are an impossibly doomed affair with a Pakistani aristocrat (Preity Zinta), a steely Pakistani lawyer (Rani Mukherjee) determined to give him the justice he deserves, and more emotion, color and beauty than 10 Hollywood movies put together. I cried like a baby when I saw this in a movie theater, but that was OK. A burly man with a bushy mustache sitting a few seats down from me was crying as well. This is not only my favorite Bollywood movie, it is one of my favorite movies of all time
2. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge: The movie that made me fall in love with Bollywood. It clicked for a lot of other people as well, apparently, since it's the longest running Bollywood movie of all time (it came out in 1995 and is still running). This is a perfect romantic movie about a London-born Indian girl from a very conservative family who takes a month-long trip in Europe and falls in love with the ne'er-do-well, very Westernized son of an indulgent father, and a fellow Londoner. Problem: she is already promised by her family to marry in an arranged marriage. Kajol who plays Simran and Shahrukh Khan who plays Raj both shot to superstardom with this movie, and their crazy chemistry (they are one of the legendary Bollywood movie pairs) is evident throughout. But so is the growth and change of their characters. It made me laugh, it made me cry and it still has my very favorite movie scene of all time.
3. Asoka: SRK plays Asoka, an Emperor who renounced war and converted to Buddhism. This movie might not deal much with real history (it's more of a fable than a historical movie), but each frame of Santosh Sivan's movie is a perfect painting. The intrigues, war, secret identities and the star-crossed lovers give this movie a Shakespearean flavor, and Shahrukh Khan, as the arrogant Asoka, who is humanized by his brief stint as a commoner before losing his reason for living and descending into violence, evil and war-madness is amazing. DDLJ might have made me a Bollywood fan, but Asoka made me a SRK fan. Plus, I love the pacifist message of the movie.
4. Dil Se: Mani Ratnam's masterpiece, IMO.Considering that he is, IMO, best Indian director working today, that is saying quite a lot. This is a meditation on nationalism, terrorism and obsession has Shahrukh play a journalist whose life unravels when he gets obsessed with mysterious and tormented Manisha Koirala. Oh, and it's visually stunning.
5. Devdas (2002): If you could distil pure emotion into film, you'd get this movie. Impossibly lush, impossibly beautiful, impossibly tragic, this is Sunjay Leela Bhansali's take on a story of a weak man who loses the woman he loves because of his own indecision and drinks himself to death.
6. Paheli: I just did a write-up on this. It's a deceptively simple fable about a woman whose neglectful husband is replaced by a Spirit. I loved the colors, I loved the story, I loved the feminism.
7. Swades: Shahrukh plays a scientist who goes back to India looking for his nanny and gets involved with her village. This is a very low-key, naturalistic movie about social change and personal transformation, that deals with quite a lot of sensitive issues but is not in the least preachy. SRK won last year's Filmfare award (a cross between MTV awards and Oscars) for his performance.
8. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai: A story of a widower finding true love with his best friend who has loved him all this time, this is romantic and moving and fun and was a huge hit. And it co-stars the amazing Kajol.
9. Kal Ho Na Ho: There's a bit too much crying, and it's a bit of an ensemble piece (those looking for all SRK, all the time are better off with another movie), but it has a lightness of touch, a mixture of angst and humor, great secondary characters and is set in New York. The main character is Naina (played by Preity Zinta), whose life is turned upside down when a new next-door neighbor moves in.
10. Main Hoon Na: I don't know if it would be as funny if you haven't watched any Bollywood. I think it would. This is a great spoof of the 70s Masala movies, with their missing brothers, nasty villains, and fights. Shahrukh plays a Special Forces officer assigned to protect the General's wayward daughter (Amrita Rao, adorable) from an evil terrorist (Suniel Shetty). Unfortunately he has to pretend to be a student even though he is entirely too old. While there he tries to reconcile with his oblivious half-brother (Zayed Khan) and falls for a super-sexy chemistry teacher (Sushmita Sen). Yeah, and there are still those pesky terrorists. I dare anyone not to love this flick.
Least Favorite:
1. Yeh Lamhe Judai Ke: How bad can a movie be, when both its "stars" (Shahrukh and Raveena Tandon) disown it? The reason "stars" is in quotation marks is because both SRK and Raveena shot about 20 minutes worth of footage decade ago and the movie got shelved. However, because SRK is by far the hottest thing in Bollywood, the producers took the 20 minutes (SRK and Raveena haven't even recorded their own voices in the movie) and built a movie around them with non-actors who pretend the non-existent stars are there.
2. Anjaam: Shahrukh chews acres of scenery as a spoiled psychopath who destroys the life of equally awful Madhuri Dixit when she won't return his love. The thought of King and Queen of Bollywood in this is incomprehensible. "Favorite" scenes include Mashuri literally chewing on her brother-in-law's arm, and Shahrukh asking Madhuri if she will marry him, to which she responds that he insults her as she is a wife. He then pulls out the life support plug from her husband and asks "Now?" He also twitches throughout. Probably trying to escape the set.
3. Guddu: "Well, he had a family to feed" is about the only excuse for this flick. SRK and Manisha Koirala who are so brilliant in Dil Se are dead in this movie that will make you want to poke your own eyes out.
Guilty Pleasure:
Koyla: It's a totally bad movie, by any definition. Yet, I adore it, romance novel plot, bad hairstyles and all. Shahrukh plays a mute slave of the evil Amrish Puri. Puri falls in love with the beautiful Madhuri Dixit and marries her on false pretences, by sending her Shahrukh's picture as the groom. There is much love, revenge, improbability and gore. Also, some of the theme is stolen from 1492. I love every second, from the sweaty mulleted Shahrukh being Amrish's hunting dog, to the Grimy Avenger Shahrukh saving his beloved Madhuri and putting an end to the evil Puri with a blow torch.
After seeing the lovely Paheli this weekend, I decided to make a list (compulsive list-maker) of my favorite Shahrukh Khan movies. This is a rather biased list: I prefer serious movies to comedies and no matter how excellent the performance, if I didn't care for the film itself, it's not on the list.
Shahrukh Khan has been in 54 movies (Bollywood is notorious for cranking out an insane number of films each year), and no, I have not seen them all. I have seen 37 though. *blush*
So, here are my Top 10:
1. Veer-Zaara: Star-crossed lovers don't come much angstier than this. Shahrukh plays Veer, a former Indian Air Force officer, now a nameless prisoner in a Pakistani jail who has not spoken for over 20 years. Involved are an impossibly doomed affair with a Pakistani aristocrat (Preity Zinta), a steely Pakistani lawyer (Rani Mukherjee) determined to give him the justice he deserves, and more emotion, color and beauty than 10 Hollywood movies put together. I cried like a baby when I saw this in a movie theater, but that was OK. A burly man with a bushy mustache sitting a few seats down from me was crying as well. This is not only my favorite Bollywood movie, it is one of my favorite movies of all time
2. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge: The movie that made me fall in love with Bollywood. It clicked for a lot of other people as well, apparently, since it's the longest running Bollywood movie of all time (it came out in 1995 and is still running). This is a perfect romantic movie about a London-born Indian girl from a very conservative family who takes a month-long trip in Europe and falls in love with the ne'er-do-well, very Westernized son of an indulgent father, and a fellow Londoner. Problem: she is already promised by her family to marry in an arranged marriage. Kajol who plays Simran and Shahrukh Khan who plays Raj both shot to superstardom with this movie, and their crazy chemistry (they are one of the legendary Bollywood movie pairs) is evident throughout. But so is the growth and change of their characters. It made me laugh, it made me cry and it still has my very favorite movie scene of all time.
3. Asoka: SRK plays Asoka, an Emperor who renounced war and converted to Buddhism. This movie might not deal much with real history (it's more of a fable than a historical movie), but each frame of Santosh Sivan's movie is a perfect painting. The intrigues, war, secret identities and the star-crossed lovers give this movie a Shakespearean flavor, and Shahrukh Khan, as the arrogant Asoka, who is humanized by his brief stint as a commoner before losing his reason for living and descending into violence, evil and war-madness is amazing. DDLJ might have made me a Bollywood fan, but Asoka made me a SRK fan. Plus, I love the pacifist message of the movie.
4. Dil Se: Mani Ratnam's masterpiece, IMO.Considering that he is, IMO, best Indian director working today, that is saying quite a lot. This is a meditation on nationalism, terrorism and obsession has Shahrukh play a journalist whose life unravels when he gets obsessed with mysterious and tormented Manisha Koirala. Oh, and it's visually stunning.
5. Devdas (2002): If you could distil pure emotion into film, you'd get this movie. Impossibly lush, impossibly beautiful, impossibly tragic, this is Sunjay Leela Bhansali's take on a story of a weak man who loses the woman he loves because of his own indecision and drinks himself to death.
6. Paheli: I just did a write-up on this. It's a deceptively simple fable about a woman whose neglectful husband is replaced by a Spirit. I loved the colors, I loved the story, I loved the feminism.
7. Swades: Shahrukh plays a scientist who goes back to India looking for his nanny and gets involved with her village. This is a very low-key, naturalistic movie about social change and personal transformation, that deals with quite a lot of sensitive issues but is not in the least preachy. SRK won last year's Filmfare award (a cross between MTV awards and Oscars) for his performance.
8. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai: A story of a widower finding true love with his best friend who has loved him all this time, this is romantic and moving and fun and was a huge hit. And it co-stars the amazing Kajol.
9. Kal Ho Na Ho: There's a bit too much crying, and it's a bit of an ensemble piece (those looking for all SRK, all the time are better off with another movie), but it has a lightness of touch, a mixture of angst and humor, great secondary characters and is set in New York. The main character is Naina (played by Preity Zinta), whose life is turned upside down when a new next-door neighbor moves in.
10. Main Hoon Na: I don't know if it would be as funny if you haven't watched any Bollywood. I think it would. This is a great spoof of the 70s Masala movies, with their missing brothers, nasty villains, and fights. Shahrukh plays a Special Forces officer assigned to protect the General's wayward daughter (Amrita Rao, adorable) from an evil terrorist (Suniel Shetty). Unfortunately he has to pretend to be a student even though he is entirely too old. While there he tries to reconcile with his oblivious half-brother (Zayed Khan) and falls for a super-sexy chemistry teacher (Sushmita Sen). Yeah, and there are still those pesky terrorists. I dare anyone not to love this flick.
Least Favorite:
1. Yeh Lamhe Judai Ke: How bad can a movie be, when both its "stars" (Shahrukh and Raveena Tandon) disown it? The reason "stars" is in quotation marks is because both SRK and Raveena shot about 20 minutes worth of footage decade ago and the movie got shelved. However, because SRK is by far the hottest thing in Bollywood, the producers took the 20 minutes (SRK and Raveena haven't even recorded their own voices in the movie) and built a movie around them with non-actors who pretend the non-existent stars are there.
2. Anjaam: Shahrukh chews acres of scenery as a spoiled psychopath who destroys the life of equally awful Madhuri Dixit when she won't return his love. The thought of King and Queen of Bollywood in this is incomprehensible. "Favorite" scenes include Mashuri literally chewing on her brother-in-law's arm, and Shahrukh asking Madhuri if she will marry him, to which she responds that he insults her as she is a wife. He then pulls out the life support plug from her husband and asks "Now?" He also twitches throughout. Probably trying to escape the set.
3. Guddu: "Well, he had a family to feed" is about the only excuse for this flick. SRK and Manisha Koirala who are so brilliant in Dil Se are dead in this movie that will make you want to poke your own eyes out.
Guilty Pleasure:
Koyla: It's a totally bad movie, by any definition. Yet, I adore it, romance novel plot, bad hairstyles and all. Shahrukh plays a mute slave of the evil Amrish Puri. Puri falls in love with the beautiful Madhuri Dixit and marries her on false pretences, by sending her Shahrukh's picture as the groom. There is much love, revenge, improbability and gore. Also, some of the theme is stolen from 1492. I love every second, from the sweaty mulleted Shahrukh being Amrish's hunting dog, to the Grimy Avenger Shahrukh saving his beloved Madhuri and putting an end to the evil Puri with a blow torch.