DIL KA RISHTA
DIL KA RISHTA
September 11th 2003, DVD, Myrlin + Jeremy's living room
Wow - this movie - well, heck. It's my first Bollywood film and it was exactly as I had expected - unbelievably cheesy (or should I say "paneer"?), melodramatic, overlong, and with some super badass dance sequences that bring Busby Berkeley's principles of symmetry and multiplicity to this random Hindi nonsense. The dancing is spectacular, for sure. Our romantic leads (Aishwarya Rai, Arjun Rampal, Priyanshu Chatterjee, and more briefly, Isha Koppikar) are total hotties and decent singers, if you go for that kind of strangled-throat traditional Indian warbling (and I do). The storyline is, well, absurd - super rich boy Jai has never been in love before, and he falls hard for Tia, the blue-eyed multitalented girl who works at a deaf-blind school (a detail which is rapidly forgotten). Jai's best friend Anita is secretly in love with him, but would never tell. Tia is already engaged to Raj, who is poor. Tia's mum (played with great battle-ax mother-in-law-from-hell sternness by the single-monikered Raahkee) reluctantly, but with great emotion, agrees to "adopt" Raj, who has no mother. Jai stalks Tia in various creepy rich-guy ways. Tia and Raj get married and have a cute bambino. And then something happens that I can't mention out of respect for spoilers, should you wish to see this ridiculous wad of melodramatic sentiment and musical sequences that come out of nowhere and mean practically nothing to the plot. You might - Aishwarya Rai is really incredible to look at - but I've been advised by my Bollywood experts that if you like Aishwarya, you should watch DEVDAS instead, because she's in it and it's a much better movie.
Still, I loved it.
September 11th 2003, DVD, Myrlin + Jeremy's living room
Wow - this movie - well, heck. It's my first Bollywood film and it was exactly as I had expected - unbelievably cheesy (or should I say "paneer"?), melodramatic, overlong, and with some super badass dance sequences that bring Busby Berkeley's principles of symmetry and multiplicity to this random Hindi nonsense. The dancing is spectacular, for sure. Our romantic leads (Aishwarya Rai, Arjun Rampal, Priyanshu Chatterjee, and more briefly, Isha Koppikar) are total hotties and decent singers, if you go for that kind of strangled-throat traditional Indian warbling (and I do). The storyline is, well, absurd - super rich boy Jai has never been in love before, and he falls hard for Tia, the blue-eyed multitalented girl who works at a deaf-blind school (a detail which is rapidly forgotten). Jai's best friend Anita is secretly in love with him, but would never tell. Tia is already engaged to Raj, who is poor. Tia's mum (played with great battle-ax mother-in-law-from-hell sternness by the single-monikered Raahkee) reluctantly, but with great emotion, agrees to "adopt" Raj, who has no mother. Jai stalks Tia in various creepy rich-guy ways. Tia and Raj get married and have a cute bambino. And then something happens that I can't mention out of respect for spoilers, should you wish to see this ridiculous wad of melodramatic sentiment and musical sequences that come out of nowhere and mean practically nothing to the plot. You might - Aishwarya Rai is really incredible to look at - but I've been advised by my Bollywood experts that if you like Aishwarya, you should watch DEVDAS instead, because she's in it and it's a much better movie.
Still, I loved it.