Bollywood Hollywood (English) Review

A formula to end all formulae is to formulate the formula that defines all formulae. If that is not your beaker of solution, try this. Another spoof on good ol' Bollywood folks! Comprendez? Capisce? Make sense?

Rahul Seth (Rahul Khanna) is left at the helm of his family after Daddyji conks off. The aforementioned family comes with one emotional glycerine-toting Mommyji (Moushumi Chatterjee), one Shakespeare-quoting Grandmaji, one sister Twinky of marriageable age and one brother Govind, painful brat. Driver Rocky comes with the package and he also doubles as a famous drag queen Rukmini by night.

Rahul's sweetheart, a white pop diva, has a fatal levitation accident. Rahul, hounded by his family to find a fiancée before his sister's engagement, bumps into Sue aka Sunita (Lisa Ray), who can be anything he wants her to be. He pays her to be his betrothed till D-Day, and they manage to fall in love, have a misunderstanding and finally smooch up by patching... er... patch up by smooching.

This one works on the principle most cartoonists use to earn a living - grab all obvious features and exaggerate them (not that Bollywood's features need any exaggerating). And to pep it all up, we have smartass lines appearing on the screen à la sub-titles, deliberately mistranslating melodramatic Hindi dialogues and defining clichéd situations in an oh-so-humorous way. Oh how we laughed.

Comedy is an art that takes some mastering, and Deepa Mehta has some way to go. To start with, Rahul Khanna and Lisa Ray are not good enough material. Chocolate faces may be what the script demanded, but sans any sign of acting ability, the humor lost some sheen thanks to these lackluster performances. The others did tolerable jobs and managed to hold the movie together.

Bollywood Hollywood is a flick you can sit through and chuckle a few times if you dig mannequins mouthing smart lines. But to be fair, this spoof is much more tolerable than the 100 odd Bollywood movies which tried to take the same plot seriously. At least here the humor is intentional!