tikistitch

At this point in the movie, you have been waiting TWO HOURS for Hrithik to freaking DANCE ALREADY.

I guess if I had to sum this up in a sentence, imagine if The Hangover as an art house film, but the kind you can take your mom to.

So, the scenario is three best friends go on a bachelor party trip to Spain when one of them gets engaged. And, they learn lessons that will last a lunchtime.

I was pretty taken aback by this movie: as I said above, it could have been one of those foreign language films you'd go to with girlfriends in college and afterwards hang at TGI Friday's and sigh over the hot foreign actors whose names you couldn't pronounce. There was very little Bolly-madness, which had good and bad aspects.

I'll start with stuff that didn't work for me: these guys are supposed to be just out of college. And, they're all at least a decade too long in the tooth for this. Now, in a musical or a silly superhero movie, I can ignore this, but it's played seriously, AND they keep mentioning at every juncture, "We were in college FOUR YEARS AGO." And then Hrithik (who's supposed to be a workaholic) keeps telling people he's gonna make a pile of money and retire "at 40." Uh, better hurry up, dude, because I think that's next Tuesday.

This also drags the movie a bit as one of the running gags is that they like to play childish pranks on bystanders. As I said, they're a bit too old for this to work for me, and they just end up looking like assholes.

Now the good, which was quite good. FIRST OFF, Hrithik Rothan, who plays Arjun and is one of the prettiest men in all of god's creation CAN FUCKING ACT. Who knew? And he totally fits the workaholic character: I can imagine him on the treadmill blabbing into his fucking bluetooth and making everyone else wanna smack him.

They're all really great characters. Imraan, who's supposed to be the playboy of the bunch, in a US film would be played by Bradley Cooper, and be teh kewlest. But, he's not. He's sometimes kind of an asshole. And you get to see that. But you're also sympathetic. And that goes for all of them: the bride-to-be, who would be turned into a complete witch in a US film, has a point of view, and you feel for her.

And that's the core of what I liked: I really believed these were people, not characters, and I could see why these three guys were buddies, and not just types Hollywood cooked up because they'd appeal to various demographic groups.

I had a couple of small quibbles. Like everything from India I've seen so far, they could have hacked at least 20 minutes off the running time and I would not have missed it. But there's also some really nice, quiet moments, like when Arjun, who is scared of the water, learns to scuba dive with a sympathetic instructor.

And as I said, I really WANTED everything to come screeching to a halt so Hrithik could get up and FUCKING DANCE ALREADY. Maybe next time: I have a Dhoom move coming later this week. That's another great thing about Bollywood: there's ALWAYS more movies.

Oh, and one more note: this video was a must, as the posters featuring Hrithik looking like he was soon to lose his pants were ALL OVER INDIA. I think maybe the DVD had just come out.