Chandni Chowk to China (2009)

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As a woman-- over the years, I've often seen the raising of many an eyebrow when I confess my love of martial arts films. On the other hand, my devotion to musicals others can understand-- there are gender double-standards it seems even for film geeks. Likewise, my passion for old silent comedies starring Charlie Chaplin seemed perfectly natural given my profession but the idea of a rather feminine girl sitting down and watching Jet Li or Jackie Chan roundhouse kick their way to victory always seemed as foreign to most as the films that come out of India's Bollywood.

However, to me, there was always something musical about martial arts films-- choreography that worked with a dancer-like precision, blending comedic elements of the old silent masters with strict attention to tempo, timing, rhythm, and-- above all-- always making sure viewers had the same contact high of sheer joy that we had watching kung fu as we had watching Astaire or Kelly.

It only seemed like it'd be a matter of time before the two genres blended but I must admit to have been equally baffled when I heard that it was the product of the world's largest filmmaking center (outside Hollywood, that is)-- India's Bollywood that had decided to craft a full blown Bollywood kung fu movie.

Of course, purists remained skeptical that the same industry that gave us the excellent three hour plus Best Foreign Film Nominee Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (a.k.a. an epic and stunningly engrossing musical film about a cricket match) would be the best choice to serve up what screenwriter Shridhar Raghavan called "Kung Fu curry."

Still, the inclusion of legendary Shaw Brothers master Gordon Liu (known to this generation mostly for his work in Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2), veteran martial arts star Roger Yuan (Bulletproof Monk, Batman Begins, Lethal Weapon 4, Shanghai Noon), and the incredible stunt director Huen Chiu Ku (Fist of Legend, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Matrix, Kill Bill, The Forbidden Kingdom etc.) instantly gave Warner Brothers Studio's Chadni Chok to China a much needed boost of Hong Kong street-fighting cred.

Slated to be as Michelle Nichols of Reuters wrote "the largest Bollywood release in North America," there is a lot riding on the film high-kicking into action on 125 screens in both Canada and the United States today along with a major opening in India.

As Warner's "first Indian production," the film's director Nikhil Advani articulates the challenge best telling Reuters that, "if this one succeeds, even if it marginally succeeds... I think there will be a wave of more Bollywood films."

Also set for release in thirty additional countries, time will tell whether fans of both genres will embrace the hybrid along with audiences who typically avoid subtitles to see if they'll turn out in support of a Bollywood version of martial arts, offering broad humor, elaborate sets and state of the art musical sequences featuring a sea of extras.

Boasting a remarkably catchy Indo-Chinese fusion score inspired by the sounds of both countries from Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy including the film's addictive theme song and starring Bollywood's most popular action star Akshay Kumar who first made a name for himself following his work in the profitable Khiladli series, the film intriguingly strikes a chord with the star on a personal level as Kumar was raised in Chandni Chok and later worked as a Bangkok chef before he reached Indian super-stardom.

Crafting a lovable loser underdog in the vein of Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther and Sacha Baron Cohen in Borat and infusing him with the humor of Jackie Chan, Kumar plays Sidhu, an unlucky vegetable peeler and assistant cook in Chandni Chok who-- very similar to Kung Fu Panda of all things-- is told his destiny is to become a great warrior. However, instead of being trained by Dustin Hoffman's adorable animated Master Shifu, the overly broad Sidhu whose constant pratfalls, stumbling, and over-the-top Kung Fu Hustle inspired effects for the first thirty to forty minutes wears on viewer's nerves, lands in China to star in the much more successful roughly two hour final part of the movie.

Realizing-- much too late-- that he's been duped and that he isn't the reincarnated village hero who's meant to assassinate the villainous mobster Hojo (Gordon Liu) who is overly fond of decapitating his enemies with a boomerang like hat (indicative of James Bond's shoe-throwing Odd Job in just one of several-- including one tongue in cheek dialogue reference to the 007 franchise), Sidhu finds himself embroiled in an increasingly complicated epic family mystery as the movie continues.

When he falls for the beguiling Indian TV commercial model Sakhi (supermodel Deepika Padukone, also known as the first Indian woman to become Maybelline New York Cosmetics' global face) and then mistakes the same woman for her Asian double Meow-Meow (also Padukone), Sidhu discovers a fascinating tale of a family destroyed by tragedy, twin sisters separated and more as the plot-line evolves into a fascinating high-concept soap, complete with the genres' trademarks of stylish fights and gorgeously executed musical numbers.

Although it's an uneven attempt and one feels far more engrossed in the plight of the young women as the movie improves upon its Chinese location change and Kumar's character Sidhu is able to ham less as the annoying buffoon and begin to turn more into the hero he'll become, it's still one of the most wholly original cinematic works we've seen in the theatre in a long while.

Additionally, it's one that-- even when you're completely lost by the plot or struggling to stay still during its 154 minute running time-- must be seen on the big screen for the entertaining spectacular diversion it is with characters using umbrellas as parachutes, the breathtaking Great Wall of China as a wondrous backdrop and decidedly the type of leave-your-worries-on-the-doorstep sunny offering the world needs right now in lieu of far too many hapless Oscar bait tragedies of dysfunctional families falling out of love and into loathe.

While it may be a tough sell to hardcore fans of Hong Kong kung fu and men who shudder at the idea of characters bursting into song-- once the movie picks up momentum, perhaps even the most extreme fans of martial arts cinema will at last be able to see the way the genres of slapstick and musical comedy compliment the fight choreography. Likewise, maybe they'll finally see what I've been trying to explain for years-- how in reality, the blending of the three had perhaps already been done to some extent (as in the Keaton and Chaplin styled routines of Jackie Chan) and rhythmic "greatest hits mix tape of martial arts" as Uma Thurman takes on a room full of Yakuza fighters in Kill Bill.

Marigold

Ali Larter Goes Bollywood...

I must admit that I’m not sure why Ali Larter isn’t a bigger star. I mean yes, of course, she earned her big cinematic break playing a Varsity Blues bimbo but she made intelligent choices thereafter with the cult teen scarefest Final Destination. And despite a Hollywood absence for a few years to take a break from the sex-kitten characters being offered her way (Allure, 7/08), she’s rebounded much better than other late ’90s starlets who also first portrayed bimbos, such as American Pie’s Shannon Elizabeth. I guess, in retrospect, Larter and her fans should be grateful that she doesn’t have Elizabeth’s primarily straight-to-DVD career but the potential for Larter is undeniable.
Case in point: before her TV series Heroes “jumped the shark,” you couldn’t open a magazine without press covering it with multi-page spreads and articles, yet all the ink spilled seemed to surround the likable, funny Japanese newcomer Masi Oka’s Hiro and Hayden Panettiere’s perky “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” character. Yet, honestly, while the sunny young Panettiere was used as the face of the show to maximize its youth appeal as the new Buffy, as far as women were concerned on Heroes, it was Larter and not Panettiere who played the best character in season one (before I gave up on it last Fall). As a New Age Film Noir heroine, Larter played a combo of the virgin and the whore dual personality all rolled into one without the cheesy melodrama of a daytime soap and we never knew which side of Larter’s character we’d see next.
And while granted she’s no Meryl Streep, in the film Marigold as well as a recent independent screener called Crazy I was lucky enough to view (currently making the rounds in the film-festival circuit), she gets the chance to show a range that we haven’t seen before and both films involve music. While in the biopic Crazy, she plays the long-suffering wife of a talented guitarist, in writer/director Willard Carroll’s likable sleeper Marigold, Larter takes her biggest risk yet and gets her diva shot at Bollywood glory.
Due to the rightful insistence of casting directors that she’s just not “sympathetic enough,” D-List actress Marigold Lexton (Larter) whose own boyfriend describes her as a “four-star bitch,” has made a career appearing in numerous direct-to-DVD sequels of famous films. After earning a horny fanbase with turns in "Fatal Attraction 3" and "Basic Instinct 3," Marigold’s career has taken such a status dive that as the film opens she boards a twenty-hour flight to Bombay in coach class and bumps along during a hellish twelve-hour cab ride to Goa for her latest gig in Kama Sutra 3.
After screaming at her agents and boyfriend via cell phone the entire way (and clearly loving the chance to play a hammy stereotype as Larter kills even Carroll’s most throwaway lines), eventually her feet touch land in Goa. However, instead of a red carpet, she quickly discovers that due to the shady dealings in the background Sutra’s Indian producers have landed in jail and the German bankers fled to Singapore to avoid a similar fate when financing fell through. Further distraught when her fed-up agent fires her over the telephone and she realizes she was only provided with a one-way ticket to India, the unkind Marigold relies on the kindness of strangers in the Bollywood film community as she tries a way back to the states.

Although instead of a temporary layover, her stay is lengthened the duration of a film shoot, when she’s shocked to discover that while blonde actresses are a dime a dozen in synthetic La La Land, in Goa, her exotic golden-tresses and experience working even in, as Kathy Griffin would call, D-List films, makes her a valuable commodity. Soon, the director is reworking his Bollywood production to feature Marigold in a starring role and although (much like Larter), her character has zero musical or dancing training, her new friends quickly take her under their wing, including the gorgeous and guileless choreographer Prem (Bollywood sensation Salman Khan). A romantic relationship predictably develops but culture clash and prior commitments (both with Marigold’s lackluster relationship back in the states and Prem’s familial obligations) threaten to get in their way.

A true fairy-tale for the film’s duration—tinged with beautiful visuals and featuring seven original songs about the various stages of love (of which only some are successful), Carroll’s Marigold is an earnest and warmly romantic guilty pleasure. And as the director noted on the DVD that it's an “affectionate homage” rather than a parody of the genre, he manages to produce a Bollywood-light film that even the uninitiated will find appealing without immersing themselves fully into the genre. Famous for their multiple-hour running times and sudsy plots that nonetheless engross (like the Academy Award-nominated three-hour “cricket-match musical,” Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India), Bollywood isn’t for everyone. Like sushi, country music, and the comedy of Dane Cook—you’re either a fan or you’re not and oftentimes it’s hard to analyze why.

While ultimately, as far as I’m concerned, I really enjoy the genre, I do grant that I couldn’t watch too many of them in a short time period. In the same token if pressed—genre-wise, I’d say that I wished I could spend one day living life as though it were a frothy French romantic comedy; American musicals would be a close second. With this in mind if you blended together the sweet with the sour of both genres and poured on the soapy melodrama while grating on generous amounts of cheese, you’ll have formulated the ultimate Bollywood musical that it’s fun to get lost in, at least for two hours.
However, while I’m a casual fan, writer/director Willard Carroll is a die-hard Bollywood devotee. The filmmaker, a few years back crafted one of my favorite underrated Altman-esque ensemble pieces, Playing By Heart (which I forced everyone I knew to rent). Afterwards, he found himself fascinated by the genre after only taking in one Bollywood musical--incidentally starring Khan-- when he was in India. When he arrived back in the states, complete with a new obsession, he programmed a one-man international film festival, absorbing, analyzing and viewing an admitted “150-200” films before he set out to begin crafting his own.

And although it will never top Playing By Heart which is still one of my favorite films—ironically Heart is one so synonymous with its cast (including Connery, Jolie, Rowlands etc.) that it wasn’t until after I began researching Marigold, that I even realized the helmer of this one was one and the same. Still, Marigold is affable Saturday afternoon fare for single girls or a lightweight date movie for nights curled up on the couch, sure to find a bigger audience on cable television, as long as-- that is-- Bollywood doesn’t send you running.
Yet unlike Gurinder Chadha’s Jane Austen inspired blend of American musicals and Bollywood fare—Bride and Prejudice—Carroll wanted to pay tribute to what he liked but avoid parroting the genre altogether in what could have been an unsuccessful satire. Couple this with the fact that—as he reveals on the DVD—Ali Larter was living in his guest home and suddenly one day while observing her doing laundry, he realized he had his very own remarkable leading lady to get the job done. And likewise, he gave her a chance as a friend and supportive professional that most in the industry wouldn’t have, as he says, believing in her even more than the actress does herself.
While unfortunately it's a bit skimpy on DVD extras, the studio more than makes up for it with a fascinating behind-the-scenes thirty-minute making-of featurette on the Marigold DVD, taking film lovers further into the cinematic process of such a visually stunning work. And although therein he admits that although the process of the two stars couldn’t have been more different with Larter’s cerebral questioning and longing for rehearsal and the veteran Khan who has the ability after the bare minimum of run-throughs to just complete a complicated number flawlessly, soon they inevitably clicked. And in doing so, much like the film itself—thereby managing to meld the west and east together in a very harmlessly yet unexpectedly entertaining way.

A Peck on the Cheek

Director:
Mani Ratnam

When asked why I don’t have children, aside from rattling off the traditional concerns of wanting to raise a child with a good man since I believe two parents are ideal or preferring to wait to ensure financial security, one of the most frequent arguments I encounter from other childless individuals within my 25-40 year old age bracket is the citation that it may not be the fairest decision to bring another innocent life into a world filled with such violent uncertainties including war, school shootings, horrific economic injustices, rampant drugs and intolerance. While the argument certainly feels all the more timely today, it’s curious that when I speak with much older friends and relatives, they offer the same exact reasoning that gave them a fertility pause decades ago. In fact, they tell me it was especially an oft-quoted political statement during the tumultuous Vietnam era and assassinations of prominent historical leaders in the 1960’s. And while it’s easy in this era of American-centrist news to naively feel as though this may only be unique to our citizens, it’s a fear that’s cropping up in the farthest reaches of the world where justifiably some are giving greater thought to starting a family by weighing pros and cons in a way that possibly hadn’t occurred to some individuals in both the United States and abroad to investigate that perhaps the near-mandate to grow up, marry, procreate, buy a home and continue working until death had larger moral implications to take into consideration.

It’s precisely this same line of thinking that the type of world a child is born into may not be worthy of such an innocent creature that provides the earliest obstacle in the newly arranged Sri Lankan marriage between the twenty-two year old beautiful Shyama (Nandita Das) and her new husband in Indian writer/director Mani Ratnam’s award winning Film Movement selection A Peck on the Cheek. Although the nervous, introverted Shyama finds herself unable to make eye contact with her husband during their nuptials, the two find themselves falling easily into a joking, flirtatious rapport once they’re alone, however their early bliss as newlyweds is cut abruptly short by their war-torn country where explosions seem as abundant as the trees in the forest and their consistently dangerous existence inspires Shyama’s husband to state he wants to wait to give her the eight children she longs for until at last there is peace in the country. However, Mother Nature and fate have other plans and when war finds the young married lovers cruelly separated, Shyama is shocked to discover she’s pregnant and, in a country where the hospitals are in ruins and wanting the best for her daughter, Shyama’s father sends her away where she goes into labor upon her arrival in an Indian refugee camp in Rameswaram.

Given the emotionally devastating prologue, I was completely unprepared for director Ratnam’s abrupt change in both tone and style as, following Shyama’s delivery, we cut to nine years later as her young, mischievous and fiercely independent daughter now named Amudha (P.S. Keerthana) lives with her two younger brothers along with her adopted wealthy, professional parents including the engineer and successful fiction writer Thiru (R. Madhavan) who publishes under the name of his television anchorwoman wife Indira (Simran). Set in a vibrant, colorful Madras, India, the film’s hauntingly lyrical beginning is wiped away by high-energy Bollywood production values, complete with musical numbers and the introduction of several characters—some far too confusingly quickly—until the film finally settles down into a more cohesive narrative as the nine year old Amudha learns on her birthday of her true origin and adoption. With emotions going overtime as she struggles to process this from feeling predictably betrayed to fascinated and worried how it will affect her life with her parents who adore her and had in fact, sweetly fallen in love while bonding over the young infant daughter who inspired her father’s most passionate story that secured his future wife’s affections. Driven by her concerns, Amudha makes some feeble attempts to run away and track down her biological mother until her parents decide to aid her in her quest to uncover her past as they journey to the still horrifyingly dangerous Sri Lanka to track down Shyama.

While some of the Bollywood numbers, the overly manipulative score, and a few far too convenient plot devices detract from the emotional impact of the otherwise very solid film, Ratnam’s movie is filled with gorgeous little details including the way it flows forwards and backwards in time with its most successful segment following that powerful introduction as the compassionate outcasts Thiru, Indira and baby Amudha all seem to fall for one another simultaneously, thus reminding us that-- while the world can be horrifyingly cruel and bleak-- we must take every opportunity to love each other while we’re here and reach out to one another, often forming a family with those we wouldn’t expect.

An excellent foreign gem to share with high school students and one that will definitely play even better to audience members who have experience with adoption, A Peck on the Cheek, which earned six national awards in its native India before screening at festivals around the globe has been recently made available to movie lovers here in the U.S.A. courtesy of Film Movement.