Tonight I saw my first Bollywood film, at the Regal Cinema on Colaba Causeway / Regal Circle, Bombay, India. My first Bollywood film. In Hindi. Without subtitles. Here’s what happened.

Commando: A One Man Army

Four Indian head wobbles out of Five

Some hench Indian man trains in a forest doing impossible exercises like handstand dips on two logs; meanwhile, a Colonel in the Indian army is getting nervous in the rain. Hench Indian man gets captured by order of said nervous Indian Colonel and submits him to an entire year of torture, including sitting naked on a chair whilst someone pulls down on a piece of string which is presumably tied to you know what. (Why? Who cares?) Some time later, hench Indian man escapes from captivity and runs off into the forest.

Elsewhere, a gangster with no pupils in his eyes, just whites, takes his sunglasses off, holds a gun to a child’s head in jest, says something in Hindi and everyone laughs. So do we. We have no idea why. He seems pretty evil. He then goes into a house, mocks a family and instantly falls in love with their beautiful daughter.

He then goes to extreme and elaborate (if a bit creepy) lengths to propose to her which includes scores of men and women dancing an him singing whilst every now and again head butting someone else to prove how hard he is. Everyone in the cinema cheers. Again, we’re not sure why. Isn’t he the bad guy? Anyway, she shuns his proposal and makes a fool out of him. Everyone laughs.

She then decides that she must run away, and is of course pursued by creepy, no pupils gangster mans mob. Because that’s what happens in real life. But of course, she bumps into hench Indian man who takes them all out in extreme style in a slow motion montage of roundhouse kicks and jumping of walls unnecessarily.

Fast forward and hench Indian man and female have been fleeing through the forest for days trying to escape creepy, no pupils gangster mans mob. They all get beaten up one-by-one in more and more elaborate ways.

Also, some European hitman has been hired by the Indian army to chase and kill hench Indian man. We’re still unsure what he’s done but this European guy means business: he’s killed the girl he was in bed with and some guy in a post office before he’s even spoken a line.

Next, we flick back to hench Indian man and female in the forest and he is building an extremely intricate nest for her to sleep in for the evening. Where he found such a collection of graded and regulated sticks all of uniform length without felling entire hectares of forest is unclear, but she falls in love with him instantly for his bushcraft skills. And possibly his Die Hard style shirt and vest and ridiculous muscular build. Cue birds eye view music video of he writhing around awkwardly in the sand whilst he sweats on her, but their lips never touch.

Fast forward past hench Indian man being thrown off a cliff and surviving after being shot, and European and creepy gangster have teamed up and taken female captive. Hench Indian man shows up, just in the nick of time, kills everyone with a single blow, except European who beats him at first to a very dramatic soundtrack, but then gets strangled to death, and saves female. Meanwhile, we learn that no matter how many times a man slaps a man in a Bollywood film and the “qu-toosh” sound effect is played, it is ALWAYS FUNNY. In fact, it gets funnier in direct proportion to the number of times it is done.

We finish with a show down between the army, police (where did they come from?) and a few mobsters who have realised that a single roundhouse kick to the face, no matter how many other vertical surfaces someone has bounded off to reach you, is not sufficient to allow you to lie down for the rest of the film. Hench Indian man then hoists creepy gangster up on a noose and pokes him in the eye to reveal that he isn’t the devil reincarnate, he’s wearing contact lenses.

Everyone laughs, cheers and goes home happy. 100 rupees well spent.

Now, I’m not the type of person to judge an entire country’s cinematic output on a single action blockbuster… But, if I were to do that, I would say that it seems that Bollywood cinema is basically a list of cliches acted out to music and in slow motion. Thoroughly enjoyable though, mostly for the audiences response to the action and jokes. Everyone was cheering, laughing and wooping whenever things got exciting.

But then again, that’s India.

The Darjeeling Limited

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Octopussy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19lY5cqPzNs

Slumdog Millionaire
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIzbwV7on6Q

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