It is over! And by "it" I mean graduate school for Sarah and Kay. For now at least. They have graduated and now we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming of bad movies every Monday night. In fact, we have a new plan for the next couple of months until we get bored with this plan: two weeks of the month will be new movies, one week will be a rewatch, and the other week will be a Bollywood film. Our drive into Bollywood with "Singham" really opened our eyes to a whole world of fun, high budget movies that we could be watching outside of the low budget crap produced mostly in America (although we have seen a fair amount of UK, Canada, and Italian productions in particular). Of course, we also need to specify that bad is subjective. We thought "Singham" was straight up awesome but there were a lot of things that made us laugh when we we're totally sure if we were supposed to be laughing, crazy camera movement, and over the top acting. Are these things characteristic of a bad movie? Of course. Does this make "Singham" a bad movie? Doesn't matter. We loved it."Singham Returns" was mostly more of the same delightfulness we got from "Singham" but where it falls apart for us as a bad movie crew was the more frequent dips into serious commentary. Like the first one, there is a plot involving a cop who dies under circumstances that seem to indicate that he was involved in corrupt activities and Singham wants to prove otherwise. Like the first one, there is a side romance with some wacky hijinks and a music number (although Adam distinctly doesn't trust the new love interest for reasons he can't quite articulate). Like the first one, there is some big conspiracy going on but this time it's even bigger.
Singham is now a cop in Mumbai and the attempts by bad guys to get him to abandon his principles have increased exponentially. This leads to the new catchphrase "Singham gives; he doesn't take" i.e. Singham will give you pain, not take your bribes. Singham also says, "Now I've lost it" a bunch, usually before punching people (and during the credits there was a new song based on this phrase). The large overarching plot is about an upcoming election where the progressive and good candidate is murdered by his corrupt opposition comprising of a financial guy and a dude passing himself off as the religious leader of a cult. Stuff gets messy when you mix religion and politics and there's even a prominent newsachor figure who brings in the media component.
The most memorable part of the movie is also the least funny and most real moment. Singham is punishing some kids for accepting bribes to vote for the corrupt politicians and then one of their moms steps in to give a long, heartfelt speech about how they need the bribe money to eat and how they don't care about which government is elected because their concern is just existing from day to day. Singham is shook. He has a very somber music segment where he has a crisis of faith. We are shook. We don't even know what to do with this hardcore truth dropped into our silly action movie.
Regardless of the sharp turn to the didactic, we still love Singham and really hope there's a third one.
Spoon Rating: 7
Adam's Grandma's Review: "Good."
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