[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.] It's been three weeks since a Bad Movie Night post and with good reason. One of those weeks Adam and Sarah were on vacation in Boston. The other two weeks were spent watching this Bollywood comedy "Welcome." Usually we try to avoid comedies because deliberately trying to make the audience laugh usually ends up more painful than actually funny and there are fewer opportunities for unintentional comedy, but after covering the "Singham" films we needed a different Bollywood genre. Critically, this movie got mixed reviews but it came unironically recommended by one of Sarah's coworkers who thinks it's really funny. It also has a sequel called "Welcome Back" which we will not be watching because this one was not enjoyable enough to warrant us wanting more. The plot of this movie is actually surprisingly simple considering it's three hours long. Rajiv, boy from a decent, normal family, falls for Sanjana, a girl from a crime family. The normal relatives do not want to the marriage to happen so the boy and girl try to get her brother and his fellow gangster to pursue decent careers with the influence of Ishika, a girl they hired to make them fall in love with her. That's it really. There are a lot of hijinks. The courting of Sanjana by Rajiv takes over a half hour in itself. Towards the end there's a lot of nonsense when Sanjana accidentally shoots the boss's son, ironically named Lucky, and there's a whole "I'm Not Dead Yet" series of body swapping with a funeral pyre (Adam: "This guy's gonna pull a Denethor"). This also eats up about a half hour of the film. The climax of the film culminates in all the characters together in the boss's unstable house playing a murder version of hot potato while government brokers try to push the house off a cliff and solve their crime problem and their housing violation problem at once. The twenty minutes of them trying to escape the house that's suspended over a cliff are mindless. The film had some redeeming qualities. Music numbers never fail to amuse us for instance. We are always able to amuse each other when we have ridiculous content to base jokes off of. There are a lot of misplaced sound effects that feature Adam's least favorite instrument in existence: the slide whistle. Our subtitles kept saying "rascal" when the actors were literally saying "bastard." We weren't bored. But we've seen better. And if you're wondering if there's an awful ear-wormy theme song, you're in luck.
Spoon Rating: 4.5 Note: Grandma is currently in a nursing home. It is unclear whether she will be able to return to Bad Movie Night for her poignant reviews. On a side note, the bad movie shelf has been updated. Feast your eyes on this glory (you can click on the picture to get a better look at what's on it):
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.] 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."
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
It's been a long time since I made a post. it's not that we haven't been doing Bad Movie Night the last two weeks but the two movies we watched I have nothing more to say about: "Saving Christmas" and "Birdemic." Two classics I have talked about enough. However, this week we are back to watching things we've never seen before and we came back with a bang. Literally. I wouldn't even call this movie bad. It's like "Inhuman Resources" which we all loved so much: it's a movie that knows what it wants to be and is well aware of its ridiculousness and doesn't care. This movie knows no boundaries. On a scale of one to ten it is pretty much always operating at an eleven and never drops below a nine. After this, it's pretty much a gurantee that there will be more Bollywood movies at bad movie night because it was so damn fun. None of us had even seen a Bollywood action movie before (Indian movies in general, yes, but not like this) and Adam described it well with, "This is like old school Hollywood. You're here for a show and godamnit we're going to entertain you." In a rapid prologue of Dutch angles and flashbacks we get the story of a Goa city cop named Rakesh Kadem who killed himself after being framed by the city's top gangster, Jaikart Shikre, who has the whole police force bending to his whim. Kadem's widow knows he only killed himself because of the pressure but on him by Shikre and wants to clear his name of corruption charges. Suddenly, the story changes entirely as a man emerges from a giant pool as if summed by the gods and we are treated to the first of three musical numbers. With lyrics saying, "The heart races. The body trembles when you know he's coming. Singham!" you know what's up. Singham is a cop, the perfect cop actually (Indian Chuck Norris, really), in a small town outside of Goa. Everyone loves him. He literally sends men flying up into the air by tapping them on the head. Cars flip over in his presence. He's basically the Jesus of fist fighting who ends his battles by whipping his opponents with his belt. Among this mad display of manliness we are treated to a silly comedic side story about how his friend's daughter falls in love with him and pretty much demands marriage. We get another musical interlude. He says he loves her so I guess they're engaged. Everything is swell until Shikre is given conditional bail and must travel to Singham's village every day to sign in. Initially he sends some goons but Singham is not having it and embarrasses Shikre into complying. Shikre gets revenge by having Singham transfered to Goa where he can make his life hell with the goal of driving him to suicide as well. Singham is frustrated with the state of Goa and how none of the other cops will help him try to take down Shikre because they're all afraid of him. Singham almost gives up and goes home. There's another song break between Singham and his girlfriend. He is inspired then to try to turn everything around after meeting Kadem's widow and remembering the true meaning of taking down the bad guy. He arrests Shikre's top lieutenant by framing him but Shikre gets revenge by kidnapping Singham's girlfriend's sister. Then Singham decides to beat up more bad guys in public and give rousing speeches to the police officiers about their duties. They agree to band together to take down Shikre. Which they do. By killing him. And making it look like a suicide. No chill. And Kadem gets cleared of all charges and his widow is personally apologized to by her husband's coworkers. Explaining the plot of this movie does little to get to the meat of why this movie is such an experience. It's so hard to describe the most over the top fight scenes you will ever witness juxtaposed with essentially pop music videos (which you can watch on YouTube by the way). And the sound effects! Sound effects dissimilar from any you have heard in the known world! Oh, and every time Singham is being really badass, his theme plays. Or at least the part that says his name. And we will be singing it for all eternity. SINGHAM!
BMN Quotes: Adam: "This is the film equivalent of an eight minute Metallica solo." Kay: "This is the film equivalent of pounding Red Bull." Adam: "This is the Dragonforce of cinema." Spoon Rating: 9
It's been three weeks since a Bad Movie Night post and with good reason. One of those weeks Adam and Sarah were on vacation in Boston. The other two weeks were spent watching this Bollywood comedy "Welcome." Usually we try to avoid comedies because deliberately trying to make the audience laugh usually ends up more painful than actually funny and there are fewer opportunities for unintentional comedy, but after covering the "Singham" films we needed a different Bollywood genre. Critically, this movie got mixed reviews but it came unironically recommended by one of Sarah's coworkers who thinks it's really funny. It also has a sequel called "Welcome Back" which we will not be watching because this one was not enjoyable enough to warrant us wanting more.
