Monthly Archives: March 2014

Opening March 14: Bewakoofiyaan

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One new Hindi movie opens in Chicago area theaters on March 14, 2014. The romantic comedy Bewakoofiyaan stars Ayushmann Khurrana, Sonam Kapoor, and Rishi Kapoor.

Bewakoofiyaan opens on Friday at the AMC River East 21 in Chicago and AMC South Barrington 30 in South Barrington.

Of last weekend’s new Bollywood releases, Queen and Total Siyapaa get a second weekend at both the South Barrington 30 and the Big Cinemas Golf Glen 5 in Niles. The South Barrington 30 also keeps Gulaab Gang around for one show per day.

On Friday, The Lunchbox expands to the Renaissance Highland Park in Highland Park, joining the Century Centre Cinema in Chicago and Century 12 Evanston in Evanston.

Heading into its third week, Shaadi Ke Side Effects carries over at the Golf Glen 5 and South Barrington 30, plus the Regal Cantera Stadium 17 in Warrenville.

Other Indian movies showing at the Golf Glen 5 this weekend include Balyakalasakhi (Malayalam) and Hang Up (Telugu). The Century Stratford Square in Bloomingdale is showing the Punjabi film Kaum De Heere (with English subtitles).

Box Office: March 7-9

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A glut of new releases led to some strange North American box office results for the weekend of March 7-9, 2014.

This past weekend saw the release of four new Hindi films — Queen, Gulaab Gang, Total Siyapaa, and Ya Rab (in its U.S. debut) — to compete against a big budget romcom (Shaadi Ki Side Effects), a hyped indie film (The Lunchbox), and a lingering critical hit (Highway). All four of the new films released in relatively few theaters, limiting the potential audience.

According to Bollywood Hungama, the weekend’s winner in terms of total gross was Shaadi Ki Side Effects in its second release week. Much of that success stems from showing in ninety theaters, whereas its closest competitor — Total Siyapaa — commanded only fifty screens. SKSE earned $165,079 ($1,834 average), bringing its total North American collections to $855,836.

In terms of per screen average, The Lunchbox won the weekend. Expanding into thirteen theaters nationally, The Lunchbox earned $114,779 for an average of $8,829 per screen. Its two-week U.S. total stands at $174,711.

Queen fared the best of the weekend’s new releases. It earned $161,998 from thirty-nine theaters. Its per screen average of $4,154 is the fourth highest for a Hindi film this year, and it bested the average of all but the three highest earners in the overall U.S. top ten (according to Box Office Mojo).

The second place finisher among the new releases earned less than half of Queen‘s total, despite debuting on more screens. Total Siyapaa earned $77,469 from fifty screens for an average of $1,549.

Despite having arguably the most local hype of any of the new flicks, Gulaab Gang earned just $60,718 from 46 screens, a per screen average of $1,320.

The big loser of the weekend was Ya Rab, which dropped into fifteen U.S. theaters with no fanfare weeks after its Indian theatrical release. It managed to underperform even Karle Pyaar Karle, taking in $1,404 total for an average of just $94. Jeepers.

In its third week in theaters, Highway earned $10,904 from seven screens. Its per screen average of $1,558 was better than those of Total Siyapaa, Gulaab Gang, and Ya Rab in their debut weekends. Highway‘s total North American earnings stand at $525,033.

Movie Review: Queen (2014)

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QueenMoviePoster4 Stars (out of 4)

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Queen is the epitome of a feelgood movie, yet it’s substantive and truthful, thanks to the remarkably well-crafted character at its core. Writer-director Vikas Bahl and actress Kangana Ranaut give life to Rani Mehra, a woman whose journey affirms the virtues of courage and an open mind.

On the day before her wedding, Rani’s fiance, Vijay (Rajkummar Rao), calls off the marriage. Rani (whose name means “queen”) locks herself in her room, reliving memories of Vijay’s initial courtship.

Flashbacks to early romance are commonplace in Hindi films, though they generally don’t advance the story so much as provide a convenient place for a dance number. In the case of Queen, the flashbacks inform the audience as to why Vijay’s abrupt change of heart comes as such a shock to Rani and her family.

This period of mourning also establishes what a loving family Rani has. Her mother, father, and younger brother are worried and protective, but they don’t blame her for the breakup or pressure her to reconcile.

Rani is finally motivated to act by the words of her very cool grandmother, who encourages her granddaughter to go experience the world, since one never knows what the future holds. Rani decides to go on her dream honeymoon to Paris and Amsterdam, even if she has to go by herself.

Rani’s arrival in Paris begins her fish-out-of-water adventure. She experiences all the typical frustrations of traveling in a country where one doesn’t speak the language, including a funny and disastrous attempt at ordering a meal off a French menu. A clever riff on a chase scene involves Rani running in desperation to find someplace in the city without a view of the gargantuan Eiffel Tower, a symbol of her failed relationship.

The heroine’s fortunes change when she’s taken under the wing of Vijayalakshmi (Lisa Haydon), an endearingly slutty, half-Indian hotel employee. Vijayalakshmi gives Rani the tools and courage to navigate her new world and introduces her to experiences she would’ve avoided in the past. Ranuat’s performance when Rani finally lets loose at a disco is fierce, funny, and bewitching.

Vijayalakshmi embodies one of the movie’s main themes: that there are good people all over the world, from various cultures and living a variety of lifestyles. From Vijayalakshmi, Rani learns that being exposed to new ideas and experimenting with new activities doesn’t compromise one’s identity or morality.

One of the delights of Queen is the goodness of all the characters in the film, besides the villainous Vijay. Rani leaves Vijayalakshmi and meets a trio of new friends in Amsterdam — Taka from Japan (played by Jeffrey Chee Eng Ho), Tim from France (Guithob Joseph), and Oleksander from Russia (Mish Boyko) — as well as an emotional Italian chef (Marco Canadea), who pushes Rani to prove something to herself and to the world.

The kindness of the supporting characters is important because the primary conflict in Queen is internal. Brief flashbacks throughout the film establish that Rani has been too passive in the past, lacking the determination to do what she wants. Only Vijay takes advantage of this tendency, but the point of Rani’s journey is for her to realize that she’s an individual who deserves to find and follow her own dreams.

The international supporting cast is uniformly likable and talented. Haydon stands out, playing the id to Rani’s superego. The costume department deserves kudos for supplying Vijayalakshmi with a flashy, slightly scandalous wardrobe that delights Rani’s father and brother when they catch a glimpse of the new friend via Skype.

Kangana Ranuat is at the core of Queen‘s success. She makes Rani into a character that the audience feels like we really know, and someone we would want to know in real life. Her journey ends on such an optimistic note that part of me hopes that Bahl writes a sequel. I want to know what happens to Rani next.

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Movie Review: Total Siyapaa (2014)

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Total_Siyappa_poster1.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Total Siyapaa (“Total Chaos“) could’ve been a cute romantic comedy about the power of love to overcome cultural differences. Instead, the level of humor never rises above ethnocentric cheap shots. It’s a missed opportunity.

Ali Zafar plays Aman, a Pakistani musician who’s on the receiving end of nearly every abuse one could throw at his country. He arrives in London to meet his girlfriend, Asha (Yami Gautam), only to be arrested by a white police officer who suspects Aman of being a terrorist.

Things get worse when Aman meets Asha’s family. They really, really, really hate Pakistanis. In fact, the only defining characteristic of Asha’s younger brother, Manav (Anuj Pandit), is his hatred for and desire to kill Pakistanis. Naturally, Asha failed to tell anyone in her family whence Aman hails.

Once Aman meets the family — headed by a matriarch played by Kiron Kher — there are plenty of opportunities for situational comedy. Aman’s behavior grows more erratic due to his social discomfort and his realization that he may have accidentally killed Asha’s father, who was hit in the head by a container of frozen soup Aman dropped out the window.

Asha’s mom gamely tries to overcome her prejudices and accept Aman for her daughter’s sake, even as Aman’s goofy antics make it hard to understand what Asha sees in him. The film’s most successful scenes feature Kher and Zafar, who share a nice comic chemistry.

Over and over the jokes in Total Siyapaa return to slams against Pakistanis, well after the film has exhausted that humorous vein. The climactic argument that nearly drives Aman and Asha apart involves them shouting nationalist insults at one another.

For good measure, the white cop from the beginning of the film returns near the end to refer to a mixed group of Indian and Pakistani young men as “stinky terrorists.”

The whole experience feels like being stuck at a family gathering while an elderly relative tells a series of vaguely racist jokes, heedless of the uncomfortable expressions on the faces of his audience. There’s not much point in speaking out, since it’s not like you can change his mind, so you just sit there and wait for the joke teller to either run out of material or get up to refill his beverage.

As Total Siyapaa plods along, it’s easy to see how the movie could’ve been better. It has a solid fish-out-of-water premise; it has some decent visual gags; and it has tried-and-true comic actors in Kiron Kher and Anupam Kher, who plays Asha’s father.

If only director Eeshwar Nivas and writer Neeraj Pandey had dialed the Pakistani jokes way back after the first half hour, Total Siyapaa could’ve been pretty good.

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Movie Review: The Lunchbox (2013)

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TheLunchbox3.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Debutant director Ritesh Batra’s less-is-more style perfectly suits The Lunchbox: a seemingly simple story of an improperly delivered lunchbox that changes the lives of both the sender and the recipient.

Mumbai’s system of dabbawalas is one of the most fascinating systems engineered by humans, ripe for use as a movie plot device. Every day, thousands of dabbawalas (“lunchbox delivery men”, essentially) collect tens of thousands of lunchboxes filled with hot meals from residential and commercial kitchens, delivering them to offices across the city in time for lunch. Their rate of mistakes is estimated to be as low as 1-in-a-million.

Rather than let that one errant lunchbox go to waste, director Batra fashions a story in which a meal prepared by a neglected wife winds up in the hands of a curmudgeonly accountant.

When the wife, Ila (Nimrat Kaur), is returned an uncharacteristically empty lunchbox one afternoon, she thinks she’s found a way to get her distracted husband, Rajiv (Nakul Vaid), to pay attention to her. When Rajiv compliments Ila on her cauliflower — a dish she didn’t prepare that day — Ila realizes that there’s been a mix up, and someone else has started receiving her food.

She includes a note in the meal she sends the next day, thanking the unknown diner for his enthusiastic appetite. The accountant, Mr. Fernandez (Irrfan Khan), sends back another empty lunchbox — and a note commenting that the food was a bit too salty.

Ila’s relationship with Fernandez develops sweetly as they gradually include more personal details in their notes. Ila’s interactions with her mystery diner are aided by her upstairs neighbor, Auntie (Bharati Achrekar): a disembodied voice whose only evidence of physical being is the basket of ingredients she lowers out of the window to Ila.

The lightness of the early relationship between the lead duo turns more serious as reality sets in. Ila is a young, married woman with a daughter, and Fernandez is just weeks away from retirement. The story ends in a more believable way than a traditional love-conquers-all romantic comedy.

(That said, I’d love to see Batra direct a traditional romcom. He’s very good with the elements of that genre present in the first half of The Lunchbox.)

Batra perfectly emphasizes the theme of urban isolation in the story:

  • Rajiv won’t make eye contact with his wife.
  • Ila never sees her neighbor face-to-face.
  • Ila and Fernandez communicate only via written notes.
  • Fernandez watches through the window as his neighbors enjoy a family meal to which he’s not invited.
  • Even Ila’s parents live across town, their physical distance mirroring their emotional distance.

This sense of isolation is heightened by a soundtrack that prioritizes urban clamor over music. The sounds of trains and buses provide most of the background noise. The movie’s infrequent music is provided by the dabbawalas singing on their train ride home or by old film tunes piping down from Auntie’s window.

Still, Batra takes this notion of isolation further than he needs to by implicating marriage as one of those isolating forces. Obviously it can be, since in Ila’s case it keeps her tethered to a man who’s not interested in her. But the movie’s most prominent female characters all seem to consider marriage an institution of diminishing returns for wives, as love quickly fades into resentful caretaking. Perhaps it’s more realistic than in a typical film, but it’s overkill.

The performances in The Lunchbox are wonderful. Ila and Fernandez spend a lot of time reading notes or silently deciding what to do next, yet Kaur and Khan make every moment riveting.

The supporting cast is equally terrific. Auntie is a wonderful creation, and Achrekar does so much to enliven the character without ever appearing on screen.

Though Ila provides the impetus for Fernandez to reconnect with people, his best opportunity comes through Shaikh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), the eager young man hired to replace him. Shaikh needs a lot of help in order to fill Fernandez’s shoes, and Fernandez takes a long time to warm to the idea of mentoring him. Siddiqui’s great performance again proves that he’s as reliable an actor as there is.

The Lunchbox is something special, and hopefully the first of many great movies to come from a promising new director.

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Opening March 7: The Lunchbox, Gulaab Gang, Queen, Total Siyapaa, and Ya Rab

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I have never seen a weekend so packed with new Hindi films! Five new movies open in the Chicago area on March 7, 2014, though in a limited number of theaters.

At last, Chicago gets The Lunchbox! The only downside is that it’s opening in just two theaters, and neither of them is a theater that typically shows Bollywood movies. Clearly, distributor Sony Pictures Classics trusts that The Lunchbox will draw in the general public, in addition to the local Bollywood diehards. I’d love for this to start a trend.

The Lunchbox opens on Friday at the Century Centre Cinema in Chicago and the Century Evanston 12 in Evanston. It has a runtime of 1 hr. 44 min.

The rest of the new Hindi movies opening locally March 7 will run at many of the usual Bollywood-friendly theaters. First up is Gulaab Gang, starring Madhuri Dixit-Nene and Juhi Chawla. It opens on Friday at the Big Cinemas Golf Glen 5 in Niles and AMC South Barrington 30 in South Barrington and has a listed runtime of 2 hrs. 19 min.

Also new on Friday is Total Siyapaa (formerly known as Aman Ki Asha), a romantic comedy starring Ali Zafar and Yami Gautam. It opens at the Golf Glen 5 and South Barrington 30 and has a listed runtime of 1 hr. 49 min.

The Golf Glen 5 and South Barrington 30 will also carry Kangana Ranaut’s Queen this weekend. It has a listed runtime of 2 hrs. 26 min.

Even though it released in India on February 7, the political drama Ya Rab debuts this Friday at the Golf Glen 5 and South Barrington 30. It has a listed runtime of 2 hours.

Note: My tentative plan (subject to change) is to review Queen on Monday and Gulaab Gang on Tuesday. I’m planning to give Ya Rab a pass, but things can always change. My reviews of The Lunchbox and Total Siyapaa are now online.

Despite all of the new fare in theaters, the Hindi movie most widely accessible to Chicago area Bollywood fans remains Shaadi Ke Side Effects. After a good opening weekend in North American theaters, it carries over for a second week at the Golf Glen 5 and South Barrington 30, plus the AMC River East 21 in Chicago, Regal Gardens Stadium 1-6 in Skokie, AMC Loews Woodridge 18 in Woodridge, and Regal Cantera Stadium 17 in Warrenville.

In addition to all the new Hindi fare, the Golf Glen 5 will also carry Nimirndhu Nil (Tamil) and Thomson Villa (Malayalam) this weekend.

New Trailers: March 4, 2014

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The trailers for three very different films all opening in April, 2014, are now out. First up is Jal, an interesting-looking festival film about a water diviner trying to solve a drought. It opens in India on April 4, but that doesn’t guarantee it’ll open in the U.S. on the same day.

The family friendly supernatural comedy sequel Bhoothnath Returns releases the following weekend, on April 11. I wasn’t crazy about the original Bhoothnath, but a new crew behind the camera and Boman Irani in front of the camera give me hope.

April 18 is the release date for 2 States, a romantic drama starring Alia Bhatt and Arjun Kapoor. With the movie’s central conflict driven by the cultural differences between the two lead character’s families — a Tamil Brahmin family from Chennai and a Punjabi family from Delhi — I’m not sure how well the story will translate outside of India to an audience without the preexisting knowledge of what those differences are. We’ll have to wait and see.

Box Office: February 28 – March 2

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Shaadi Ke Side Effects got off to a great start in its debut weekend in North American theaters, February 28 – March 2, 2014. This shouldn’t be much of a surprise for an accessible, family-friendly romantic comedy featuring two supremely talented actors. SKSE took in $578,346 from 108 theaters (according to Bollywood Hungama). Its per screen average of $5355 is the second highest first-weekend return of any Hindi film to open in the United States and Canada in 2014.

The Hindi film with this year’s highest U.S. per screen average also released this weekend. The Lunchbox debuted in just three American theaters on February 28 but earned $40,634: a per screen average of $13,545! According to Box Office Mojo — whose earnings totals differ slightly from those supplied by Bollywood Hungama — The Lunchbox had the best per screen average of any movie playing in the U.S. over the weekend.

The Lunchbox opens in eleven additional theaters on March 7 and in many more theaters across the U.S. in the coming weeks. The stellar box office returns of The Lunchbox — which is being distributed in America by Sony Pictures Classic — goes to show just how well an Indian movie can perform in the U.S. with the benefit of some marketing to the masses. If only sophisticated films like Dedh Ishqiya and Highway had received such support.

Speaking of Highway, business for the road-trip drama fell significantly in its second weekend. It earned $94,030, bringing its North American total to $489,860. With the potential for three new Hindi movies to hit theaters on March 7, I don’t expect Highway to stick around for a third weekend.

Also likely to make way on Friday are Gunday (which has earned $887,675 in its three weeks in North American theaters) and Hasee Toh Phasee ($642,632 in four weeks).