Shah Rukh Khan and Anushka Sharma reunite for director Imtiaz Ali’s romantic comedy Jab Harry Met Sejal, opening in Chicago area theaters on August 4, 2017.
Mubarakan carries over for a second week at the River East 21, MovieMax, Rosemont 18, South Barrington 24, Marcus Addison, Cantera 17, and Woodridge 18.
MovieMax also hosts a special showing of Baahubali 2: The Conclusion in Telugu on Saturday, August 5, at 8 p.m. Tickets are only $1!
Other Indian movies showing in the Chicago area this weekend:
I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Netflix with several additions to the catalog. Jab We Met made its triumphant return to the streaming service, joining the newly added 2017 film Anaarkali of Aarah, starring Swara Bhaskar. Also new is the 2016 American-Indian co-production Tie the Knot, which stars Omi Vaidya and Tara Reid. The Netflix original documentary series Daughters of Destiny — which follows a group of impoverish girls through their life at a boarding school — is available as well. The show looks inspiring, and it features music by A.R. Rahman.
Mubarakan turned in a fine opening weekend performance at the North American box office. During the weekend of July 28-30, 2017, the comedy earned $305,449 from 148 theaters ($2,064 average; adjusted average of $2,386 from 128 theaters*). While those numbers aren’t flashy, they’re still better than the opening weekend figures of two other 2017 releases with similar theatrical footprints: OK Jaanu ($211,660 from 136 theaters) and Half Girlfriend ($238,001 from 127 theaters).
Other Hindi movies still in theaters (until SRK’s Jab Harry Met Sejal boots them out on Friday):
Jagga Jasoos: Week 3; $19,246 from 31 theaters; $621 average; $853,806 total
Mom: Week 4; $8,645 from nine theaters; $961 average; $602,255 total
Munna Michael: Week 2; $5,835 from 17 theaters; $343 average; $103,887 total
*Bollywood Hungama frequently counts Canadian theaters twice in when they report figures for a film’s first few weeks of release. When possible, I verify theater counts at Box Office Mojo, but I use Bollywood Hungama as my primary source because they provide a comprehensive and consistent — if flawed — data set.
Even in movies about reincarnation, where the audience knows that the lead couple is fated to be together, we still have to want them to be together in the first place. Raabta (“Connection“) gets that part of the formula wrong, pairing a likable woman with an immature moron.
It’s hard to overstate just how awful Shiv (Sushant Singh Rajput) is as a main character. He’s an entitled boor who hits on every white woman he sees, assuming them to be easy and stupid. A new job in Budapest gives him plenty of opportunities to be an abominable lech.
Of course, when he meets a lovely Indian expat named Saira (Kriti Sanon), Shiv is immediately ready to settle down with her. The presumed inherent moral superiority of Saira’s race and national heritage make it okay for her to jump straight into bed with Shiv, while the flirtatious white women Shiv dates are depicted as disposable tramps.
Saira can’t explain the depth of her attraction to Shiv (and neither can the audience). She senses it has something to do with her vivid nightmares of drowning, and his sudden appearance in them. Shiv dismisses her suspicions, always eager to downplay her concerns and dictate the terms of their conversations.
But Saira’s not alone in suspecting a connection to the past. Debonair rich guy Zak (Neerja‘s Jim Sarbh) has seen visions of Saira as well, from an ancient time when they were once in love. They meet when Saira and Shiv agree to the dumbest possible test of their fidelity: hitting on other people at a party to see if they are as attracted to anyone else as they are to each other. Shiv promptly rips off his shirt and jumps in a pool with some blondes, and Saira flirts with Zak, who is as classy and mysterious as Shiv is tacky and vapid.
Genre convention holds that Zak will turn out to have sinister intentions that endanger Shiv’s and Saira’s preordained romance. The problem is that Zak is objectively better in every regard than Shiv. Yes, even after Zak kidnaps Saira. That’s how deplorable Shiv is.
Rajput does his character no favors, turning in the worst performance of his career. Besides being annoying in the present, Shiv’s past self — Jillan — talks in a Christian-Bale-as-Batman growl, augmented by bug-eyed twitching. The only redeeming quality either version has is a set of six-pack abs (which Zak also may have; we just don’t get to see).
Sanon’s brief career has been distinguished by capable performances in roles with zero agency. Much like Sanon’s character in her debut film, Heropanti, Saira has no control over her own body. Shiv and Zak push, pull, and grab her at will, arguing over which of them she “belongs” to.
Further reducing Saira to object status is that she’s socially isolated in a way the two men aren’t. Shiv has parents in India, and his best friend Radha (Varun Sharma) accompanies him to Budapest. Zak has dozens of paid servants and bodyguards and can turn out hundreds of guests to a party on short notice. Saira, on the other hand, works alone, was orphaned at age two, and sees her boyfriend driven off by Shiv in the span of ten minutes. She has no connections to anyone, making it easier for the two men to do with her as they please.
If there is any bright spot in Raabta, it is Jim Sarbh. He takes a role that could have easily become cartoonish and makes Zak unhinged but understandable. Zak wants Saira as fulfillment of an ancient promise but also because she’s the only other person who shares his belief that the past is repeating itself. Shiv refuses to entertain Saira’s reincarnation story, belittling her as crazy despite the fact that she’s correct — yet another knock against these star-crossed lovers.
Sarbh’s cool charisma starkly contrasts Rajput’s over-the-top antics. It’s time for filmmakers to shift Sarbh from the compelling villain slot into leading man roles (and maybe consider demoting Rajput).
The biggest star in Raabta is Deepika Padukone, who performs an unenthusiastic item number for the title track. She sways and walks the runway, and that’s about it. I hope she got a ton of money for doing next to nothing, if only to serve as a cautionary tale for filmmakers considering such transparent casting stunts.
The new comedy Mubarakan — which brings Anil Kapoor and his nephew Arjun together onscreen for the first time — opens in Chicago area theaters on July 28, 2017.
Munna Michael gets a second week at MovieMax and the South Barrington 24. Mom carries over for a fourth week at the South Barrington 24 and Woodridge 18, which also holds over Jagga Jasoos.
Other Indian movies showing in the Chicago area this weekend:
Is it time to question Tiger Shroff’s potential to be star who can carry films internationally? Shroff’s fourth film, the dance flick Munna Michael, went all but unnoticed in its opening weekend in North America. From July 21-23, 2017, Munna Michael earned $64,756 from 73 theaters, averaging $887 per theater. His previous low opening weekend average was $1,360 for last year’s underrated superhero comedy A Flying Jatt, which opened in about the same number of theaters (79). Shroff’s combined total North American earnings for all four of his movies are $744,105.
On the plus side for Shroff, his upcoming projects are more traditional action films, including a sequel to his most successful movie, Baaghi (which earned $437,243 here), as well as a potentially disastrous Rambo remake. Then again, how many fans will be drawn in simply by the genre and not because Shroff’s name is on the marquee?
In its second weekend, Jagga Jasoos earned $117,736 from 106 theaters ($1,111 average), bringing its total to $788,777.
Mom closed out its third weekend with $27,297 from 22 theaters ($1,241 average), for total earnings of $579,077. Also in its third weekend of release, Guest Iin London earned $167 from three theaters ($56 average), bringing its total to $50,813.
Anxiety is a difficult disorder to explain to people who don’t have it. While everyone experiences mild anxiety from time to time — be it a fear of heights or speaking in front of a group of strangers — it’s nowhere near the kind of crippling fear that can accompany serious anxiety attacks, a panic that can make an otherwise ordinary task seem terrifying.
Phobia comes as close to accurately depicting a panic attack as any film I’ve seen. It’s so effective that I’d caution those with a history of anxiety problems make sure you’re in a good mental state before you watch it. I thought about bailing a couple of times, it was that intense.
Radhika Apte stars in Phobia as Mehak, a single artist living in the city. She leaves an exhibition of her work early after feeling some bad vibes, falling asleep in the taxi on the way home. She awakes to find the cab driver molesting her behind some abandoned buildings.
Even though she escapes the attack, Mehak develops agoraphobia. Fearful of the outside world, Mehak hides in her apartment for months. Concerned by Mehak’s lack of improvement, her friend Shaan (Roshin Joy) and her sister Anu (Nivedita Bhattacharya) conspire to drug Mehak and move her to a new apartment, hoping that the change of scenery will fix everything.
Their actions exemplify one of the biggest challenges for anxiety sufferers: not being believed, or the fear of not being believed. By definition, phobias are irrational overreactions to perceived threats. My mother’s fear of snakes was so extreme that even a picture of a snake provoked the same terror as if one was actually slithering toward her.
Yet Anu and Shaan treat Mehak as though her fear can be diffused with logic. Shaan refuses to take out the garbage, hoping that leaving it will motivate Mehak to leave the apartment and walk down the hall to the trash bin. He doesn’t understand that the twenty-foot-long hallway might as well be twenty miles, as far as Mehak is concerned.
Mehak’s tortured attempt make it to the bin is Phobia‘s shining moment. Mehak breathes rapidly, her shirt soaked in sweat. She ties a makeshift rope of sheets to a shelf and then around her waist, as though she’s climbing out of the window and not stepping out into the hallway. If she falls, she’s afraid she won’t be able to retreat to safety. The whole sequence captures the overwhelming nature of a panic attack. Mehak’s terror is depicted perfectly by Apte, who is absolutely tremendous in the film.
Mehak’s condition only gets worse in the new apartment when she starts hallucinating sounds and images of a bloodied woman whom she assumes is “Jiya,” the previous tenant who suddenly went missing, leaving all of her belongings behind. Mehak is simultaneously too scared to go out and too scared to stay in. Shaan’s answer is set up security cameras in the house, as if Mehak’s haunted psyche can be soothed by proof.
The apartment itself looks like an upscale haunted house. There are mirrors everywhere and lonely paintings that take on a sinister air in the dark. The living room is separated from a hallway by a backless shelving system made up of niches ripe for peeping through. One of the bedrooms is full of artfully strewn about furniture.
Yet director Pawan Kripalani doesn’t deploy the horror tropes in his arsenal in the expected ways. He routinely directs the audiences gaze through mirrors and security cameras and the peephole in the door, but the anticipated jump scares never arrives. Phobia — which Kripalani wrote as well — isn’t about momentary thrills, but the persistence of Mehak’s fears.
I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Heera with an exciting new addition to the catalog. The reincarnation drama Raabta — which just released in theaters on June 9 — is now available for streaming!
One new Bollywood movie gets a limited release in the Chicago area on July 21, 2017. Munna Michael stars Tiger Shroff as a dancer who teaches a gangster (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) how to cut a rug.
