Fresh on the heels of a pair of new releases last weekend comes Ladies vs. Ricky Bahl, opening in the Chicago area on December 9, 2011. The romantic comedy reunites Anushka Sharma and Ranveer Singh, who charmed audiences last year in Band Baaja Baaraat.
Ladies vs. Ricky Bahl opens on Friday at the AMC South Barrington 30 in South Barrington and Regal Cantera Stadium 17 in Warrenville. Click here for a nationwide theater list. Its runtime is listed as 2 hrs. 20 min.
Of last weekend’s new releases, only The Dirty Picture gets a second week at the South Barrington 30 and Cantera 17. (So long, I Am Singh.) Desi Boyz, which has earned $984,679 in its first two weeks in U.S. theaters, gets a third week at both theaters as well.
Update: Big Cinemas’ U.S. theater sites are undergoing maintenance, so head to movietickets.com to check theater schedules. The Big Cinemas Golf Glen 5 in Niles is showing Ladies vs. Ricky Bahl, The Dirty Picture, Desi Boyz, Osthe (Tamil) and Panjaa (Telugu) this weekend.
Hate crimes committed against Sikhs, Muslims and others deemed sufficiently “Arab-looking” in the wake of 9/11 are some of America’s greatest embarrassments. Yet I’m not sure I Am Singh is the movie the victims of those attacks would want to represent their side of the story.
I Am Singh is a boring, poorly acted sequence of lectures on Sikh history and American moral failings that insults the intelligence of those who watch it.
The movie is held together by a thin excuse for a plot, cobbled together from real-life examples of crimes committed against American Sikhs. The presumptive lead of the film is Ranvir (Gulzar Chahal), an Indian Sikh who flies to America after his family is attacked by a gang of skinheads in Los Angeles. One of his brothers is killed, the other falsely imprisoned, and their father seriously injured.
I say that Ranvir is the presumptive lead because he disappears entirely during the climax and is frequently benched in favor of subplots. Ranvir’s biggest competition for screentime comes from Fateh Singh (Puneet Issar, the film’s writer, director and producer), a member of the “U.S. Police Force” fired for wearing a turban.
Issar doesn’t seem to have enough confidence in his story’s ability to convey his moral message. He has characters deliver all of their important dialog looking straight into the camera, just so there’s no confusion about who the message is really directed at. The effect is comical.
It’s almost as a comical as the sheer volume of closeup shots of actors faces. I didn’t count, but it’s probably close to one hundred. Frequently, the camera zooms into closeup, making the movie feel like a Mexican soap opera. I couldn’t help but think of this:
The acting is horrible across-the-board, but kudos to the non-Indian actors for being especially bad. The two blonde human rights lawyers deliver their lines woodenly, while the skinhead leader with the eye patch that won’t stay in place insists on shouting at subordinates standing a few feet away.
The audio dubbing is frequently out of sync. For some reason, many of the white American actors have Australian or British accents despite the action taking place in L.A.
Laughably poor execution aside, I Am Singh runs into its biggest problems when it veers into hypocrisy. America is alternately characterized as beacon of morality that simply lost its way and as an irredeemable nation of hateful morons. Such generalization is exactly what the movie is trying to condemn.
Overall, I Am Singh represents a huge missed opportunity to introduce a wider audience to Sikhism.
The weekend beginning December 2, 2011, sees two new Hindi movies opening in the Chicago area. I Am Singh — a drama about one Sikh family’s experience in the U.S. after 9/11 — gets the wider release of the two new films.
This weekend’s other new release is The Dirty Picture, based on the life of South Indian ’80s bombshell Silk Smitha. The film reunites two of the stars of Ishqiya, Naseeruddin Shah and Vidya Balan, who plays Silk in the new film.
The Dirty Picture opens on Friday at the South Barrington 30, Cantera 17 and Golf Glen 5, which is also carrying the movie’s Telugu-dubbed version. The movie has a listed runtime of 2 hrs. 33 min.
After earning $702,325 in the U.S. over the 5-day Thanksgiving weekend, Desi Boyz gets a second week at the Golf Glen 5, South Barrington 30 and Cantera 17. The South Barrington 30 is also carrying over Rockstar.
Other Indian movies showing at the Golf Glen 5 this weekend include Mayakkam Enna (Tamil) and the Telugu films Bezawada, Solo and Sri Rama Rajyam.
