Tag Archives: Netflix Original

Movie Review: Vijay 69 (2024)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Vijay 69 is a compact slice-of-life flick that’s funny and touching. The new Netflix Original movie created by Yash Raj Entertainment — the OTT arm of Yash Raj Films — fits perfectly on a streaming service.

Anupam Kher stars as the titular 69-year-old Vijay. A neighbor sees him jump into the ocean for a late night swim and assumes it’s a suicide attempt. Curmudgeonly Vijay turns up at church the next morning in the middle of his own funeral.

Even more upsetting to Vijay than being declared dead after only a few hours of fruitless searching is the eulogy his best friend Fali (Chunky Panday) wrote for him. The speech mentions that Vijay was good at rummy and once won a garba dance contest, but that’s about it.

Vijay is incensed that the eulogy didn’t mention the bronze medal he won in a national swimming competition, but that happened decades ago. When he sits down to write his own list of achievements, he can’t think of anything else. Though he has good friends, a caring daughter and grandson, and memories of his beloved wife Anna, he realizes he’s been running out the clock since she died from cancer fifteen years ago.

Inspiration for how to beef up his eulogy comes when an 18-year-old boy in his apartment colony starts training to become the youngest Indian to complete a triathlon. A quick internet search reveals that Vijay would beat the current record holder for oldest Indian triathlete by two years if he competed. Even though no one believes he can do it, Vijay vows to finish the triathlon.

The conflict in Vijay 69 is absurd in a good way. Vijay becomes rivals with the teenage athlete Aditya (Mihir Ahuja, who played Jughead in The Archies). Vijay trains under the eccentric Coach Kumar (Vrajesh Hirjee), who has local kids pelt Vijay with water balloons to make him run faster. As the old man swims laps, Coach shouts, “You’re a sea snake! You’re a sea otter! You’re an underwater mountain goat!”

Writer-director Akshay Roy (Meri Pyaari Bindu) clearly had fun with the dialogue in Vijay 69, making Vijay’s foul mouth a continual source of laughs. One can only imagine the challenge subtitler Neena Kiss faced trying to come up with English equivalents for Vijay’s colorful language.

Kher does a nice job humanizing Vijay, making him more than just a grumpy Gus. He’s vulnerable and openly shows gratitude for his friends. The unexpected alliance he eventually forms with Aditya is quite sweet.

Panday stops just short of making Fali into a caricature, allowing the affection his character feels for Vijay to shine through. Hirjee is delightful in a role I wished was bigger.

Vijay 69 suffers most when it tries to be a more conventional sports movie. Filmmaker Roy doesn’t trust the drama inherent in sport to carry the story, and instead relies on too many shots of characters struggling to increase dramatic tension. After the umpteenth closeup of Vijay looking like he’s going to have a heart attack while riding a bike, the emotional effectiveness wanes.

That said, the film’s sub-two-hour runtime keeps it from overstaying its welcome, even if it does become heavy-handed at the end. Vijay 69 is a nice story that’s small enough in scale to suit at-home viewing but worthy of one’s undivided attention.

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Movie Review: CTRL (2024)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane’s Netflix Original film CTRL chillingly reminds the audience to do something we regularly neglect: read the fine print.

The film opens with the rapid social media ascent of influencers Nella (Ananya Panday) and Joe (Vihaan Samat), a romantically-involved couple who document their dates and travels on their channel. We see their relationship evolve through their social media posts, which increasingly feature sponsored products. Their lives are entangled as much financially as they are emotionally.

Nella surprises Joe on-camera while he’s out at a meal with friends, only to find him kissing a girl she doesn’t know. Nella’s dramatic meltdown in the restaurant becomes meme-fodder, and we see other creators using her blowup to make their own material.

As she deals with the implosion of her relationship and career, Nella spots a comment advertising an AI service that can remove someone from your digital life. She signs up for the service and creates a virtual assistant “Allen” — who looks like a mop-topped cartoon version of Ranveer Singh and is voiced by Aparshakti Khurana — instructing him to erase Joe from all of the photos and videos on her computer.

Allen asks Nella questions about the photos as he removes Joe pixel by pixel, acting as the confidant she lost in her breakup. When she’s ready to go to sleep, Allen says he can keep deleting Joe overnight if she gives him full access to all of her computer’s systems. She doesn’t think twice before agreeing.

If this were a sci-fi movie, this is where Allen would turn out to be a super-smart AI that takes over Nella’s life. But because CTRL is set in reality — where AI is nowhere near capable of doing that — what happens next is less dramatic, but more frightening because of its mundanity. Nella’s permission allows a developer to remotely access her desktop and all of her apps and files. The human on the other end can snoop around as much as they want — writing, copying, and deleting to their heart’s content while Nella snoozes.

We’re all guilty of agreeing to corporations’ conditions without really knowing what we’re consenting to, whether that’s how the company uses our data or signing away our rights to sue. CTRL is so effective because of how believable it is in its depiction of a worst-case corporate overreach scenario borne out of consumer inattention.

Ananya Panday has been a compelling performer since she debuted, and she demonstrates what a top-tier leading lady she is in CTRL. She acts nearly all of her scenes alone, addressing the camera directly while filming her own video content or interacting with Allen on her laptop. Even without other actors to play off of, she hits every emotional note perfectly, making the audience care deeply for Nella even as she creates new problems for herself.

In the hands of a less-skilled filmmaker, telling a story entirely via social media posts and footage shot through laptop cameras and video calls could come across as gimmicky. But Motwane is so talented that the visual flow of the film feels totally natural. The spell breaks a little when we’re shown footage of other influencers’ posts or cable news reports, but since it’s clear that this is what Nella is watching, it makes narrative sense.

Here’s hoping that some politician watches CTRL and makes it their mission to pursue greater regulation of AI. Trusting corporations to do the right thing is foolish.

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Movie Review: Sector 36 (2024)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

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One of Netflix’s most challenging Original Hindi films makes insightful social commentary in a fictional retelling of a real-life tragedy.

Sector 36 is based on the 2006 Noida serial murders and takes place in approximately the same area at the same time. Over the course of a couple of years, more than twenty children go missing from a slum in Sector 36 populated by poor families who’ve migrated from other parts of India to find work near Delhi. Inspector Ram Charan Pandey (Deepak Dobriyal) — the police officer in charge of the area — tells each parent the same thing: the kid will turn up, just hang your “Missing” poster on the board with all of the other posters. That’s as far as his investigations ever go.

The audience already knows what’s happening to the missing children. They’re being abducted, raped, and murdered by Prem (Vikrant Massey), caretaker of a large home next to the slum owned by businessman Balwar Singh Bassi (Akash Khurana). Prem disposes of parts of the bodies in the sewers outside the house, so he isn’t going out of his way to conceal his crimes. Since the police won’t investigate, he can do what he wants.

That changes when Prem mistakenly tries to abduct Ram Charan’s daughter Vedu (Ihana Kaur) during a festival. Prem is masked, so Ram Charan doesn’t see his face after he drops Vedu and runs off. However, the close encounter is enough for the inspector to follow up on some of the tips provided by other parents of missing children, one of whom was last seen entering Bassi’s house.

It’s quite the indictment of Ram Charan’s lack of empathy that he isn’t compelled to act until his own daughter is endangered, but he’s undeterred once he begins. Yet he quickly realizes that his own prior laziness is not the only obstacle standing in the way of justice for the missing kids. His interview with Bassi is cut short when the businessman calls his old school friend, Jawahar Rastogi (Darshan Jariwala) — Ram Charan’s boss. Rastogi tells the inspector to back off and suspends him when he doesn’t.

At the same time that Ram Charan is warned against investigating further, the child of a rich industrialist is abducted and held for ransom. Every resource at the police department’s disposal is thrown at retrieving the child and catching his kidnappers. Ram Charan sees where the department’s priorities lie, and they aren’t with the citizens of Sector 36.

Systems theorist Stafford Beer coined the phrase: “The purpose of a system is what it does.” Sector 36 is a perfect example of that phenomenon. The purpose of the police force that Ram Charan works for is not to protect the innocent, or solve crimes in an effort to give them justice. It’s to protect the rich and keep the poor vulnerable–basically, to ensure nothing threatens the current power structure.

I’m not qualified to speak to caste elements that may factor into Sector 36‘s story, but the film does a wonderful job illustrating how those at the top of the class hierarchy foment discord among those beneath them in order to maintain their own positions. Ram Charan feels superior to those living in the slum he oversees and lords his authority over the officers working under him. Rastogi knows that any of those lower officers would jump at the chance to take Ram Charan’s place. Because Prem works in a comfortable house for a boss with connections, he feels superior to those migrant workers living in the slum, even though he came from a small village himself.

Yet even as powerful men like Bassi and Rastogi purport to look out for those who report to them, they really only look out for one another. They use the system to maintain their protected positions. Ram Charan, Prem, the other cops, and the migrant workers all have more in common with one another than Bassi or Rastogi — but you could never convince any of them that that’s true.

Director Aditya Nimbalkar and screenwriter Bodhayan Roychaudhury convey all this through compelling character interactions and clever pacing. There’s a real level of finesse from a first-time feature director and first-time screenwriter. It’s a little less surprising when you realize that Nimbalkar previously worked as an associate director for Vishal Bhardwaj, whose productions are basically a farm system for future directorial talent.

The main thing working against Sector 36 early on — besides a subject matter that will be too intense for some — is that it’s disgusting. The camera cuts between shots of a human body being chopped and a shots of a butcher chopping meat. It feels like a cheap shock tactic.

That said, it’s worth enduring the gore for career performances by Massey and Dobriyal. This will likely be the most vile character Massey ever plays, and he makes Prem as intriguing as he is loathsome. Dobriyal shines as a character who is flawed and complicated and up against a system that makes it hard for him to be his best self. His performance is outstanding.

Sector 36 is not an easy film to watch, not just because of the crimes that inspired it but because of what it reveals about the system that allowed them to happen in the first place (and that still exists). As grim as the movie is, the only way to imagine a better world is to really examine what’s wrong with the one we have now.

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Movie Review: Kaali Khuhi (2020)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

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The Netflix Original horror film Kaali Khuhi (“The Black Well“) centers on a compelling theme but falls flat in its execution.

10-year-old Shivangi (Riva Arora, who was delightful as Young Supri in Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota) lives in the city with her dad Darshan (Satyadeep Mishra) and mom Priya (Sanjeeda Sheikh), who’s pregnant with a baby girl.

The family is called back to Darshan’s village because his mother (played by Leela Samson) is seriously ill. She was afflicted shortly after a tormented man opened up a sealed well outside of the village, letting something out.

When they arrive at the family home, Darshan’s aunt Satya (Shabana Azmi) is agitated. Shivangi sees an apparition of a girl, and the adults hear strange noises in the house. Shivangi suspects that the truth lies in a scrapbook kept by Aunt Satya that is full of horrifying drawings and lists of girls’ names. This is not a safe place, but Darshan refuses to leave, even after his mother dies.

Director Terri Samundra — who co-wrote Kaali Khuhi with David Walter Lech — goes for an eerie tone rather than out-and-out scary, but it’s not totally successful. Apprehensive characters approach every spooky sound at such a slow pace that any tension dissipates by the time they find the source. The film is only 90 minutes-long, but it still feels padded.

In all that padding lies a missed opportunity to better connect the family’s story to that of the town. The curse applies to the whole village for its traditional practice of female infanticide, yet we really only see what’s happening to Shivangi’s family. They feel removed literally and figuratively from the rest of the village, even though they weren’t the only ones to participate in the heinous tradition. As such, the theme isn’t explored as thoroughly as it could have been.

This disconnect between the village and the events at the family homestead make it especially confusing when Darshan insists that they stay, presumably abandoning their life in the city along with Priya’s doctors and Shivangi’s school. Possibly it’s the curse making him do it, but it’s unclear.

The performances are underwhelming when the most common direction is: “look concerned and move slowly.” Prolonged periods of quiet are interrupted by a character suddenly screaming, making for unpleasant sound design. And there’s a moment at the end when things get very, very gross.

The most interesting thing about Kaali Khuhi is positioning a 10-year-old girl as the protagonist. Shivangi hasn’t hit puberty yet, so she may not have gotten the “birds and the bees” talk from her parents. Burdening a young kid with the knowledge that her ancestors murdered their newborn daughters feels unfair. But Shivangi demonstrates that sometimes you have to act with courage even when you’re unprepared.

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Movie Review: Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba (2024)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Taapsee Pannu and Vikrant Massey reprise the chaotic lovers Rani and Rishu from 2021’s Haseen Dillruba in Netflix’s first Original movie sequel: Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba (“Beautiful Beloved is Back” — and yes, there’s now an extra ‘s’ in Hasseen).

Familiarity with the first film is essential to understanding the characters and why they are living the way they are in the sequel (which takes place several years after the original). Thankfully, Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba offers a plot summary via a song montage within the first ten minutes. It’s a sufficient memory refresher for those who’ve watched the original.

As in Haseen Dillruba, the sequel begins with Rani (Pannu) in the middle of a crisis. She runs into a police station on a rainy night, claiming that her husband is trying to kill her. The action then flashes back to two months earlier. Rani lives in Agra and tells everyone she’s a widow, but the truth is her husband Rishu (Massey) is actually alive and living in town as well. They meet secretly in a park with a view of the Taj Mahal and plan their escape to Thailand, where they can finally be together again.

Of course things don’t go as planned. Inspector Kishore Jamwal (Aditya Srivastava, whose character was named Kishore Rawat in the original) still believes that Rani is a murderer, and he tracks her down in Agra. Worse, he’s brought along tenacious police officer Mritunjay Prasad (Jimmy Shergill), who happens to be the uncle of Rani’s affair partner Neel from the first movie. “Uncle Montu” won’t rest until he finds Rishu and makes him and Rani pay.

To confuse the cops, Rani proposes marriage to love-struck pharmacist Abhimanyu (Sunny Kaushal, who plays smitten beautifully). She warns him that her heart will always belong to Rishu, but Abhimanyu says he’s okay with that — until he finds out that Rishu is still alive.

Though Jayprad Desai directs Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba — and capably so — the franchise is the brainchild of screenwriter Kanika Dhillon. Mystery series are often centered around detectives, so there’s novelty in having the protagonists be criminals while still hitting all the necessary genre beats. The surprising character developments of the first film are largely absent since Rani and Rishu are known quantities, but that adds a pleasant feeling of familiarity.

In the best mysteries, there’s an element of “play along at home” that the viewer engages in, trying to figure out what’s going on before the writer reveals the solution. While there are some nice setups and payoffs, the ultimate revelations seem to come out of nowhere. More obvious possibilities are ignored in favor of answers that are totally unpredictable.

Part of why this happens is that Rani’s character is a fan of a fictitious mystery author Danish Pandit, and his works are continually referenced. Were Rani a fan of Agatha Christie, well-read viewers would be able to spot allusions to her books and guess where the story is going. But the Haseen Dillruba movies are tethered to the internal logic of an imaginary author’s bibliography, allowing Dhillon to explain everything away via a connection to Pandit. Everything makes sense if you’re a fan of Danish Pandit — but no one but Dhillon is, because Pandit isn’t real.

Nevertheless, Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba is consistently entertaining, with interesting performances throughout. If there’s a way to keep this franchise going, I hope Dhillon comes back for a third round.

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Movie Review: Wild Wild Punjab (2024)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

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TV director Simarpreet Singh makes the jump to features with the Netflix Original film Wild Wild Punjab, a road trip comedy written and produced by Luv Ranjan.

Office drone Khanna (Varun Sharma) caught his co-worker girlfriend Vaishali cheating on him with their boss, and now the new couple is getting married.

Distraught Khanna wants to end his life, but his womanizing friend Maan (Sunny Singh) has a better idea. Maan says that, while Vaishali thinks she’s traded up, if Khanna tells her that he’s over her, it’ll make her question whether she’s with the right guy.

Their friend Honey (Manjot Singh) agrees, but he thinks it’ll be most effective if Khanna tells Vaishali “I am over you” in person. Festivities are underway for her wedding in Pathankot, which is only a three hour drive from Patiala. Honey offers to drive them there in his souped-up truck.

The only friend with reservations is cowardly Jain (Jassie Gill), but that’s just because he’s terrified of his overbearing dad. Jain’s own arranged marriage is scheduled for next week, so he’s already got plenty to worry about. Still, the guys convince Jain to lie to his dad and join them since they’ll be back from Patiala by morning. What could go wrong?

Before they’ve even left town, the guys crash a wedding to get free food and drinks. When they wake up hungover the next morning at a stranger’s house, Jain discovers he’s married to the woman whose wedding they crashed. And they’re still hours away from Pathankot.

As immature as the friends are, they’re actually decent guys. Their plan isn’t borne out of vindictiveness, but out of concern for Khanna’s well-being. Taking him to his ex’s wedding to tell her he’s moved on isn’t that disruptive, and it will give him back a sense of control.

After some initial reluctance, they even welcome Jain’s accidental bride Radha (Patralekhaa) into the group. She suggests that Khanna’s declaration will be more believable if he’s accompanied by a new woman, and they head to a nearby college to find one. That’s how feisty Meera (Ishita Raj) joins the crew.

When the story focuses on the characters, it’s pretty entertaining. It helps that the acting is uniformly good, with Manjot Singh and Patralekhaa standing out among the rest. Counterintuitively, the story drags during the action scenes in the second half, when the group engages in multiple car chases and a shootout with drug dealers. Drugs and guns feel like perfunctory signifiers that the movie is set in Punjab, as if without those tropes the movie would lack a sense of place.

Simarpreet Singh’s direction is overall good, and the screenplay — co-written by Ranjan, Sandeep Jain, and Harman Wadala — is decent. But Wild Wild Punjab is a misleading title for a movie so conventional.

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Movie Review: Maharaj (2024)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Maharaj recounts a legal case of historic importance but fails to stir the emotions around its sensitive subject matter.

The main story takes place in Bombay in 1862 and focuses on journalist Karsandas Mulji (Junaid Khan, son of Aamir Khan). Growing up in Gujarat, young Karsan questioned everything, refusing to follow orders on blind faith. By the time he was 30, he was an established social reformer, activist, and writer.

A devout Hindu, Karsan worships at a sect run by a charismatic religious figure — or maharaj — called JJ (Jaideep Ahlawat). The other holy men at the place of worship appreciate JJ for expanding the sect’s reach and growing its coffers.

In return, JJ exploits his peers’ permissive attitude and his followers’ blind faith to indulge in what the movie calls “erotic escapades.” He uses tradition to pressure young women devotees into having sexual intercourse with him under the moniker of “divine service.” Other men pay to watch, promised that witnessing the act will help them achieve salvation.

Theology also enables this sexual abuse. Holy texts are written in Sanskrit, which most lay people can’t read. The maharaj interprets scripture for the laity, who lack the knowledge to challenge his interpretations. It’s akin to the language barrier which separated Catholic lay people from the liturgy until the 1960s, at which point priests were finally allowed to conduct mass in local languages rather than exclusively in Latin. The parallels between the abusive culture in Maharaj and the abuse abetted by the Catholic Church is hard to miss — though the film goes out of its way to frame JJ as a lone bad actor without blaming Hinduism as a whole.

JJ’s abuse comes to light when he sets his sights on Karsan’s fiancée Kishori (Shalini Pandey), and Karsan witnesses her partaking in “divine service.” Though she’s uncomfortable about what happened with JJ — it’s unclear whether she knew she was being observed by strangers — her faith refuses to allow her to question the leader’s intentions. Only when Karsan breaks their engagement does she realize she may have been wronged by the holy man.

Kishori’s mistreatment prompts Karsan to write about JJ’s sexual abuse in his newspaper. JJ responds with social pressure, witness intimidation, and even arson. When Karsan refuses to back down, JJ sues him for libel for an astronomical amount of money.

The way the events are portrayed in Maharaj — which is directed by Siddharth P. Malhotra and written by Sneha Desai, Vipul Mehta, and Bernard Williams — Karsan prints his allegations with little in the way of concrete proof, so there actually is an interesting question as to whether JJ has a case. Unfortunately, the courtroom scenes show little of the legal back-and-forth and primarily set up Karsan’s climactic speech (though JJ does give a few theatrical shows of power that are entertaining).

Overall, the film falls into an uneasy space where it doesn’t hit the emotional parts of the story as hard as it could have for a real melodrama, nor does it delve into the details like a legal drama or film on investigative journalism. It’s undoubtedly watchable, but it feels like a very well done made-for-TV movie.

Ahlawat is perfectly cast as the slimy JJ, maintaining an infuriating air of self-assurance throughout. Pandey is sympathetic as the duped Kishori. Shavari Wagh appears midway through the film as Karsan’s admirer, Viraaj, but the comic relief she’s asked to provide feels out of place.

Khan is under the microscope as a star’s son his first lead role, and he performs okay as Karsan. It’s a tough role to play in a story this tepid. Khan is very tall, and there’s a physical awkwardness to the way he moves — like a foal on unsteady legs. Being that he’s a newcomer, it’s hard to know if that’s his characterization of Karsan or simply him.

Malhotra and studio Yash Raj Entertainment tread carefully with this story about a corrupt holy man to avoid inflaming tensions unnecessarily, resulting in a movie that pulls its punches. Unfortunately, the folks who were always going to be mad about it got mad anyway, and the rest of us got a movie that was good but not great.

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Movie Review: Kathal – A Jackfruit Mystery (2023)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

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A young police inspector in a small town navigates challenges in her professional and personal life in the comedy Kathal: A Jackfruit Mystery. Writer-director Yashowardhan Mishra gets a lot right in his feature debut, even though the story loses focus as it goes on.

Sanya Malhotra plays Mahima Basor, a police inspector in the small town of Moba. She’s achieved a lot in her short career and her superiors are pleased with her work, but some of the male constables who work under her quietly resent taking orders from a woman.

Further complicating matters is that one of those constables is her boyfriend, Saurabh Dwivedi (Anant Joshi). He supports Mahima’s career success, but his dad refuses to let them marry until Saurabh is promoted to inspector, too.

Fresh off Mahima’s arrest of a notorious gangster, she is assigned an even more important case — find the thief who stole two jackfruits off the tree in politician Munnalal Pateria’s (Vijay Raaz) garden. These aren’t just any jackfruits. They’re a special Uncle Hong variety that pickles exceptionally well.

Everyone except Pateria realizes what a ridiculous misuse of police resources this endeavor is. It’s funny to watch Mahima roll her eyes in the background as the investigation stirs up lingering resentments between Pateria and his son-in-law, which gets everyone else in the family involved.

This is when the story is at its best — as an interpersonal comedy that happens at an intimate scale, in a town small enough where everyone knows each other’s business. For example, no detail of the theft is too small for enthusiastic local reporter Anuj (Rajpal Yadav), who has little other news to cover.

Kathal loses its way when it expands the story beyond Moba’s borders into other villages, and the investigation uncovers more serious crimes. Pateria’s family recedes in importance, which is a shame because the characters and their influence over the town make the movie a lot of fun.

The plot gets diluted as the scope broadens. While the crime at the heart of the jackfruit case is trivial, what it reveals about power and police accountability is not. Same goes for the conflict that arises within Mahima’s relationship with Saurabh.

The introduction of weightier material doesn’t make Kathal any more important of a film. It was important already. Kathal is very close to being a very good movie. But the escalation in its latter stages overextends the runtime and distracts from the characters and a location that made up such an enjoyable, well-defined world.

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Movie Review: Plan A Plan B (2022)

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1.5 Stars (out of 4)

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The lack of effort that went into making Plan A Plan B is readily apparent. Stars Tamannaah Bhatia and Riteish Deshmukh are occasionally able to elevate the poor material they’re given to work with, but much of the movie is forgettable.

Fault for the film lies at the feet of director Shashanka Ghosh (who made much better films like Veere Di Wedding and Khoobsurat) and writer Rajat Arora (who has a more mixed track record). All of the dialogue feels like a first draft, with characters saying the most obvious things and repeating conversational patterns over and over again. Because the movie was made for a streaming service and thus subject to less stringent Indian censorship requirements, the characters make frequent sex references, but in the most juvenile ways.

Bhatia plays Nirali Vora, a matchmaker taking over a successful business from her mother Kiran (Poonam Dhillon). Kiran announces her retirement by saying, “From now on, it’s just me and my pussy” — by which she means her friend Pushpa. See what I mean about juvenile sex references?

Deshmukh plays divorce attorney Kosty Chougule, who is as enthusiastic about marriages ending as Nirali is about marriages beginning. However, Kosty won’t agree to his own wife Runjhan’s (Bidita Bag) divorce request because he hates to lose and is still in love with her.

That doesn’t stop Kosty from finding plenty of hookups on dating apps. He meets the Indian women he connects with on the apps in public places like restaurants, while the white women he finds come to his apartment in revealing outfits. The harmful oversexed-white-woman trope has fallen out of fashion in recent years, so including it is more evidence of the laziness that went into writing Plan A Plan B.

Nirali and Kosty have offices next to each other in a co-working space in Mumbai. Their personalities clash, resulting in loads of noisy bickering. (If I was one of the other workers renting office space, I’d demand a refund.) The things they fight about are dumb and trivial, as are the reasons why most of Kosty’s clients want divorces. It’s all tidy vs. messy, dogs vs. cats — elementary school examples of opposites, basically. One reason Runjhan wants to divorce Kosty is because he won’t let her help in the kitchen when he prepares gourmet meals for her. Like, is that really a problem?

When Kiran enlists Kosty’s help preparing for her sixtieth birthday party, Kosty and Nirali agree to a truce. (The birthday party triggers some cringe-worthy “Look at these inspirational old ladies” observations from Kosty.)  The truce finally allows Deshmukh and Bhatia the chance to show why they are such likeable actors, as their characters finally try to connect with one another.

That said, there isn’t much chemistry between them, although they may not be at fault. The movie’s lone intimate scene plays out like combat rather than romance. The characters yank on each other’s clothes while strategically holding their heads to hide the fact that their lips aren’t actually touching.

There’s far more sensuality in a dance number Kosty and Nirali perform at Kiran’s birthday party. In fact, just watch their performance to the song “Keh Do Ke” and skip the rest:

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Streaming Video News: June 2, 2022

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I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Amazon Prime with today’s streaming debut of the blockbuster K.G.F: Chapter 2. It’s available in its original Kannada, as well as dubbed versions in  Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu.

I also updated my list of Bollywood movies on Hulu with the premiere of the Hotstar Specials series 9 Hours. In addition to the original Telugu, the series is also available in Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, and Tamil.

Finally, I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Netflix with yesterday’s addition of the Malayalam film Jana Gana Mana. The Kannada, Tamil, and Telugu versions of Jana Gana Mana are all titled Jana 2022 in the Netflix catalog.

This was a surprisingly busy week for news about Netflix Original projects in production. Filming wrapped on the series Rana Naidu (an official remake of Ray Donovan). The movie based on The Devotion of Suspect X finished its Darjeeling schedule. Filming began on Anushka Sharma’s Jhulan Goswami biopic Chakda ‘Xpress. And the Sanjay Leela Bhansali series Heeramandi got a new director. Not sure how many of these we’ll get in 2022, but I wrote about most of them in my 2022 preview for What’s on Netflix.

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