Refugee, (2000)

Abhishek Bachchan is "teh hotness." This phrase roughly translates into English as "the hotness." If the value of Refugee was judged solely on the hotness of the lead actors (Suniel Shetty too!), then we'd have a decent movie here. And it is a decent movie, for the most part. But for all it's worth, I'm glad I rented it instead of buying it.

When East Pakistan became Bangladesh in the 1970s, Muslim families were displaced again following the partition of Pakistan and India. Unfortunately, East and West Pakistan had been seperated by more than a thousand miles of India, meaning that families had to sneak into and out of India in order to reach Pakistan. Refugee focuses on the plight of one such family for the first two hours, but then deteriorates into yet another nationalistic Bollywood film.

The eponymous Refugee (Abhishotness) makes his living smuggling people across the "rann" from India to Pakistan or vice versa. This rann is apparently a treacherous uninhabitable salt-marsh-desert; on one side Jackie Schroff patrols on camelback, while on the other Suniel Shetty does the same in a better-looking uniform. Refugee takes a liking to Naaz (Kareena Kapoor), whose family he helps into Pakistan. They fall in love, but there's a bit of a love triangle with Suniel Shetty's character (don't worry, Suniel... I'm always available). Of course, there are more than romantic complications, especially when Refugee unwittingly smuggles terrorists into India - terrorists who promptly recruit his brother and blow up trains.
But then the movie takes the principle of "suspension of disbelief" a little too far. I could buy it when Refugee was shot in the leg and recovered. I can't take it when he suddenly he turns into "super patriotic Indian," turning on the people he worked with before. It only goes downhill from there, with actors abandoning any previous characterization and choosing sides. It all culminates into a ridiculous climax, that shows that maybe Pakistan and India can be "good buddies" after all. "Good buddies..." huh. Somehow it still smacks of that "India good, Pakistan... er... not so good" sentiment it had so deftly avoided in the beginning.

Waqt - The Race Against Time, (2005)

A bout of the flu and, more importantly, a string of mediocre movies have prevented me from posting lately. Adaptation, although I appreciate its very nature, confounded me (I love Susan Orlean’s work, which made Meryl Streep’s portrayal very weird to me). I found Fever Pitch, which I watched this morning while recovering from a vomitrocious evening, rather delightful. I rooted for the aliens in War of the Worlds (if anything, this movie led me to some very philosophical, existential questions about the nature of the universe – primarily, why are aliens always nekkid?).

Then Netflix heard that I was sick and sent me a get-well present. I finally got Waqt – The Race Against Time, which had been sitting at the top of my queue for fifty years. Worth the wait?

Totally not.

I was expecting to see the same old Bollywood love-hate father-son relationship rehashed, and I knew it was about rich people, and I had been warned about the scrolling ads, but somehow I thought that I could get over it. I thought maybe the movie (based on a Gujrati play) would amount to more than that. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be. There was nothing new about the story – it was Ek Rishtaa with a little more gloss and fancier saris. The rich thing – God was that annoying. There was a particular discussion about bedrooms (“I have twelve at my house but you only have seven… but poor people make do with two… I guess that’s not so bad…”) that made me realize that I wasn’t going to enjoy the movie. It was bad, but not even laughably bad, just plain bad. Pretty to look at, but there was nothing going on upstairs.

Akshay’s ten years too old to pull the whiny, spoiled Aditya off either likably or believably. AB’s the chief plumber – when he’s not crying melodramatically he’s invoking tears in others. Shefali Shah is pretty… pretty useless. Priyanka Chopra (a.k.a. “the Uterus”) is there for song picturizations and baby-making only.

If this movie indicates anything, then I think Akshay is seriously considering a career change. He's trying to either be a stunt man (after pulling off "the world's most dangerous stunt") or Madhuri Dixit:

It must be seen to be believed.

I can think of 6,000 better ways to spend three hours, like individually plucking every strand of hair from my body or finding a way to get the flu again. Avoid, yaar. Don't say you weren't warned.

It's like a movie potluck!

I just rented the DVD Celebrity Mix - a compilation DVD of sorts. It contains eight short independent films. Now, I know independent films are meant to be thoughtful, meaningful, interesting - and short films imply that they are kind of what the short story is to the novel. But, unfortunately, for every Brokeback Mountain there's a chocolate rabbit out there that I can't possibly bring myself to eat because of word association with The Brown Bunny. To make a long story short (ha, ha), there's a pretty mixed batch on this group - a few good ones, a few, well, not so good.

Goldilocks offers a cold shoulder to narcoleptic Sleeping Beauty

My favorite of the batch is Waking Dreams (2004), starring Ben Shenkman (of Angels in America, another one of my favorites) and Tina Holmes. When Becky the temp (Holmes) warns Charles the executive (Shenkman) about his impending death, he takes the news lightly - maybe a little too lightly for the psychic/psycho temp. Another contender is Dysenchanted (2004), Terri Miller's vision of a fairy tale support group. While Dr. Jim Belushi mediates the session, Goldilocks blathers about OCD while Cinderella harps on Prince Charming; divorced soccer mom Clara thinks maybe she doesn't belong, but the Disney-esque heroines convince her otherwise. House Hunting (2003), starring Zooey Deschanel, Paul Rudd, and Terry Kinney, follows an argumentative married couple in their search for a house while dealing with a klepto of a realtor.

If this were a studio film, this is the moment when the meteor would smash into the car.

Of course, that's the whole silver lining. There are five more shorts on this DVD that were subpar or, even worse, mediocre. David Hyde Pierce is admirable as Laud Weiner, but the character sketch is ultimately uninteresting. Media Whore (2002) is simply annoying, while the thriller Curiosity (2005) fails to pique mine. Then there's Mr. Dramatic (2005), which relies on style rather than substance. Dependable People (2001) may have been interesting, but not really enough to hold my attention (a ten-minute film can't hold my attention - I wonder what that says about it).

Ali MacLean annoys Coolio too!

I don't know if I could recommend the DVD since I like less than half the films, but if you like indies you might want to give it a shot. I'm probably being horribly critical - it's hard to make a short movie, with or without a budget or a big star - but I'm not that easy to please.