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graveyard of DOOM index < | > This is a great example of how a masala film can totally fuck up by trying to fit everything into the one movie. None of the different elements in Mumbai Se Aaya Mera Dost hang together particularly well, and by the end of the film you're left with a strong "what the fuck was THAT supposed to be?" taste in your mouth. Here's the deal: Kanji returns home to his remote village after years living in Mumbai. His grandfather has recently arranged for the village to have electricity for the first time, and Kanji brings home a TV and satellite dish as a present. Pretty soon the villagers are all hooked on the TV, to the consternation of the local priest, who tries to get the local villainous landlord (there's one in every remote village) to get rid of the TV. Meanwhile Kanji has gone and fallen in love with Kesi, the prettiest girl in the village, who just happens to be the villainous landlord's sister. You can see where this is going, can't you?
It's not as if there aren't some enjoyable moments. The dance sequence that accompanies the title song (which translates as "A friend has come to stay from Mumbai") - boys versus girls in a dance-off to argue whether it's better to live in a big city or a remote village (the village wins, after all that's where the pretty girls are) - is catchy, colourful, and fun. The seven-minute love song montage is kind of interesting - the duet has a nice melody and a few more-thinly-veiled-than-usual innuendoes in the lyrics. Some of the comedy bits, like when one villager decides that he's only going to move in slow motion from now on like the scifi movie he saw on the TV, or when the village barber decides to become a cowboy after watching a western, and keeps his cut-throat razors in holsters at his hips, are diverting enough. With all of the above, Mumbai Se Aaya could have made do with being just an ordinary run-of-the-mill Bollywood offering, but about half an hour from the end it takes a nosedive into total turkey territory. Somehow it finds what scant motivation it feels it needs to justify devolving into a bloody revenge-driven crapfest complete with horseback swordfights and brave villagers fighting with sharpened sticks and axes until just as our hero, bloodied but not beaten, for he knows his cause is just and true, is about to deliver the killing blow to the landlord (did you ever doubt?) some guy in a blue Batik-print shirt and white slacks steps in from nowhere and says "That's enough, you've done well, your girlfriend's a right spunk, hey? Take him away boys!" and two cops enter from off-camera and drag the bad guy away. All the villagers jump up and down in celebration (never mind all the dead extras lying everywhere), our hero's woman rushes to his side and roll credits the end. Shonky, shonky film. Glimpses of mediocrity among the shite. I'm giving this one one- and-a-half bhang lassi out of five. Related links: |
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