Bollywood Calling (2001)
Film:
DVD:

Written & Directed by Nagesh Kukunoor
Starring Pat Cusick, Om Puri, Perizad Zorabian, Navin Nischol, Chet Dixon

Anamorphic: No.

My Advice: Rent it.

Pat (Cusick) is having a really bad time. First of all, his claim to fame is having been the title character in the atrocious action flick Bloodfeather. Don't ask. Second of all, he's managed to drive off almost everybody who could remotely care about him, because he's constantly getting drunk. The only one who hasn't abandoned him is his agent (Dixon), who really wants his cut. Since he's pretty much blown everything stateside, however, there's only one producer who wants to talk to him: Subra (Puri). As you might have guessed by this point, Subra is a Bollywood producer. Since, in India at least, Pat is a fairly impressive star (or at least a cut-rate fairly impressive star) thanks to Bloodfeather, Subra wants him for his new movie: Maut: The Death. With nothing to lose (and even less to lose thanks to some really bad news in his life), he goes to India to shoot the film. There he must deal with not only himself and his failings, but a megalomaniacal Hindi film god (Nischol), a headstrong leading lady (Zorabian), and...doing a movie musical.

Normally when we're talking about a Bollywood movie, I'm giving you a warning up front about the fact that I'm non-Indian. This is to alert you to the fact that I'm an American guy talking about a film from an entirely different cinematic culture that can seem, on first approach, a little wild and wacky. In this case, however, you need to already have a few Indian films under your belt before approaching this one...because otherwise you won't get the joke.

And the ongoing joke is the best part of the film, this constant send-up of how Bollywood cinema works, both on screen and off. On screen, you've got people in really outlandish costumes saying things that, in a lot of cases, no living, breathing human being would ever be caught saying. And then they burst into song, all while the melodrama condensation is so thick the stuff is starting to rain down from the ceiling. Off screen, you've got the director screaming that there aren't enough large colorful plastic balls rolling through the shot while people hidden in trees wave red flags. Why? No one cares. It's Bollywood, cut and print it.

Just to show how spot-on the parody is, there's a party to announce the beginning of production on Maut. The actors all stand around and talk about how different a film this is from any that have come before, how different the role they're playing is from anything they've done before, and how lucky they are to be a part of the project. Oh, and also how their co-stars rock the house. It's almost verbatim what I viewed among the premiere footage provided on the Devdas special edition. And, because of this, I was laughing quite intensely.

Where the film stumbles and futzes around a bit is in the emotional side of things. Pat's relationship with Manu, the aged Indian film icon, and Kajal, the leading lady...these things are sometimes handled okay, but most times they throw off the film's pacing in an attempt to get a little serious. These sequences have a tendency to bog down, which is a shame, because filmmaker Kukunoor has proven he knows good timing in previous scenes.

As far as the DVD presentation goes, it's virtually non-existent. The edition used for review is one from Timeline Entertainment, which is based out of Calcutta...I'm guessing they didn't have a lot of money to throw at this thing. This is evident when you get to the main screen of the film...and there's an option to play. That's about it. Not even a chapter menu. So I'm not going to be too hard on them in that respect. However, the film is in pretty rough shape. A scene towards the end of the film seems to skip forward...how long? Seconds? A whole minute? I have no idea, I was lost after watching the film act like a really badly scratched vinyl single. So that I will be a bit concerned about, since nothing takes you out of a scene faster than suddenly missing a good portion of it.

So if you're familiar with Bollywood, then this is a nice change of pace, playfully thumbing its nose at the Indian film industry, as it were. But until I get a hold of a better version, it's only worth a rental.