Rahul Desai

Fictional translations of ready-made underdog journeys make me nervous. As do independent themes getting the mainstream treatment. A recent example is Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins (2023), a sports comedy about “the weakest football team in the world” that reduced its source material (a fantastic 2014 documentary) to a checklist of sef-conscious tropes. In terms of concept and design, Superboys of Malegaon ticks both boxes. Directed by Reema Kagti and written by Varun Grover, the 131-minute feature is inspired by Faiza Ahmad Khan’s Supermen of Malegaon (2012), a charming 65-minute documentary that revolves around the cinema-crazy residents of a small Maharashtrian town who start their own DIY-filmmaking ecosystem of Bollywood spoofs. I remember watching Khan’s documentary and marvelling at how it married the objectivity of journalism with the subjectivity of emotion. It allowed the story to tell itself, while trusting the ‘characters’ to underline its humour with cultural meaning.

EARLY ON in Drew Hancock’s Companion, two young women named Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Kat (Megan Suri) have a prickly moment on a boozy night. When Iris asks why Kat — a close friend of Iris’ new lover Josh (Jack Quaid) — doesn’t like her, a tipsy Kat says she just doesn’t like the ‘idea’ of her. “You make me feel replaceable,” she continues. The conceit of this confession is two-pronged. Iris is deeply in love with her new boyfriend Josh, but Kat is in an abusive relationship with a controlling Russian man; the obvious implication is that Kat is bitter. But the real implication emerges a scene or two later, when the film reveals that Iris (“Siri” when spelt backwards) is actually a companion robot. Up until then, it speaks volumes that the average male viewer may not be able to tell. Iris loves Josh so much that she is subservient to him — she wants to please him by hanging out with his friends on a weekend getaway, she craves to see him smile, and sex for them is basically Josh grunting and rolling over to sleep. It’s all too familiar. So Kat saying she feels “replaceable” by Iris is the film admitting that — in a world captured by the male gaze — a woman robot is no different from a woman.

Some movies break your heart when they’re not good. A chunk of filmmaker-activist Sridhar Rangayan’s filmography — which focuses on queer subjects and LGBTQ-themed stories — falls into this category. The chasm between intent and execution is as wide as the chasm between fact and fiction in Hindi historical biopics. Distinguishing between the two is important; criticising the craft of a film is not the same as panning its cause. If social significance alone were a yardstick for meaningful cinema, Rangayan’s latest (co-directed and co-written with Saagar Gupta), Kuch Sapney Apne, would be the Love Actually of the genre. A sequel to his previous feature, Evening Shadows (2018), Kuch Sapney Apne expands its multi-narrative snapshot of an orthodox South Indian family at the crossroads. The conflict is now married to its consequences.

Mere Husband Ki Biwi is such a generic and run-of-the-mill North Indian production that if it were edible, it’d be a half-crispy aloo paratha for breakfast. If it were a person, it’d be Rocky Randhawa (without the self-awareness) from Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani. If it were an emotion, it’d be the entitled rage of drivers at the Delhi-Gurgaon toll plaza. If it were a place, it’d be a breezy mustard field — but only as a painting in an upscale art gallery. I can go on, but you get the gist. It looks like every other entry in the genre: glossy, distant, intermittently alive but ultimately soulless. At least it’s environmentally conscious, because it recycles a whole book of tropes: the wise-ass best friend played by a comedian; a lustful Shakti Kapoor character; a quirky voice-over starting the film but disappearing after the introduction; an Amritsari girl who addresses her husband by either his surname, yaar, baby or baby yaar; a love triangle between a Chaddha, a Dhillon and a Khanna where two of them spend an entire half secretly competing with each other for the ‘prize’; a dozen slow-mo shots of them walking towards, past or away from each other with contempt and pride; an overseas almost-wedding; and so on and so (un)forth.

Fortunately, the worst thing about Oops! Ab Kya? is its title. The eight-episode series is an Indian remake of Jane the Virgin, the hit American dramedy centered on the life of a chaste Latina virgin who becomes pregnant after a routine hospital visit turns into an artificial insemination accident. Oops! Ab Kya? (if I repeat this title enough, maybe it’ll stop sounding terrible) is a serviceable show on its own. It has a decent cast: Shweta Basu Prasad finally gets an author-backed role of sorts, while the supporting gang is gamely led by veterans like Sonali Kulkarni and Jaaved Jaaferi. The young-and-awkward Dice Media aesthetic lends itself naturally to the show’s unserious tone. For once, the artifice and DIY stagey-ness of its setting aren’t deal breakers. And it helps that the original show aims beyond its one-line gimmick: every character becomes a protagonist of their own little storyline. There’s not much to tell the main dish from the garnish.

Hindi cinema can be middling in two ways. The first way is common — a movie settles for mediocrity despite a decent idea. The second way is not as common — a movie strives for mediocrity when the idea gets greedy. Dhoom Dhaam somehow manages to uphold both ways at once. It’s disappointing because it could’ve been better, but it’s also fine because it could’ve been worse. The one thing that’s undeniable, however, is the conveyor-belt nature of the modern streaming picture. Every time it threatens to be enjoyable, a peculiar factory-produced tone emerges. The story here is a romantic comedy: Mr. Chalk and Ms. Cheese have an arranged marriage only to belatedly discover their differences. They’re nothing like the eligible partners their families “advertised” them as. The more they learn about each other, the more complicated it becomes. Hidden faults jump out; either they’ll fall for each other or fall apart. The USP of Dhoom Dhaam is that this entire marital journey — which might take years or decades in the real world — is condensed into 24 chaotic hours featuring shady cops, possible gangsters, a masked robbery gone wrong, a mysterious package called Charlie, a horny dog, a kidnapped uncle, and a bunch of chases and escapes across Mumbai. In short, the cross-cultural romcom is accelerated by the black comedy.

At its worst, the Tour de France turned moral decay into a non-factor. Doping among Lance Armstrong-era cyclists was so normalised that, perversely, the sport became a level-playing field. The logic being: if everybody cheats, is it even cheating anymore? It’s simply about who cheats — or performs — the best. The Bollywood period biopic is in a similar position today. It goes without saying that history and mythology are used as pawns to checkmate old-school notions of secularism. It goes without saying that the game being played is more modern. ‘Hidden’ themes like Islamophobia, bigotry, propaganda, erasure and jingoism are so normal that we barely notice them anymore. It’s the default pitch; that’s why “keeping the politics aside” is a common phrase. The irony is that, unlike the cyclists, such movies are so fundamentally broken that nobody wins. Cultural doping makes it a level-playing field of mediocrity and delusion. It’s like watching them race not to the finish line but straight off the top of a mountain. And not just any mountain, Mount Everest itself. Why stop there?

I’m running out of polite ways to say that most Bollywood launch vehicles are vanity vans parading as commercial movies. I’m running out of impolite ways to say that most Hindi rom-coms feature nepotism hires and Gen Z characters who speak like outdated youngsters at a debutante ball imagined by out-of-touch boomers. I’m also running out of ways to say that I’m running out of ways. Kunal Kohli’s Bobby Aur Rishi Ki Love Story looks like it was written in 1995, shot in 2005, scored in 2015, edited in 1985, colour corrected in 1975 and released in 2025. Remember the annoying animated couple from Kohli’s hit, Hum Tum (2005)? Those two were still more realistic and less cringey than the live-action couple in this film, who do the walking-and-talking-in-Europe (or post-Brexit Britain) jig as if Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and Before Sunrise were in-flight tourist videos rather than classic landscape changers. They start as enemies, become frenemies and turn into screechy soulmates — all with the artistic spirit of a paid vacation and the emotional awareness of an oblivious meme.