Here’s a few to get you started:
Dil Chahta Hai - A very enjoyable, very approachable drama/comedy about three young men and their different attitudes about relationships. Very polished with some genuinely funny moments. Aamir Kahn is very good in this and the film manages to approach the three primary different relationships separately and still make it work as one film. It runs the gamut from sappy to sweet to funny. I really like this film a great deal. I may watch it again this weekend come to think of it ;).
Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham - Karan Johar’s most recent movie, pretty successful in India and in limited release in the states. A lot of people have written this one off as too melodramatic. Johar has a pretty simple message with the movie, “It’s all about loving your parents” and despite it being a little over the top at times (hah, yes for Bollywood) I quite enjoyed it. Rahul, played by Shahrukh Khan, defies his domineering father (Amitabh Bachchan), ignoring his wishes for an arraigned marriage and perusing a woman from a lower class. His relationship tears the family apart and the movie charts the family’s falling out and the efforts of Rahul’s younger brother and mother to reunite the family. Yes it’s a tired plot in Bollywood but it’s done very well. The musical numbers are generally very good (Especially “Shava, Shava”) but it does have a couple horrible ones in the UK part of the movie I’d skip past. Other than that it sucked me in for the length of the film, good stuff.
Kuch Kuch Hota Hai - One of Johar’s earlier works, also with Shahrukh Khan (who is called Rahul, as per usual) and Kajol (as Anjali, also as per usual). It’s hard for me to describe this movie without ruining the fun of it, but it has to due with the friendship of Rahul, Anjali and another woman (Tina, by Rani Mukherjee). Anjali is in love with Rahul, Rahul is in love with Tina and ultimately the machinations and misunderstandings tears their friendship apart. After a personal tragedy, Rahul’s family tries to reunite Anjali and Rahul to set things right. Hrm, it’s much more involved than that, but I really don’t want to ruin it. A little sappy, but very good.
Company - This movie really took me by surprise. After watching HK action movies and some of the lame attempts by Bollywood to co-opt their style, I didn’t think that Bollywood was capable of doing a good gangster movie. Company is good. REALLY good. Pretty standard gangster movie ideas: betrayal, brotherhood, family, etc. It’s just done with such polish and brutality that it seems kind of new, especially with the cultural differences from HK tossed in. I can’t recommend this one highly enough.
Chori Chori, Chupke Chupke - Another very good melodrama. A couple, Raj and Priya, are newlyweds trying to have a baby to fufil Raj’s grandfather’s dreams of continuing the family lines. In a tragic accident, Priya miscarriages and is unable to bear another child. They contemplate adoption but ultimately choose to use a surrogate mother (big social taboo), so they spirit away to Switzerland for a vacation to bring the baby to term in private. The problem is that the surrogate, a woman of negotiable morals named Madhoo, begins to have feelings for both Raj and her unborn baby. The concept sounded a little odd when I heard it, but Rani Mukherjee and Salman Khan really sell this movie beautifully. They take some absurd scenes and make them feel very real and believable. The music is great too, a couple of my favorite songs from BW are in here.
Other things to check out:
Aankhen (Action/Crime)
Asoka (Period Drama/Action)
I’ll also third Monsoon Wedding, very different than these other films, imo, but maybe one of the better films to come out of India in awhile. Also keep an eye out for Devdas, that will be hitting DVD in the next month or so, it just hit theaters in India recently, iirc, and was received very enthusiastically at Cannes.
Have fun!
