Bollywood worth watching: Ashutosh Gowariker's spectacular JODHAA AKBAR

What? TrustMovies is watching Bollywood? Of his own accord? And more than three-and-a-half hours of it -- in a single sitting?  (Two sittings, actually. He took a few-hour break between his breakfast and lunch-time viewings.) The reason? To see more of two of the most beautiful actors -- face and body -- at work today: Hrithik Roshan (of the recent Kites) and Aishwarya Rai (of The Last Legion, The Mistress of Spices and Bride and Prejudice). Instead of fast-forwarding or giving up midway, he actually finished the film in a state of sated pleasure, for the movie, as much as any he's seen, puts the "ollywood" in Bollywood -- and does so in a manner that might make Cecil B. DeMille proud.

JODHAA AKBAR, from the fellow (Ashutosh Gowariker, shown at right) who gave us the Oscar-nominated Lagaan a decade back, contains just about everything you could ask for in historical spectacle -- except of course true history.  But that's the last thing we'd want in a movie like this. Instead we get glamor and gold aplenty, battles large-scale and small, love, devotion, betrayal and comeuppance, all handled in a smart, efficient manner that allows them to spread out across a vast canvas that will solicit our ooohs and aaahs, but also pass fast enough to make those three-and-a-half hours, if not fly by, at least move with surprising speed.

The story, which tells (as the movie admits upfront via opening title cards) its own version of the marriage that united a 16th Century Mughal emperor with a Rajput princess, thus brings together Hindu and Muslim religion and culture. As a writer Mr. Gowariker stresses time and again the need for religious tolerance -- a not-bad notion for our trying times. The storybook quality of the film is maintained nicely throughout, and even the several songs scattered through the film are used, not as the usual Bollywood interruptions to the story, but as either cultural artifacts (complete with dance) or musical background to the stunning visuals.

Both Ms Rai (above) and Mr Roshan (elephant-training, below) are as gorgeous as expected, and if we don't get to see much of their physical bodies, their sublime faces are much on display. In fact, there is a single extended scene in the movie in which Roshan, stripped to the waist, practices his swordplay, as Ms Rai looks on, hidden behind a curtain. For those interested in viewing the perfection of the masculine physique, the scene is a must, for Roshan combines the ideal body with the grace, strength and balance of a dancer in a way that even the most buffed of Hollywood actors can only view with envy and disbelief.

Jodhaa Akbar, on DVD and Blu-ray, is available for rental or sale, and the Blu-ray, incidentally, is a stunning transfer -- the best I've so-far seen (granted, I'm new to Blu-ray) with the exception of Criterion's The Leopard.

Oh, golly, Bollywood is back: Anurag Basu's KITES opens internationally

I have now made my more-or-less annual visit to Bollywood, and once again have left a movie theater (the very nicely-appointed and extremely comfortable Big Cinema on Manhattan's East 59th Street) with my jaw hanging down to my knees.  What can one say about a project as silly, expensive and inconsequential as KITES?   As much as I sometimes rail against Hollywood's blockbusters, they seem models of intelligence and restraint when set against the schlock-fests coming out of India.  If you found, as did I, the screenplay for Avatar slightly "wanting," wait until you get a load of this film, produced by Rakesh Roshan and directed by Anurag Basu (shown below).

Kites' biggest idiocy is that every event in the film happens simply because the characters want it to happen -- from marrying rich to winning a dance contest to falling in mad/luxuriant/forever-after love to suddenly having a sub-machine gun in your hands because you need to wipe out the bad guys.  When anything/everything can happen this easily, very soon there is no logic, suspense or viewer goodwill remaining.  Perhaps I just don't "get" Bollywood .  (On the plus side, compared to my last B'wood outing -- Chandi Chowk to China -- this movie is at least shorter and features fewer interrupting dance numbers.)

Because Kites provides some visual enjoyment, starting with its two stars, I'll stick to pictures rather than verbiage on this one. In the male lead is one of the most handsome men currently in movies, Hrithik Roshan (shown at right), who could give the young Alain Delon competition face-wise, and whose body may be the best on view anywhere these days.  As a poor, grown-up orphan boy known as "J", Mr Roshan teaches dance classes, swims, showers and de-shirts often, so his physique, with every muscle showing and glowing, is on display front and center.

In the lead female role is Uruguayan actress Bárbara Mori, shown above and below, who made a bit of a Latina splash here in the USA a few years back via the soap-opera-ish My Brother's Wife.  Mori is an eyeful and so makes a nice match for her leading man.

Once the pair connect, they go dancing -- in the rain, of course, so that their clothing adheres tightly to those voluptuous bodies.

Unfortunately, as they are betrothed respectively to the sister and brother of a Las Vegas casino-and-crime family (don't ask), they are then hunted down by the family and so must endure foot chases with lots of vaulting...

car chases (with the expected car wrecks)...

more chases, this one resulting from a bank robbery
(again, don't ask)...

smooching...

a wedding in Mexico...

followed by more smooching...

 and then a little "down" time on the cliffs above the sea.

Probably the wackiest moment (for viewers) will come during an extended scene of animated shadow puppets cast upon the wall by our two protagonists.  And once again, I say, don't ask. 

TrustMovies is used to covering small independents and foreign films that are lucky to find a berth in one theater or two here and there in the nation's larger urban areas.  Yet Kites opens big-time in three major countries (not cities -- countries!) on Friday, May 21.  Click here to find the cities and theaters across Canada, the USA, and the UK.  And then go practice your own shadow puppetry.
You never know when this may come in handy.