Cirkus

We're in were Hello everyone, and welcome to the Bollywood Cinema Club, a show where we take a look at Indian cinema every other week. I am the host of the Culture Cast, cristatued, the show where this show spun off from. On this episode of the Bollywood Cinema Club, I'm joined by my good friend. You have heard her here before, all the way from Mondo. Heather, your friend and mine, Heather dra Hello, Hello, thank you for letting me come back.

Are you bringing the circus with you? Heather? I am the circus? Are you kidding? I've been called a clown so many times?

Oh well, speaking of clans, speaking of clowns and sad, sad, laughing people. On this episode of the Bollywood Cinema Club, we're taking a look at Circus, which is the fifth installment in the gol Mal franchise and a spinoff of Goal Mal Again, which in and of itself is based on the comedy of Airs by William Shakespeare. So this movie is based on, let's just say, one of the older texts around as far as most people are concerned. So the film is directed by Roheit Shetty, which is the director for all of the Goal Mall films, and it does star ron Vier Singh and Varun Sharma in dual roles as Roy Shohan and Roy Shanoi and Joy Chohan and Joy Shanoi, two sets of twins separated at birth and then they come back together because one of them is in the Circus and the other one.

This movie is calmple cadd folks almost to the point of being unintelligible because it does something that a lot of Indian cinema does, which is has an actor play dual roles. We'll talk all about it because not just one actors playing dual roles in this film, we have two. So, Heather, you and I watched the trailer for this movie. Neither one of us knew anything about it beforehand. Again, it is a standalone movie.

It is in the Goal Mall franchise, which neither one of us have seen, but it's a standalone story. The Goal Mall connection has to do with the kind of stinger at the end of the movie. But all that out of the way, what did you think of twenty twenty two's Circus? Well, before go into what I think of the movie as the whole, I'll go into when you and I watched the trailer together, and which is always like a fun process for this show because it's you know, you and I get to kind of explore like new trailers, new films together, and that's that's a really cool thing that I often don't get with other films. And when we saw the trailer, it's like all these really bright candy colors, like oversaturation.

I'm a sucker for a circus scene personally, like I love like carnivals and circuses, and I was like the and it looked completely different from anything you and I've talked about together on the show, So I was totally game. By the time I finished the movie. It's it does have the bright colors. I feel like it should have had a different title because really the circus, the titular circus of it is very minor, incredibly minor, actually, and it's really hardly in the movie, which is really disappointing. And to me, it kind of felt like almost sort of like the like the Illegitimate Love Child of like a Nickelodeon slashed Disney movie, you know, because it to me it almost felt like a kid's movie, but but yet was so had these kind of complicated, you know, common in the Shakespeare thing makes sense.

It also makes sense that no wonder I didn't really care for its spoiler because the whole comedy of errors brand I'm not just talk about Shakespeare just that type of comedy is. I'm not saying I don't like anything that does that. But if you do that, it has to be really really good for me to get into it. And I don't know, there was just it felt like the story just to me, everything like that felt like a first draft, Like I just felt like it should have been there, should have been like some rewrites, which is something I don't often say about film writings, usually when we cover films or films that have probably been rewritten too much, actually right, But this one, you know, it's it's commits the cardinal sin of showing that or telling not showing half the time two, which I think also just lends to this like air of just like huh, it's a very hah movie.

But before I go any deeper, like what was your what was your takeaway? I don't think I disliked it as much as Maha Call, which I think is still probably the low point of the things we've talked about I think this movie Maha Call was like an hour and four oh it was, Yeah, it was a lot longer. Yeah, I mean, you know, this movie is like two and a half hours, two hours and two hours and some change. So I didn't dislike this movie. I think it's it's a movie that looks better than it looks nice, but everything that it presents is kind of childish to the point of being just not interesting as an adult.

Like I don't know how like you mentioned, like it feels like a kid's movie, but like, I don't think it's meant to be, because there's like plenty of things that kids quote unquote would not understand or would not pick up on. And the story that they're telling is not an inherently family or family friendly story. But I guess it is, but it isn't. I mean, movies about twins are a dime a dozen. I mean, parent trap.

You know, plenty of actors have played two roles before. Fucking Amir Khan did it in Doom three, And that's the thing. A lot of Indian movies do this. Bah Wali did it where you have Prova was playing two roles. I mean, I've seen plenty of movies now where it's one actor playing two roles, or one actor playing a older person or an older version of themselves and a younger version, or they're playing their parent, and it's like, now that I kind of understand this and see that this is a common storytelling technique.

I think this movie does it poorer than almost every other movie I've seen, because at times it's impossible to tell them afore. And ron Verer Sing, as much as I like him, which I'm a fan of Ron ver Sing because he's fantastic and gully Boy, why did they have both of the characters have mustag I thought that was weird too. I mean because at least with like the Joy like his brother character, at least, I mean, it's still the same actor, but at least one of them has like a slightly different mustache. And that's kind of a recurring joke of like what'd you do to your mustache? But at least with the mustache detail, that's at least slightly like, Okay, you can tell them apart a little bit.

With yeah, ron Vier, I mean, granted, I don't want to complain too much about him with that mustache. That was I think that was one of the good things about the movie. He is a good looking man and he rocks the stash like woo, and he has a great screen presence. He really does like he and he's on the screen, he's fantastic. It's just it's not given anything to do, like really given nothing to do well.

And that was frustrated with that because no, you can tell, like now he's not I mean, he's charismatic, but also I feel like you could tell he was trying to bring like emotional different qualities, like emotionally different qualities to each brother to kind of make them stand out a little bit. Like I feel like he was doing his due diligence and he was really good. But it's like, you're right, it was like it felt like this weird in between of being like a children's movie, not like even a tween or a teenage movie, but almost like because I mean, you have like the head of this orphanage, who's the you know, the source of this you know, where he's twitched these two sets of twins around as a lesson to you know, to exhibit nature versus nurture, because you know, and because he's a fucking so he's a sociopid.

I mean, and the movie tries to couch this is like because he's like, oh, well, people put so much importance on bloodlight and religion and case systems, and I mean that's one hundred percent accurate. I mean, but there are better ways to do that than like literally kind of playing god almost with people's lives. And because it's the thing like if things the film, I mean, I don't think I'm even spoiling because this kind of movie, you know, it's not going to have a dark ending. It isn't going to go all Cassavetti's on you at the last minute. Okay, this isn't able Ferrara's circuits.

This is you know, this is a happy, you know, go lucky movie. But you know at the end when you know they're like, oh my god, I have a twin, I have a brother I didn't know about. And everybody's happy, but their lives that they hadn't met up, their lives would have been ruined because both like one guy's wife thinks that her husband is cheating on her because she can't have children and she's barren, and then the other one thinks that her man is cheating on her with you know the other you know, it's stupid, and it's like if nobody would have remedied this, these guys' lives would have been completely uprooted. And especially with all these people judging them and saying, you know, you know you're a cat and you're a naughty boy because they think they're just like philandering all over the place and they're not.

So it's like, yeah, this guy's little social experiment could have had some very like fucked up consequences. Also speaking of that, because the whole thing is like one twin they do like a Corsican Brothers kind of thing, which just came up on our last recording, So I know you must be a huge fan of these setups start the best, yes and no they're terrible. Uh And I love Chiachin Chalk like, but I don't love Chicha Chok's Corscan brother That's a but that whole thing where like if one twin experiences pain and that movie was the only thing to do that. I think there was a Roger Corman movie, was it not? Warrior Queen?

Trying to remember what is a fantasy? Like like eighties fancy movies have like two sets of female twins, and it's the same thing. When one experiences pain or pleasure, the main one experiencing it doesn't really feel it, but the other one does. And they do that here with one twin becomes like a circus act because he can be electrocuted and suffers the consequences and the other one dances around like he's got the same bitis dance and but he doesn't have any physical I'm pretty sure if you get like electrocuted constantly, can't that kill you? I can kill you right or kill the people that are touching you.

At least ye people get electrocuted to death in real life. So it's like, I don't know. And again this is why it's like, well, this probably isn't maybe meant for kids because you don't want to be chilter and like, yeah, go touch that open exposed. Why you'll just dance around and people will laugh and think it's whimsical. But the tone, the tone is so And I don't mind if they're children's movies that are good that you can watch as an adult and enjoy, that are well made movies, but this film isn't like, it isn't that, And it's also like the music like they have this candy coat.

I feel like the music wasn't matching up to the look of it, and the proceedings while they're silly, it doesn't. There's just like this total dissonance, a virus, not even total. It just doesn't feel nothing feels cohesive like it should to me and circus well, and the story is so generic in what it's presenting that I mean, I was shocked. I mean the whole the conceit of oh, he can touch electrical wires and his twin feels it, and his twin, you know, his twin doesn't understand why when people touch him sometimes he is electrocuting them, and but it just happens like that's just that's just part of his life, Like that's interesting, like that's an interesting direction to go. But then that ends up just being like a punchline to a bunch of jokes or this kind of like weird dause x machiita moment of something bad is about to happen, but then you see it cuts away to his brother getting ready to grab the wires or do an act, and so it's kind of this weird moment of you things are gonna work out all of a sudden, because you know, he's about to be electrocuted.

His brother is so like, whatever's going on in the other guy's life is going to be prevented by no fault of his own or no choice of his own, and like that's interesting. But then it becomes more about all they all converge on Uti and in Uti they're both there, and the one brother lives there and the other one doesn't. But everybody starts recognizing them and thinking it's the other set of brothers, and it's like this goes on for so long, wait too long? It goes on the essentially up until and I look, this mooovie is one hundred and thirty eight minutes long. They find out that they're brothers, all four of them.

Do you know what minute market is? Do you know how many minutes are left in this movie when that happens, I want to say, like ten twelve even then? Yeah, well, minticulous, like what you spend all of the movie going, Oh, there's these machinations happening, and they're unable to figure out why they're being recognized as other people and isn't that weird? In the care are acting like complete morons to the point where they're just like going along with it. They're like, Oh, this is weird, but maybe these people here are weird, Like you know, it's like Brad and Janet in Rocky Horror.

Maybe they do a little bit more folk dancing, like that's what it feels like. It's just so strange because I don't think they inherently have a bad setup for this movie. I think everything that comes after the setup of I swapped these twins. I want to see how their lives turn out, and one of them has essentially a superpower and the other one doesn't understand why it's manifesting the way that it is. Is an interesting setup.

It just fucking goes nowhere, and it's such it's a frustration, frankly, because ron Vir saying is fantastic in given what he's given to do, which is very little. And I have not seen Varun Sharma in a lot, if anything else, and I really like him too. He plays a really interesting kind of straight man to Ronvir's sings character straight man to one of them, and more the comedic character to the other. I really appreciated that. I appreciate the two of them and their chemistry is great.

Everything else in the movie is just kind of all over the place. Like Sanjay Mishra's character of Rai Bahador, the father of Bindu, is that, like what a bizarre character like he graded on me? And I don't even feel like I wasn want to hate the actor because I feel like that character was written to be like that, and I feel like that's you know, like he's he's from the Gold Mall movies. So I don't know if like he got famous from gold the Gold Mall films, which is what this is part of. So I don't know.

Again, I don't want to and I don't and I don't want to speak to it because I don't know. This may be kind of his shtick. OK So I don't know. It kind of feels like it's you know what it feels like when Johnny Lever was in Mahakal. It's like this is like another character from something else that you're maybe doing.

You're doing your own thing in this movie that you're known for. I Meananni Leaver is in this movie and we'll tie about that. Bye, yeah, well it's we actually let's go aheading it to Johnny right now, because because there's all the actor they cast to play his son does look a lot like a young Johnny Lever. Like I was surprised he's not his actual son legit now because I looked up the credits after watching it, because I was convinced. I'm like, I almost was like at one point, is this some deep fake shit, like what is going on?

But it's like, no, No, it's an actual actor who just happens to kind of look like Johnny Lever, which Johnny Lever is a very striking person. I find that good casting, good casting. Siddartha jod Hobb has the teeth gap from birth, like he is so little, he's so liver adjacent. I think Johnny Lever is funnier because I think there are parts of him and mahak Call that I found charming and in fact, he was one of the few bright spots for me in that movie, even though he kind of grated after a while. But again that wasn't his fault.

That was that movie, it's all. But but I noticed something similar to Maha Call is the weird Michael Jackson audio stings. Did you notice that with his son? Yeah, because you'd hear this like it was real subtle, but you'd hear like duo duh Dutch like yo like that whoo like there were some there were some weird like audio audio stingers throughout this movie. I it felt very much like a Indian cinema movie made in the early two thousands, like Doom.

In Doom, there's like these Doom Doom like when a character turns around or something these like and like it's there's I can't even think of a comparison in in in American cinema, we just don't do that, like and I don't think it's a good or a bad thing. Like sometimes it works like in Doom and other times it's just like googoo gogga noises. In this movie, it really feels I mean, it really feels like two people offset going poop poo poop ban bang ou Like It's just it's strange because again the movie wants to be that, but I don't think it has any idea how to go about it. I feel like it doesn't maybe go far enough with the mad caps zaniness, but I don't know what what that would look like because there are scenes of it, like there's a scene at roy One's house where they're you know, Johnny Lever adjacent that his the momo is his character's name, Sindarata John Hobbs character in the movie.

It's him and his gang Mango and cheeky and great names by the way. And they're all there in Roy One's house with Roy two there in Roy One's place, and there's this like slapstick scene and it's just like goes on for forever, goes on so long that it stops being funny after the five minute mark, and it's like, sometimes more is not better, and in this scenario, barely any might have been just enough because nothing that they're doing, slapstick comedy wise or physical comedy wise, is funny. It keeps going back to you, like you mentioned ron Beer sing just doing over again, which I mean, it can only be funny so many times, like the first couple times maybe, but like you can't keep doing it and expecting that all the comedy that you're doing is going through that one joke and it's gonna land because it doesn't, and it's almost always that joke recurring in some different scenario.

Yeah. Well, it's something you and I have talked about before too, is you know there are some movies that are really long that would benefit from being a lot shorter. And it's not obviously you know we're doing the show. I mean, most Bollywood movies are well over two hours. Every film that you and I have talked about on the show has been well over two hours.

I find two of our most favorite ones were almost three. So we're obviously not anti like length. If it merits it and if it's really good, But this is a movie, cut it to ninety minutes, and you might have something like this film is way too long, it gets way too convoluted. It for trying to be is like Saaney and like weird, it's not it falls really short for me. And also why is it called circus?

I wanted more Circus in it. It's it's like calling a movie like the Candy Maker, and the candy Maker's in the movie for ten minutes. It's like calling a film yellow Beard and he's only in it a couple times. I was trying to avoid the yellow Beard because it's a different podcast, but you're right, but that's where this podcast comes from, so exactly. I mean, actually we got more yellow Beard and yellow Beard than we do Circus and circus.

Well, the only circus in this movie is ron Verer Singh's character, who is a again like what the amazing electric man. He just also happens to run the circus, so he owns it. And we don't see We hardly see any clowns. We don't see any little people. We don't see any bearded ladies, we don't see any In the fifties, there'd be freaks in this one.

Come on, like, give me Todd Browning's circus, damn it. I want well, and you know, I get hewing close to something like Shakespeare, because we can all understand Shakespeare. It's like the base story elements for stories told from here until the end of time. But like I am with you, I'm not a Shakespeare person. I'm just not and really not this kind of stuff, Like I can I can fuck with some Hamlet soliloquies.

I can get down with that because that that, for me, is interesting, because that that kind of scratches the same itch of watching actors do really interesting monologues like that's what the soliloquies for Hamlet's scratch for me. But the comedy of error shit like I read Midsummer Night's Dream earlier this year, like gross, I'm sorry, Like I'm just sorry, Like I wish I wish it resonated with me in a way that I could say, Oh my god, I'm such a fan of these characters and of the of this story. And I read it and I thought, yeah, this is the kind of stuff I don't like from Shakespeare. Yeah, like I'd like Julius Caesar, Hamlet's fine, Macbeth is fine. This.

Yeah, couldn't care less. No, I've got a fan of comedies either, Well, what is there to be a fan of? Really? Like, oh, it's it's like it's it's almost adjacent to those like movies where you're like just fucking say it to each other, right, It's like the missed connection comedy where it's like one person, there's two people in a room and they're in love, but the one person just can't say it to the other one, or if they do, they're like, no, I don't love you. It's like that kind of stuff where it's like, again, a comedy of errors.

It's like, I'm not into that. It's just not something I want to be part of as a viewer. Watching all these characters just kind of be dumb, because that's kind of what it feels like, Oh exactly, well, and it's you know, where's the comedy if it's a comedy of beers. I didn't laugh, I didn't have I didn't even shortle uh. It's frustrating.

On top of that, there is a way to do a little bit of that well, because when we did Move Through, you had a little bit of that, but the whole film wasn't based on Oh no, you know, his master is in love with the same girl and there's a misunderstanding that. I mean, the misunderstanding happens midway, like they get that over with so they can proceed with the bigger plot, and that's that's also a smart way to do it. Moved Through was also a much better movie and was a film that had, like, you know, a sense of the whimsical in a way that really was woven in well. I mean, there was some total whipleds to the movie, but then all kind of lended to it. I'll end it to the bigger picture, where with Circus it's just they're trying and you know, obviously they worked really hard on the visuals look of it, but to me, it's almost like it's so sanitized more than it is, you know, like technicolor pop pop art fun like it should be.

Yeah, no, I agree, one hundred percent. And you know, the other kind of big sin that the movie commits is having two female actors in it who are given nothing to do, like Jacqueline Fernandez and Pouja Hegde are given nothing to do in any two and a half hour. They just have to act angry in every scene that they're in, and they're given None of the characters are really given any characterization. I mean the act that again, Ron Veer Sing and Ruin Sharma are playing four characters together to each They don't even stand out as distinct characters. All I can say is one of them has electricity powers and the other one feels it, and one has a mustache and the other one doesn't.

Like that's really as much characterization as we're given, and for the female characters, we're given even less. And it's crazy to me because this is a two and a half hour right well, and especially because with Mala, I mean, the most we really get of her is like, oh, she wants a baby, which is like the most generic thing you can assign to any female characters like I want to be a mother, and and there's nothing wrong with wanting to be a mother. That could be a beautiful thing, but I mean, there's more to being a woman. And also the fact that we do know that she's this novelist who is very successful writing under like a masculine pen name. But to me, that's like that character has so much potential with that, like obviously there's depth to her that were not really shown.

I mean, and again it's like if you want to be like a kid's film where there's not I mean, kids films can have depth, but if you want to be a film that's just more wacky and zaan any and there's not it's not about character depth so much. That's fine, but commits to that, but you can't really go both ways. You can't have nature versus nurture and social experiments and also these plots that are basically like people being hurt because they think there's infidelity and there's bad communication, but then be like, oh, it's wacky, and you know it doesn't the shit doesn't merge. It doesn't merge. It's like you're mixing you're mixing vegetable oil with your kool aid.

You're not gonna make a good punch with that. And I feel like there are plenty of opportunities in this movie to have gone those directions that we were expecting. And again, it's not really our expectations getting in the way of liking this movie. This movie is critically reviled. Like go read any of the reviews for this movie, and they do not They hold back even less than we are.

And it's and again, it's also coming from a place of we've seen all of Roheat Shetty's other movies, and this is a pale comparison to those kinds of film like gold Mall, which Goal Mall sounds like a lot of fun, like it's got adj Devgan in it. It is a movie that it's made a lot of money. When it came out, a lot of people went and saw it. It has like five fucking sequels that sounds interesting, maybe not gole Mall four and five, but the first one we haven't even we haven't seen. And again, this is the thing that you know, you kind of mentioned at the top of this you haven't seen a comedy that this is the first comedy we've watched.

And it's wasn't funny. It was like, the biggest sit in that this movie commits is not being funny when it's again comedy quote unquote inspired by comedy of theirs, like where how make me laugh? Please do something funny? Like, I just I can't. I can't understand if they thought what they were doing was enough, or if they figured somehow that in what you're expecting from this kind of movie.

Because here's the thing, Like, I haven't seen a lot of Indian comedies, so maybe this is the way that they all are, but reading the reviews would lead me to believe that's not the case. This is some sort of weird aberration. Yeah. Also, I'm still stuck on your review of The Merchant of Venice. This one word gross.

Hey, I just love that there's there's just not. Sometimes Shakespeare is just or no, it was that's Summer's night, right, It's I dream. I just I just not. I don't understand the appeal of Shakespeare was not He was a he was a witty guy, but I don't think he was as funny as he thought he was with the stuff he was writing. Narratively, he had some good lines that make me laugh, but like I just don't understand like that kind of comedy, it's just not I just I don't know, it wasn't for me.

Maybe I'm missing the point. Maybe that's what it is. I'm not a fan of that comedy either. I And you know, like the Meet the Fokers was that awful Ben Stiller. Maybe I didn't actually see it, so maybe shouldn't say that, like Meet the Parents, you know, that kind of I don't even know if that's really under this umbrella.

But anything where it's like, oh see, it's wacky, there's misunderstandings, and I just don't give me a good Marx Brothers movie. Give me, give me, give me the Marx Brothers. So don't give me. Don't give me Merchant Inventas or whatever, or Taming of the Shrew. I I do like Shakespeare, but yeah, I like the ones that are just kind of dark and violent and nihilistic, like Titus Andronicus, Julie Caesara did like, uh, I thought Hamlet was a little whiny.

Oh if Hamlet doesn't exist, we don't get the thing that I really love that Shakespeare didn't write. But it's Shakespeare's rosen Krantz and guildenstar are dead. Oh I do love that, right, So Hamlet has to exist. Unfortunate for something as subversive and transgressive as rosen Krantz and guildenstart to exist. So good and the movie is so good the play and the movie, Yes, agreed, agree, and that's but that's and that's how you do That's how you do funny within the same sphere of Shakespeare.

That's how you do funny. It's just characters kind of not being self aware, but being self aware of their place in the world. And when you have a movie like this where it's like, we don't know who we are, it's weird that the characters are never really asking that, because it's not like Ron Viersing's character never says at any point, is it possible that I was adopted and I have a twin brother? Like at one point Ruin Sharma says something to him like that, and he's like no, no, no, no, no, like wait, what, like how are you How could you explain any of this away? Without that being the case.

It's so fucking bizarre that, like the characters don't even want to acknowledge the idea that maybe they do have doppelgangers in OUTI by complete accident, by no fault of their own. There are so many issues because when when a film, because that's the I don't I don't hate this Morvie. I didn't like it. Hate is a strong word. Hey, for me to really hate something, it's usually gonna be something where I feel like absolute bare minimum effort was placed in, like like the cocky say, like the cocky sway of a Michael Bay that might irritate me, just because it's like, yeah, we're just gonna do a bunch of jump cuts and you know, make it two and a half hours long.

A bas cgi u sheep will come and feed from the trough kind of attitude that that that will irritate me and anger me a little bit. Uh, we'll not anger, but it's just bullshit. It's gross. I don't hate this movie because I feel like there were people that definitely put in like an effort. I mean, certainly the caf Right.

And Ron Beider is great in It Out. That scene where he waits with that mustache, that was my favorite part. For the record, such you should watch gully Boy. He's really good In gully Boy. He plays a aspiring rapper a Lumbai.

Oh my god, which imagine mile, imagine eight mile? But good well, I'm sorry. I don't find em and m to be particularly interesting as an actor. I don't find him to be particularly charismatic either, So but you can tell ron Vire sing is hell yeah. But what movies like this on?

What? What should have been done differently? And I think the three things that would have made this better One rewrite that script, trim it down, Eliminate half of the you know the father in law trying to trip up the you know the sun because that was all over the place. Happens three times in the fucking movie, three separate times, and none of them. Maybe the first time is funny, but the second and third time, which end up being longer each time progressively longer.

No, it's just like it's too much, it's redundant. It's just we keep at There are points in this film where you must feel like you'ren Ammobia strip because it's just it's the same. It's the same over and over. So trim that down significantly. Figure out who your audience is.

You know, you can make something. I'm not saying everything has to be like like de Palma's scarface. Okay, but you know, if they're going to have constjucts of infidelity and obvious like hints were you know about sexuality, which is fine, but then you have it feel like you know, Hannah Montana the team preteen Years. As far as tone, that's you know what I mean, Like it's weird, so figure that out and more circus. Oh and the other thing, I think the music, I just the music to me felt really a namic.

If there isn't a lot of it a film that looks like this, we should have had some lavish, epic Bollywood musical numbers. We should have had some great, badass musical numbers in this film with all of the visuals, and I just felt like most I just I didn't think the music itself was that great. I didn't like the musical numbers as a whole were really that great either, And there really wasn't like a ton of them. Current Laga Rey, the song that Tapeka puttacone shows up for the kind of I would say, the big song in the movie, uh is just okay. It's fine.

It's like not memorable at all. It's not like the main song from Patan, it's not like God, It's not even like the song from Ish where Amir Khan is dancing down the bridge. I mean again, a movie where like the songs maybe don't need to be there in a lot of ways, because it's more an a kind of an action adjacent movie. You're right, there's more music in Boz Lhrman's Elvis than there is in this movie. And again, like I say Boz Lhman because I've been trying to rack my brain to find like a close approximation of what a Indian cinema film would look like through a more western lens, and I think Boz Luhrman's pretty close.

Like it's just kind of all over the place in the best way, and tone and substance matter less than showing something interesting, which is the assumption about Indian cinema. It's not the case, but this movie almost feels like what you would assume an Indian cinema movie is going to be like, and then it ends up just being boring instead, like the promise of fun is never fulfilled. But the trailer made it look like it was going to be this grand old return to the classic ways of Indian cinema where there was like we've mentioned, big bright colors, men with mustaches, dressing in very vibrant the garb. I mean, all of that feels very much return to a different time in storytelling in Indian cinema.

And it's not even that. It's not even this like pared down old style way of making movies, which is kind of what I was hoping it would be, like a kind of a hearkening back to the old golden age of cinema. And it's not even that. It's just again, it doesn't know what it wants to be. And in a world of Indian cinema where you're competing with like so many movies.

I think in The Romantics, one of the actresses mentioned like eight hundred movies come out a year in India, Like that's a lot of movies to compete with. And this is on Netflix right alongside Triple R and Bahu Bali and a bunch of other movies that are so much better. It's almost hard to even say check this movie out, because I would rather just say, go watch gully Boy. If you're gonna watch something that has Roanvir sing in it, that is again just a Ronvir Singh performance, that's just just him carrying the movie. Gully Boy fantastic.

This movie, it's just like, well, how do you waste on beer Singh's time? I just it's such a shame because he's so charismatic. Oh he's the by far the best part of this movie. You know what this actually makes me think of is, Yeah, there's a classic musical, The Music Man with Robert Preston, and that movie's great. Robert Preston's amazing, and twenty thirty years later, ABC I think did a TV movie version of it, and if you compare the two, it's just like the latter just fills anemic.

Like you can see that they're trying to do some callbacks and some of the cast. I mean, they got really talented people at Christ and Shinnaw Woods in it. They got the problem Number one is they got Matthew Broderick, who I'm not which I'm oh, yeah, yeah yeah, And I'm not anti Broderick necessarily, but if you see Robert Preston's work and then you see Matthew Broderick, there's come on, like it's Preston was this great big just had this great, big energy about him and this smile and like he's so good at Victor Victoria Too, which is another movie I love. And Broderick to me again just anemic, just you can't and he's good in certain ways. But in a way, it's like this is what Circus was for me.

I feel like it was calling back to something older and better and more expertly made that I'd rather be watching. And it sounds so mean, and I hate I hate being mean. But it's just some films get critically lambasted that art that really shouldn't be, Like, well we did Thugs of Hinderstand. I really enjoyed that movie. Yeah, I wouldn't.

I mean, is it perfect? No, most things aren't. Though it's okay, I was entertained. I thought I thought it did its job. I enjoyed it.

I would recommend it, and I did. I think we did. On the episode this one, I get it. This is one where Okay, it got bad reviews, and you know, you can see why. It's just it's just like it's half there's something just so half finished about it, and it's too bad because obviously a lot of money and effort, you know, went into it.

I mean, that's the one thing I can't lambast the movie for is it's not bad to look at. I know where the it feels like I know where a lot of the time and effort went. Maybe there should have been more time and effort into the script. Yeah, because the production values are clearly there's no issue with that. Like the movie's really nice to look at, but that is not enough.

Like even bos Lherman's stuff is nice to look at, but there's more to it, I mean even his I mean something I'm not a huge fan of Mulin Rouge is it's a lot going on, but at the same time, like there is a story there, even if it is bombarding you constantly with just singings to see, which this movie kind of does the same. I mean, at one point we see like a ten foot tall ron viy or see just like standing there, and it's the moment where one of I think Roy one realizes who Roy two is or I guess Roy two realizes who Roy one is, and it should be like this big moment, and it just falls flat, like everything in this movie just falls so flat, and I'm I'm disappointed because now this is the second Indian cinema movie we've watched together it has not been good, which is true.

But I think in a way that's something that's kind of good because think about it, like we you and I mean you have the Culture Cast, and we've been on other podcasts where we're talking about all kinds of Western cinema and you know, I've been doing that gig for years, right, and for years and years a lot of years. Actually, Like damn, Chris, we could have had, like, you know, a child that would probably resent us by now what, Like you know, we could have, you know, either one of us at this point would have had like a little twelve year old that'd be like, you know, fuck you dad, or you're not my real mom. That I don't know where I'm going. But my point is part of the Joe, the joy of being a Centophile in that journey is not everything's gonna be good.

And that's why I'm glad we did talk about Circus because that that is the reality of the movie going experience. If every single film that we watched was Agni Pop, you know, yeah, that would be a actually, never mind scratch that, I'm bullshit. I mean I was to say if everything we watched was Ognipoth, I would be I would be okay with that. I would too, But but objectively, sometimes it's watching stuff that's mediocre that actually kind of helps you really learn about filmmaking and the language of film. It's some ways, maybe even more than the really great films because you can do the compare and contrast, and you can also be like, Okay, I didn't like this, but why it makes you kind of do a little bit of self searching of like why even with some stuff that people love, I mean, like they're people, well you idea for culture.

Cast did for Scump recently, and that's a film that some people really enjoy and love. Obviously, others like myself not the biggest fan of it to say the least, but I love that. I think that's all part of the healthy discussion. So I'm glad even though neither one of us liked it, I'm glad we watched it. I'm glad we discussed it.

Now. Do I hope that the next film you and I do for be cc is uh like takes our breath away because it's so good. Of course, nobody wants to actively go into something and hate it, uh, but that's okay. That is part of the journey of life that every sandwich is gonna take, you know, make a memory. That's great.

Some sandwiches are gonna make that memory of uh, complete dysentery. I'm not saying this film was complete dysentery. Mahakal was close, and Maha Call I think, I mean Maha Call was a much worse film than this one, because it just it felt like it was a waste of time, like if it felt it felt really oh, what's the word. It felt like it was existing solely to plagiarize something much better like it. It was it was a rip off.

And that and and that's the thing in the most like fucking obvious sense of the word not inspired. And that's the thing I think a lot of Westerners, especially that just assume if you see an Indian film, our Turkish film, you know, or an Italian film inspired by some else, oh it's a ripoff. Well, it depends on what kind of care went into, what kind of influence. Everything's influenced by something. I mean, if you didn't have Joseph Campbell, the writer philosopher, you don't have Star Wars right now.

And some could say, oh, that storylinees ripping off just Campbell, like in his philosophy with Star Wars. And in a way, you're kind of right, but it's not. I wouldn't call it ripoff. Yeah, you could have Orca, which am I seeing Orca is the masterpiece, but we wouldn't have Worca without Jaws. But Orc is its own movie and it's amazing because the killarel goes after Richard Harris.

That's a whole other podcast. I'm sorry, but it is. It's really amazing. So yeah, yeah, so yeah, I don't. I think the only thing we've watched I don't even dare call rip bop would be Maha call because it's it's basically crudely put together.

There wasn't really a lot of care and creativity put into it, as opposed to Ognipoth, which clearly has a lot of influences from other movies, but is its own beat because all of that care and talent and intelligence went into it. I wish Circus would have had that. There's so much potentially, you're right, like, the seeds of this plot could potentially be I think, a really great story. And if you know, you know, please, if it's gonna be called Circus, give me some circus full I saw. We don't even see a close up of clowns.

We get two clowns in the background. That's bullshit, this is a circus. Where are my clowns at? I mean, I mean that that I think is is the It's a cardinal sin of this movie, is it? Just it promises a lot of things from the title to the trailer.

That is, it's never going to deliver on and it knows that, but you don't. And now I'm not going to say it's deceptive advertising, but kind it felt like it a little bit like the movie is just so bland compared to how exciting the trailer is. A look, there's plenty of that going around. This movie is not the first, last, or only. It's one of many probably last films that came out last year even that were not what they were advertising.

So again, like it's just you hate to see this many fantastic actors being wasted, this criminally frankly, so oh one hundred percent. Also, I don't know if this is a hot take. I didn't like Milan Rouge to the point where I never finished it. I didn't like it either, and so I couldn't I just couldn't get through it. And I love I love musicals, but not unconditionally.

Maybe that's part of it too. I'm very picky with what musicals I like, but I love almost every musical we've talked about for this show. I mean really the only things we've watched it I would not recommend anybody is this in Mohacal. I feel like everything else we've watched. You know, some things are better than others, but all if it's been really good, it's been you know, really good to great.

In fact, the law of average is Chris, if we've only had two stinkers out of like several several titles at this point, that's not bad man we've done. We've done far worse on another podcast. Well, And I don't look at the reviews before I pick the movies. I'm not picking only good movies either, So I mean, these are movies that I've wanted to watch or I've seen trailers for, and then float it to certain people and if they want to do it, great, So if it's good or bad, I kind of don't want to know until after I have watched it, kind of what the critical consensus and I have. You know, we have the reviews, and then I do have some friends I grew up with in North Texas that are Pakistani or Indian or you know, or a variation of of you know, maybe even Bengali, and I always ask them their thoughts too about these movies, because again, I want to know how it's being perceived by the audience it's ostensibly being made for as well, because that's something that I can't ever really be part of, because we are again always going to be Westerners watching these movies, no matter how much we appreciate them, no matter how much we like them, we are always going to be watching it as someone who is not directly part of the culture.

And the people who are part of the culture are saying this movie's not good. So I think we're in the same ballpark here is everybody else. So it's a shame because I really like ron Vier Sing, and I wish that this movie had been a better ron Er Sing movie, because I feel like the thirstiness for ron Vier Sing would be increased even more because he has a movie coming out later this year, Rocky Are Ronnie Ki Prim Kahani, which is the love story of Rocky and Ronnie, and he is playing the main character and looks it's Karan Johar, So there's no way it's not going to be great. Also, wanted to mention to you Ron vier Sing is married to Topica Potacone, the woman who is in pink in the current jog Ray song.

So that's his real life wife as well. Oh that's so sweet. Yeah, and what a what a gorgeous couple? My lord? Oh that's almost sickening?

How how how are these people real? How are they so gorgeous? The barth that thumb? Yeah you wake up looking like that? Shut up?

Yeah, imagine what you look like after getting the makeup on, right Jesus? Like, Yeah, if I returned, I'd be like that mustache, Like, that's a mustache, daddy right there. Sometimes he has the mustache with a little curl in it too. Oh cute here, Yeah, I especially, most most people cannot, in my opinion, rock a mustache. A mustache, I think is a very difficult thing to pull off personally, because we've all seen bad mustache.

We've all seen guys that have awkward stashes, and it's just like I am one of those people. Do you have have you had an awkward stash? Yeah, I've had an awkward I had an awkward mustache when I went on my honeymoon with my wife, and I had a mustache beard combination thing last year. Oh wow, I had like it was like this, like if I have all, if I have the musk, I'm for the audio medium here. If I have the mustache and the goatee like this, but not, I don't have the connected part.

But I kind of have this. I look so it looks a little interesting. But if I just do the mustache, I cannot pull it off. My dad, on the other hand, I've never seen my father's upper lip bear. He has had a mustache from the day I was born.

Oh wow, that's the same thing with my stepdad aka my Pappy. That's all him, my patty good old pappy. Yeah, because he's always had a stash. But it's it's just part of him. It just works.

But I mean, I also look like my dad. And if my dad shaved his mustache, he would look much younger, which I think some people are not a fan of looking younger. They want to look distinguished and and kind of paternal. I guess, so I'm a yeah, it'll make me shave my mustache. But I mean, my dad doesn't sound like that.

If he did that, my dad would be working in the talkies for a living, the talk But yeah, very few people can pull off a goddamn mustache that is a fat cock of nature one hundred percent. Uh, it's the rom ver thing. Yeah, oh hell yeah, hell yeah. He's a good looking man. I mean, look again, we've talked about this every time we get together to do one of these Indian cinema.

It's not short good looking people. It's not oh every I mean it doesn't matter. You know, if you if you love beautiful women, you love beautiful men, you love beautiful people in general, welcome to Bollywood cinema, because it is. If you're having a day where you might feel like a gremlin, maybe watch another country cinema put yourself out of that situation. Oh my god.

Like it's like just like, oh god, I thought it looked pretty. It's like I watched this movie and all the women are just like goddesses. And then yeah, but that's okay because then we can look at like a mere khan or round your saying or yeah, and then it's like okay, I'm just now you get it. Heather, Now you understand, it's like I want you to watch a Rod Vier sing movie. It doesn't even have to be good, though.

I do love that when he's the Circus roy he has his costume has no sleeves, just so you can show them guns, big old guns. We're grabbing those, seductively grabbing those like wires that see, the movie needed a shot of the women just kind of like blushing in the audience, but I know they're gonna be a little demure than then. Yeah, the ladies in the in the southern region of the United States where it's gonna be like what are you know? Like both but I have the very least one of them maybe fan in themselves, like like that's some something put something in there that shows that anybody but us is supposed to care because please like it's just yeah, yeah, it's it's a it's a lot of missed opportunities.

So Heather, final thoughts on Circus, which you can find right now on Netflix. Mind you you you can find us on Netflix. So this is a movie easily attainable for anyone listening to this if you if you want to watch how come the movies that we love the most are the most easily accessible because Ognipath is on Netflix and then they literally took it off right as we recorded that episode literally the same day. Yeah, this is available, so thanks Netflix, Thanks for Netic Jerks. But anyways, my final thoughts, if you're a Ranverse seeing a completist, watch it because he is, like we have gush like, he is phenomenal in it.

The rest of the cast, I think do their best, are good. It's not none of the problem are the actors, I think in this. But otherwise I think you could just skip it. There are better circus movies, there are better romantic comedies, there's better kids movies, there's better musicals. There's certainly better Indian films.

There's better film in general. You won't really be missing out that much if you don't watch it. I feel so mean, I hate means so naked. I'm with you, like I feel bad, but like, at the same time, it is two and a half hours, and there are plenty of like you've mentioned, good two and a half hour Indian cinema films that the two of us have watched together, like GRINDI Path, like Ish, like God. I'm trying to think, Oh moth oofu.

Yeah, I mean, frankly, any of them but Maha call were fantastic. So I don't know. It's just it's so strange because the promise of what this movie was going to be feels like it was just they missed it from like the first ten minutes in and you're sitting for two hours and some change, going when are we gonna get back to the fun funny stuff or maybe exciting stuff or again again, the promise is there in the first ten minutes and it goes nowhere, and it's a shame. But hey, again, like you mentioned, we need to watch the not great movies to appreciate the better ones that much more so, and it makes me appreciate gully Boy that much more because again, I Ron vier Sing can carry a poor movie as well as he can carry a really fantastic movie.

So there you go. Absolutely so until the next time you and I do one of these, Heather, which sooner rather than later, I'm sure Where could people find you on the internet. You can find me over my website Mondoheather dot com. I'm also on Instagram and Twitter under ASCA's shock at Montoheather, and I have a Patreon so if you're a fan of my writings and ramblings and assorted thoughts and whimsies, please feel free to support me. But if you can't, that's cool too.

You always go to my website and also please support Chris and Weirdingway Media in general. I was loot to say that's where you can find this show Weirdingwaymedia dot com for all your audio needs in regards to entertainment audio entertainment needs, because it's not a podcast, it's audio entertainment. We don't say podcasts on these shows we like the wwwe we don't mention what we actually do. It's audio entertainment. We're not podcasters.

We are audio entertainers, right exactly. You can find all that at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. As for this show, baliw cinemaclub dot com, like, rate and review the show wherever you get it, and reach out on YouTube because people are interacting with the YouTube versions of the podcast and telling us to watch things, some of the things we have already watched. And I'm always looking for suggestions because hey, you guys know more than I do, and I know a lot, so that must mean you guys know a lot too. So please tell me things you want us to watch, because I am all ears folks, because I want to hear what you guys like, because my opinion isn't the only one that matters.

Shocking, I know, I left the ego at the door, and as always, Heather, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you now, always a pleasure, and we'll catch you on the next episode.