Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani

We're in. Hello everyone, and welcome to the Bollywood Cinema Club. I am the host of the Culture Cast, Chris Statue. On every episode of the Bollywood Cinema Club, we take a look at an Indian cinema film from the past or present. But you know what, most of the time, or almost every time, it's a film worth checking out.

On this episode, I am joined by my good friend you have heard him here before talking about Brahmastra. He is one of the Brahmana I'm pretty sure he holds He holds the agny Astra film critic graphic artist one of my best friends, Dustin Rutledge. Hello and h On this episode of the Bollywood Cinema Club. It's kind of a sequel to the episode that we did about Brahmastra. We're talking about a film that features well, it features several it features a lot of the people from Brahmastra, the director, the star, a special cameo by one of the stars of this movie.

We're gonna be talking about twenty thirteen's cult classic Ye Juhuani Hi Dhuani otherwise known as This Youth Is Crazy, sometimes abbreviated as hy j H d SO The film is directed by Ayan Mukherjee based on a story in screen play by Aon Muccerjee with dialogue by Hussein Dalal, and it stars Well It stars the agny Astra himself, Rombier Kapoor as Bunny aka Kabir Thopper and Tapeka as doctor Nina Talwar. And the film is all about well, the two of them and their friend group along with Kalki Kachlan and Adita Rai Kapoor. Well, there are a bunch of friends who go on a trip together and then, as you would have it in an Indian cinema film, there's a time jump. They've all fallen out with one another and they get back together at a wedding.

Well, who gets back together? We'll be talking about that. This film came out in twenty thirteen, but we are going to be talking spoilers. Dustin, neither one of us had ever seen this film before, obviously, so I'm going to turn it over to you. Tell me a little bit about your initial thoughts on why JHD It's Well, First of all, I've got to say I loved how in like Bali cinema or Indians, how everything uses acronyms.

I think it's awesome. Yeah, K three D K three G D D L J y j h D. I mean, you know, there's there's Is there really an analog in American cinema? Not really. Star Wars is just Star Wars.

I guess t OS the original series, t n G. The Next Generation MCU kind of comes close to it. Yeah, but I do like the name of the movies. I do like the abbreviations. I am a fan as well, like actors well yeah, s r K, yeah, I yah, big B.

There is just a general overwhelming sense of joy with Indian cinema. I feel it every time I watch an Indian cinema movie. I really do. And maybe it's just me with you know, you know, I don't know Rose tinted glasses. But but tell me, Dustin, what did you think about why JHD?

So it's it was a rom com pretty much. If we were to draw parallel to American cinema, right, yeah, I would say more and more or less it's there. There's kind of some dramatic bits, but I think for the most part it's a it's a rom com in the vein of you know, other late two thousand's early tens rom com So trying to think the Bunny, I think he went by. He's kind of one of the main focuses of the movie, as is Nana Nina. I thought the so in looking at it through a romantic comedy Lens, I thought they did a good job of like, he's kind of this playboy guy, she's kind of a square for a better term.

And there they've got their whole journey that kind of happens, that leads them to each other, away from each other, to each other, away from each other. So it's kind of a cool interplay with with with this type of movie. But I also like the cheekiness of the movie. I mean, so Bunny has his own laws as a character, but but I I like the overall kind of cheekiness that the movie has. It was kind of what I expected from a wrong com type movie.

Yeah, there's there's funny things in romaint to comedies. There some cheeky bits. This to me was just kind of like cheeky all the way through with some heavy moments. There are heavy moments there will yeah, you know, I was gonna say, you know, there there are like in Western cinema, there are a ton of Indian rom coms that I have not seen, but I have seen some of. Admittedly, I think anyone would agree the Big ones DDLJ, K three g Cooch Cooch Hope to Hide.

The Big Ones. I mean, DDLJ obviously is kind of the biggest one. It's one of the biggest Indian cinema films of all time, and it's the one that gets brought up in other movies. We Heather and I were watching Dongle and they're watching DDLJ in that movie. So that movie has pretty big cultural significance for Indian culture, at least Hindi in Hindi cinema.

Okay, So in a lot lot of ways, why JHD is the gen xer d d l J. Maybe millennial DDLJ. It's it's more it's more in line with people our age and probably people your age. You're a couple years older than me, but you're probably the age of the characters in this movie. Right, Like I think that they're going on their kind of trip to the Himalayas, that would like that flashback or that kind of before there's the time jump that would be eight years before twenty thirteen.

So that's like what two thousand and five, right, So like you're like, that's why I wanted to watch this with you in a way, because this is kind of the characters in this movie. It's speaking directly to your generation more so than even mine, right, you know. And I think DDLJ is speaking to a different generation because it's the early nineties, so it's speaking to people that are like gen xers at least maybe earlier gen xers. And I think it's interesting to watch kind of these two movies because this is a cult classic, as as it's called. And I think it's interesting because it is a very successful movie at telling a story about a specific kind of character and a specific group of characters, and these characters would seem familiar to you, whether or not your Indian or American or you know, Australian or British.

Even that there's a kind of timelessness and placelessness to the characters that I think is imminently relatable, which I think is something that DDLJ maybe doesn't have as much because DDLJ is a little bit more rooted in the disparity between the culture in India, between the older culture and the younger culture and kind of them coming to heads, and this movie has a little bit of it. But this is that's not the focus of this movie. This movie is a different focus and a different character journey that the character of Bunny goes through versus Srk's character DDLJ. It's a different expectation, and I think that this expectation is more in line with the issues that people your age and my age are dealing with, less the people like in DDLJ.

There's a different cultural expectation that I think is more relatable for me. And I'm not saying I liked this movie more than DDLJ, but I appreciated seeing a message that is more relatable for someone my age, but also the way those characters are being perceived by Indian cinema well, and kind of brought up an interesting point, like this movie is, I think, above all else, is about relationships in many different forms. You've got friendships, you've got kind of the love interest, you've got samily relationships going on, and there's a lot of, oh, some of the messiness that happens in between those various ones, and like how you said, like with our generation, Yeah, because leaving home, going on that adventure, having that core group of friends that you get into trouble with, Like all that stuff super relatable to me.

That, yeah, that that kind of stuff is script of my life, just at a different place, you know, right, And how there can be tension between friends, you can have that crush that just isn't going to work out. You can have you know your your parents don't want you to leave but you but they know you have to. And this is all happening at that age when your parents are aging and you know, you miss out on time with family because you're out doing your own thing, discovering yourself. And so yeah, there's a lot to that, and like just the different relationships, the way people love each other, like that was all touched on in this movie. It was that part was pretty cool.

I mean, there were moments of it you know, brings you to tears and you not much as said. Yeah, there are a couple moments towards the end of this movie that are slashbacks that really hit hard in a way that It's not that I wasn't expecting, because I definitely cried at the end of D D l J as well, but it was for different reasons. It's in that movie. It's less about the relationship with your own parents, more relationship with your student, like with your spouses or significant others parents and kind of pleasing them and their relationship with their parents. Less your relationship with your parents, and this movie it's about your relationship with your parents and your relationship with other people your age, which I appreciate.

Like you said, I do appreciate that. I think it's also really smart that the movie is more about Depica Patacone's character, because she's the main character of the movie, and she plays a very i would say, a very stereotypical. She's a medical student, she's very focused on her studies. She feels like a stereotype, and I think that all the characters in this movie feel like stereotypes. But I think that there are very few kinds of movies where that works, and romcom are one of them.

I think rom coms work with stereotype characters because writing a character broadly means certain members of the audience can immediately associate with that character or understand that character. You know, immediately. They don't need a lot of subtext. It's pretty obvious who these characters are and they're written very broadly and very large because again, larger characters with broader emotions work in movies that are comedies or in this rom coms where you know you're going to be putting these characters through the ringer, and in a lot of rom coms the characters wouldn't be together at the end because they've been put through such a ringer. But again, if you write them as broadly as possible, it kind of works.

All the characters in this movie are stereotypes. Bunny is a womanizer, Nina is a you know, just a book nerd. You have Addie who is, you know, the tse and then you have av who's kind of the dark and serious one. But you know, they're all They're all people that we know or we are one of them. But that's what works about movies like this, regardless of who's making them, like you said, regardless of the Indian version or the Japanese version, or the Mexican cinema version or the American cinema like they all are going to be hewing very close to the same kinds of characters, but putting them in scenarios that I think are more or less less universal than more.

But again, they all kind of have a universality to them, but they have a flavor of where they are and we kind of see that in this movie. But I will say, because Nina is the main character, Bunny is used sparingly and as much as I do like ron Beer Kapoor in this movie, his character is a little much, right at least the first maybe hour, because this movie is one hundred and fifty nine minutes, so I mean again, we're talking, you know, two and a half hours, So his character would be a lot if he was the main character. I'm glad he's not, but he's a lot of the first half of the movie pre intermission. His character is very shall we say immature. Yeah, you just spend a lot of the movie like you get invested in the again, I'll say, the cheeky flirting back and forth between his character Nata's and you just want him to like you want to reach the screen and smack him like knocknah.

Yeah. He I mean there's a scene early on where they're on the train together and this is you know, I guess within what like this is the day that this is the day that they've kind of reacquainted one another because they knew each other from school, but you know they've more or less traveled in similar circles but weren't friends with each other. And early on, you know, Nina is sitting there with Addie and Avy and Bunny and these kind of girls from the train show up and Bunny is hitting on one of them pretty hard. This character will show up again later in the movie, which makes us all feel very Shakespearean and very kind of grand and epic that they're all in this circle already, even though they don't know it yet because I guess that woman on the train is the sister of the the guy that Oddie ends up marrying at the end of the movie.

Yeah, which it just feels all like very grand and epic, right, Like I mean again, like we've we've seen this now in several Indian cinema movies, like in K three G where it just it all feels so kind of grandios like, oh, you knew them then and they're here again, and like, but early on, Bunny is just like hitting on all these women and he seems like such a scumbag this woman that he really likes clearly, and like again like but you can't tell if he just likes her because she's a good looking woman, or if there is more to it, and that that's never answered in the first half of the movie. I guess it's I mean, they do kind of answer it obviously right at the end. But being a romantic comedy, it has the I almost tell you or I need to tell you something moment and then this, I mean I hate that interrupts it.

Yeah, I hate that. It is so lazy, right, it is lazy. It's it's a plot contrivance because like in real life, you'd be like, just say it, like this is gonna be like you don't know the chance you're gonna get. It's funny because this movie is rather well written other than really having those stereotypical rom com moments. It's rather well written outside of those moments where it's just like I've seen other movies do this before, but gosh, for some reason they work like rom combs are not normally my bag.

And here I was two and a half hours into this thing, like, just get together, just get together, already, stop with the back and forth. Yeah, but that but that is the thing that's nice about the first half of the movie is we kind of get to see an understand why these characters are the way that they are with one another. And you know, if you tell someone in an American an American cinemagoer, right, this is a rom commits and a half hours, they would be like, no fucking way, I'm out of here, or something like DDLJ. I think is even longer than this. But here's the thing, like the fact that these movies are able to give us.

As much as I'm not a huge fan of Bunny's character, in the first half of the movie, he feels like a complete character. He feels like a completely well thought out, completely fully realized character who I understand his wants, his needs and where and what he's kind of trying to do with his life. And I again, you know, yeah, it's two and a half hours, and that's a lot for a rom comp But I'm completely invested because they spend all that time doing that. Otherwise I'm not invested because they take the time to tell us. Yeah, they take the time to tell us who these characters are, and not just tell us, but show us, give us these situations that the characters are going through together, where they're you know, they're climbing the mountain together, and then they talk about, oh, you know, at the top of the mountain, you know your dream will come true, and so you know, oh, well, somebody's going to go up there, and they go up there together, Nina and Bunny do, and that's this kind of poignant little moment between the two of them that you know does lead other places.

And it's not an easy ask for an American cinema goer to willingly wants a two and a half hour rom com. But that feels like a fucking shame because the rom coms that end up coming out are rushing. They're not taking the time to give you characters to get invested in. And what happens with that is twenty minutes and you already know the formula of how this movie us get to go with the movie you're talking about, Like those rushed ones, you already know the formula of it. Whereas this, like I thought I knew, okay, like okay, yeah, they're going to get together, but then there's moments it's like, oh maybe they're not.

Like it actually kind of thrives you and for all all those characters really like everything. That kind of happened towards the end. I didn't quite expect well. And you know, I'm trying to think of, you know, rom coms that I like, the Western ones, because I don't watch a lot of them anymore than I'm assuming you do will lately. I mean, we're both married, you know, we both have significant others, and I don't know if you're getting roped into watching rom coms, I'm not really.

I actually don't have as much of an aversion as one might think. I just they're not something that either my wife or I like to watch. But like one of the ones that sticks out to me that I like that I think people think is a rather long rom com is Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Yeah, it's like almost two hours long. It's like one hundred and eleven minutes, but you go on a complete journey with the characters.

By the end of it, you're not sure if the characters are going to get together. They actually do a pretty good job of faking you out to think that they won't. Even like it's again, it's kind of a more mature, well thought out romantic comedy that does also have a dramatic sign to it. And this movie feels very much of that same time and place, because they don't make rom coms like this anymore, even in Western cinema, Like I think kind of it feels like in a little ways, the rom coms are dead, at least Western cinema rom coms. Like you know that there was like that Rebel Wilson movie that came out a couple of years ago that was like a parody of rom coms.

She got sucked into a rom com, and I felt like that was like the death knell of rom coms. When that kind of movie comes out, they kind of go into hibernation for a while so that everybody can forget all the tropes, or maybe some people can reapproach the tropes and you know, returned to the rom coms of old type thing. But this movie feels very much in that same vein like it's edgy. It has a little edginess, but it does have rather likable even with someone like av who's kind of an unlikable character as much as Bunny is. He's unlikable, but he feels real.

He doesn't feel it feels like a real person. He feels flawed. Bunny feels flawed like a real person would be flawed yep, yep, and how all their friends are dealing with something and like when you mentioned they kind of grow apart, it becomes clear that those friendships were really important to everyone in the group one way or another. In the fact that everybody grew apart like kind of caused problems, Like Abby kind of went into like he had nobody to lean on and he was gambling and drinking and losing his business. I guess, like, yeah, everybody's just kind of lost, especially him.

He probably needed those friendships more than anybody, but he acts like he doesn't. Yeah, you kind of get a sense of like how important that becomes and like how broken he is without it. Well, and you know, I think it's really smart to I mean, it is effectively in a lot of ways. Two movies, right, I mean, you have you have the moment up until you know Bunny and Nina are standing there and Bunny is not being honest with his friends, and he hasn't told them that he's going to Northwestern for journalism, which obviously is about as far away from Dilly and where they are humanly possible, and he hasn't told them, and they've all grown close throughout this trip to the Himalayas together, and Bunny is not interested in, you know, growing together with Nina.

He wants to just he wants to go out on his own, and he doesn't know that she loves him. And that's that kind of scene that we've already talked a little bit about where you know, again, just fucking say it, like it may not have changed anything, but just fucking say it. Obviously, he pretty much just says he wants to live life hard and fast, right and you know, he wants to travel and see the world, and then we get an eight year jump. I really appreciate all I mean again, because if it's it's all set dressing for the second half of the movie, it really feels like just you could sit down and watch the movie after the intermission, and I think you would probably get more or less the entire film, Like you would get more or less the gist of what's going on.

You would get the connections of the characters because they do kind of talk about the things that have happened before. They don't just not reference it. I mean, you know, you would think we've just seen it in the movie. You don't have to reference it. But they do kind of bring some of those things up, and they kind of reference these moments that have happened before, which feels kind of TV sensibility in a way.

But I appreciate that you could watch the second half without the first half, but by watching both parts and getting the entire film, it feels like a much more just. It feels like such a well thought out narrative. It really does, even though it's pretty I mean, it's pretty basic. I don't think it's trying to really break the mold of what I would consider a rom com is, even if it isn't in English, right, And I was kind of surprised impressed the gall who played a DT. She's like a French actress yep, sure, yes, I mean wow, and she works primarily in Hindu cinema.

Yeah, yeah, that's pretty impressive. She was in I think Gulley. I think she's in gully Boy as she's like kind of shows up for a while and gully Boy, and I remember seeing her and that being like huh, in truth, like I never I've never seen her before, but like she's fucking amazing in this movie. Yeah. Yeah, character, I mean, we all know somebody like her character, right, Yeah, I feel like I know, I know somebody like everybody in this movie.

I don't think I am any of these characters that they don't resonate with me like that, but I feel like I know people like everybody in this movie. For sure. She plays a really interesting version of that kind of character. Yeah, just a little at the beginning movie, she's just a little aloof you know, just kind of right, yeah, yeah, get you know, the one that the parents don't really want you to hang out with, kind of a free thinking friend as it were. Yeah, oh she's an art student.

Oh yeah, whatever the fuck that means. I mean, I get it. I mean they you know, they do have these early scenes in the movie with Nina's parents, and then we have the scene with Bunny's parents as well, and that kind of comes back later in the movie. But this isn't a story about the interactions between the parents and the kids. There is a nice poignant moment at the end of the movie that has to do with Bunny's parents, but that's more about Bunny's growth as a character and the things he's missed out on, less his interaction with his parents.

Yeah. Yeah, and I like that. I like that that this movie is more about your interaction with your friends and those relationships that you've made with the people that you choose to be your family versus the people that are you're born into. Right, Yeah, I kind of like I mean having step parents, Like just the brief moments that Bunny interacts with his dad and stepmom and stuff like those are relatable too, because like it's just different with like your step parents. And his stepmom brings him like that that Sherbett drink and it takes a step and he's like it's terrible and always and always has been.

Yeah, And it's basically just because it's not his mom's. You know, if his mom made it, it had been the best, right. And that's interesting because in most Indian cinema, we aren't dealing with like stepparents. We're dealing with like grandparents or aunts and uncles and a stepparent. Just like it was interesting to see that was the that was kind of the relationship they chose to focus on.

The familial relationship that they do focus on is the stepmother. To me, if Bunny had that family life, like he probably wanted to, Like, it's not you know, his mom's gone. He probably has some stuff going on with that. He's at the biggest fan of his stepmom. I mean, she's probably fine, but like he didn't choose her, you know, right, And so yeah, he wants to get the heck out of there and just go carve his own way through the world.

So I don't know that commensely relatable from the sound to me a little bit. Yeah, which I really I really love that this movie spoke to you in that way. I'm dead serious because again, like I can never know watching one of these movies because a lot of the times I don't watch them first to figure out if they're worth watching. I want to experience it together. Like we'll watch it, maybe not together, but we'll watch it them we'll end of talking talking about it and sharing that at the same time.

And I never know. I mean I did an episode with Otto and Adam and we talked about I remember, Oh Charrulatto, which we one of us was a fan of and two of us weren't, but we didn't know that going into it. So I find it interesting because that didn't speak to me in the same way because I don't have that similar experience. But what did speak to me. Was that interaction he kind of has with his father who's not there, and that just that's just like beyond heartbreaking.

And I mean because he has the flashback to you know, his dad talking about you know, what would make you happy and he's like, whatever makes you happy is what makes me happy. And he's like, well, I just needed to hear you say that to know like that that's what matters. And that is just like I wasn't expecting that in this movie and it does kind of come out of nowhere, it does. Yeah, that was one of the tear juggers. Yeah, and I think it also goes with Faruk Sheik, who plays Bunny's dad.

It is just he's such a kind of just such a nice looking guy, Like he just seems like a he he seems like a really genuine human being and you understand, right, And so you can kind of see why Bunny is the way that he is, maybe like with the dad that he has, who seems like just this like genuinely nice guy who's like, you know, I just want you to be happy, which again, like in Indian cinema, the expectation is like you know, with Nina's parents, you see her relationship with them. It's like, you know, you're gonna go do this, like don't don't go do anything else, like do you want to go on vacation? Like just kidding, like don't do that? Like it like, but that's the expectation, you know. And but and it's an expectation that is good, that is going away, that is and I mean even in our Western society we struggle with that.

I mean that's something that a lot of people our age really struggled with, is you know, the expectations of your parents, and what are your parents expectations for you? And what are they putting on you because of themselves in their shortcomings or perceived shortcomings. And there's not a lot of that in this movie, but you kind of they kind of hint at it. It feels like and I appreciate that. Once again, you know, we do have a movie that doesn't have a happy ending, yes, but it also has like an honest ending I think as well, Like it's honest with the journey of the characters.

It doesn't sugarcoat it. Yep. I don't think American films would have the AVVI character ending where he ended. Do you know what I mean right, and yeah, I definitely thought something bad is going to happen to and then they put it in that direction. Yeah, but I thought it was cool that towards the end, like for a group that was so tight together and then they drew apart, and then at the end for they're all back together, but not in the same places, like they're all still separated, but they're together just in a different way.

Well, and I mean I think obviously, you know now more than ever. You know, obviously this film came out in twenty thirteen, so the before times, but now more than ever in these kind of you know, hard to describe to anybody other than the people who are alive during at times, so they would say unprecedented. Uh, it's it's important to keep in touch with people and and and check in with each other and be there for each other. You know. You you and I our friendship is very much in a lot of ways.

I mean, we've never talked about it on a recording or anything, but we live rather close to one another. But we have really not had a lot of opportunities to hang out, primarily because our friendship started like the week of the pandemic. It feels like in a lot of ways. The first time we ever hung out was the like March of twenty twenty. Yeah, the second week of March.

Our friendship grew in a non you know, in person way, right, So that's that's how we it's it's what we know, right, And like either, plenty of people that I podcast with that I have never met. There have been people that I have podcasted with that I have podcasted with and then they have passed away or gone out of the podcasting business entirely, and I have not talked to them in years. So it's kind of weird because we're all still existing at the same time. It's just a matter of picking up the phone and calling them. And I have plenty of friends that I haven't spoken to in years, but I know I could pick up the phone and call them.

It's just life gets in the way. Things get in the way. And that would not have felt relatable in twenty thirteen, yeah, either, But yet it feels relatable now because the character of Bunny I would have said. I would have said, it's impossible for me to believe that people who are that close could not talk for eight years, But but I think we both could attest to friendships or people we know that we could talk to that we haven't talked to and maybe not as long a time, but close to Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. So that were like massive parts of our lives for long periods of time.

And that's the thing, like they really weren't. And that's what I like about this movie is this is this is a kind of less about the people that you're really good friends with and more the people that you were really good friends with for a minute, you know, yeah, because it's like for a summer, right, Like they were friends for a summer. I mean they didn't know each other, but they weren't super well acquainted, but they got really well acquainted over that summer. And I like that. It's it's like more about this one summer that changed everything.

They just didn't know it, right, right, Which that is very romantic size, right, I mean, did you have a summer growing up where everything changed like this? Like, uh, probably not to this kind of dramatic swing, but right. But yeah, it has been eight years since, so yeah, we can't say it hasn't happened yet, but yeah, yeah, and the time is theoretically passed so no, I can say that I've probably had like that great summer friends are there, met some new ones, you know, and yeah, to this day, I haven't talked to some of them people. But if I would ever see him, it would be like this awesome reunion. You know.

I had a summer where I hung out with a group of people that they were some of them were there only for the summer for like a medical like a med school intern program, and I knew one of them from high school, and so I would like hang out with them every night for like two months type thing. I haven't talked to any of them since, and it's like, it's weird to think about, because like they're not going to come back into my life in the way that these characters did. I have very much gone into a different direction, different person entirely. You know, you probably you know, you have a family now type thing. So we're all in different places than I think any of us maybe thought we would be.

I guess it would be eleven years ago now for these this group of people. But it is funny that, you know, it's such a relatable idea that you can make this kind of story around those friends you had one summer that end up at that one time. Yeah, that one time that end up being you know, you can't get them out of your mind, and that's the thing, like, you know, Bunny does come back. Yeah. Well, I like how it starts off with Nana get kind of going out of her comfort zone and she is in Bunny's comfort zone, you know, doing the wild crazy stuff, right, and then it flips he comes back for this wedding and now he's kind of on her home turf, in her comfort zone with the families in the community and all that, and he kind of struggles at first with like, you know, he needs to get back out into the world.

This is dragging him down. But then obviously he comes to realize otherwise. And I like that. The second half of the movie is all essentially more or less set at the wedding in rajasthan in Udaipur, which the time I went to India, that is one of the places that we went to in India was Udaipur, and it is a great place to have a destination wedding in India. It's beautiful, is just like a giant lake in the middle of the town.

I mean you kind of see it in the movie, they show it, I mean they show a lot of like traveling on like boats when they're showing establishing shots, but the imagery in the second half of the movie, and like the setting and the production value, I mean it's impressive. I mean the fact, I mean they're setting it in a place it's already beautiful, but a great you know, a kind of a great contrast to the beginning of the movie, which it's not that there wasn't a lot of like interesting stuff to look at, but it was less about what they were doing and more about the interactions with the characters. And I like that the second half of the movie also sets it somewhere that's really kind of interesting and nice to look at it.

And it feels very specific to say specific to India, but specific to Indian cinema. It doesn't just feel like some hotel somewhere. It feels like a hotel in Udaipur that has this kind of very interesting architectural look to it. Yeah, I noticed that architecture. And like when they're kind of sneaking around trying to find out what the groom's dance is going to be, like there's like scaling the wall and coming down onto this other wall to like see what they're doing and kind of hang up half upside down to peek in there.

And I was like, you couldn't do that in a regular building or house, right, like because of how the architecture is, they were able to do what they did, right. What did you What did you think of a Kuno roy Kapoor as a tehran Adit's husband, the character that we meet in the second half of the movie. I didn't know was I couldn't tell if the movie wanted me to laugh at him or with him, Like I could never really get a read on his character because he's kind of the odd man out. He would theoretically be like the audience in an American cinema movie. You could tell a movie his point of view, right, And there have been where it's like the person who comes into the family or the group of friends from the outside.

Well, my first impression of him was kind of he's kind of like just a goob, like a goober, Like, just like, is this guy like he's not part of their group, he's nothing like them and Ben Stiller from Meet the Parents. Yeah, yeah, he's just kind of a yeah, an outsider or you know, almost kind of a nerd. Well the way they paint him. They paint him as this like socially awkward guy, but like it's weird, Like towards the end of the movie they kind of drop that, like I don't get it, Like he wears like Hawaiian shirts, so we're clearly supposed to think he's like kind of a dork. But like someone like Addie.

Her character, the way that she's played like she wouldn't be with someone like that, Like they make it very clear. So whatever, I'm just trying to look for that moment where I understand what her character sees in him. Yeah, and it wasn't Abbie kind of into her. I guess, like that's what I could never fig You're out in the first half of the movie is Abvy and Addie are are Aren't a thing? Are the thing?

And I thought something's going to happen. I thought they were. I thought they were going to get together and like before the wedding happened, but it was became a moment of she basically says that that guy, the person she is marrying, she's a better person with that person, which given where Abby's character kind of is in this movie when we come back to him makes sense, Yeah, yeah, because he's kind of a dickhead. In the first half of the movie, I mean, they get into this giant set piece of a fight that's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom kind of adjacent, where they're chased through the streets by these kind of dickheads that they piss off accidentally. Though it I guess it kind of makes sense later that Abby is an alcoholic, but yeah, I kind of don't understand what's going on.

And they kind of have this chase through the streets of a Himalayan town, which is a really well done set piece for a rom com. Holy cal like it was entertained throughout Yeah. Yeah. And everybody's got that friend that wants to start a fight, right or like Addie doesn't keep her mouth shut. She just keeps yelling at him and like bring him up.

We all have one of those friends, right Yeah. But like she again, like her character and Abby, it's I don't, I don't kind of it feels kind of like a missed opportunity that could have gone into it a little bit more in the second half of the movie because they what they feel it feels like they spend a fair amount of time in the first part of the movie pre intermission kind of talking about their relationship. Yeah, or their relationship is kind of one B too Bunny and nine as one A, and it doesn't really get wrapped up in a meaningful or even successful way. I don't think it gets wrapped up successfully their relationship. I feel like it.

She just kind of goes, well, I feel better when I'm with him than I'm with you, which again makes sense. He's an alcoholic, he's gambling, he's really down on his love when we come back to him post intermission. But that's it, Like, that's as far as it goes. And it feels like a missed opportunity because you know, Dita Roy Kapoor is a fantastic actor. He's really good as Abby.

It's a little, I mean, it's a little on the nose. I mean, it's not anything new with that kind of character. He's gambling and he's an alcoholic again, right, But that interaction between Avvy and Audie was so good and so interesting, their kind of chemistry back and forth that I would have liked have seen them do a little bit more, even if the conclusion doesn't change, Like I'm not saying change so that she ends up with him at the end of the movie. I think the important message is to not have them be together. But they should have approached it because it wasn't just a throwaway relationship.

And that's kind of the way it felt. It felt like they focus more on Bunny and Nina in the second half of the movie, and they had an opportunity to focus on both. I mean, the character is still there, like, it's not like they wrote him out of the movie. Yeah, they focus more on Bunny and Avvy than they do an Auv and Addie in the second half of the movie. I think Buddy was such a He's kind of a disruptive force, and not always disruptive, but just a force right within the friendship group where he's more important to them than he realizes.

He doesn't realize that till towards the end. Well, it turns out he's the glue. Yeah. Yeah, and here he thought he was just like the feather in the wind. Right, he's the goof of the group.

Yeah, but he doesn't realize the goof can be the glue. I don't know, if you're the glue for some of your friend groups. But I one hundred percent am for certain aspects of certain angles of my friend group. I am one hundred percent the glue for some of those to the point where because I don't talk to those people enough or as much or at all, other people are not talked to either, or they have lost touch with people. Yeah, like I can directly trace, though I would never take credit for it.

One group of people that I know, a marriage exists more or less not because of me. But we met those people that, and we met the people that ended up forming a relationship with someone else I knew because of me, which is insane. I have one of those, right, it's and I only met one of those people because I knew someone that he had gone to. I met him because I knew his roommate, because his roommate went to high school with me. So I would never have even met him if I had not gone to high school with his roommate, who I'm not even friends with now.

It's insane, Like, Yeah, to be the glue is not something you ask for. It just kind of happens, right Yeah, And it just you know, everybody together has a good time, and you can tell that that group is a good group when they're together, So somebody has to Sometimes it just happens organically, but somebody has to be the one to make sure that gets together. Like I have friends who lived in the same apartment complex together, didn't know it, then found out, and even after finding out, didn't hang out because I didn't live in Texas. Because I was the one that got the whole friend group together, because nobody ever hung out separately, and some people didn't have a way to hang out, you know what It's like.

It's just I don't know, like it's it's interesting because I don't I don't empathize with the Bunny character in the movie because he's very different from me, but all of the characters are more or less just a personality type or a part of a hole in some respects, and the Bunny character I definitely emotionally resonated with more some of the aspects of the character arc that he has, because that whole thing about being the glue it kind of sucks, like it really does kind of suck in a way. Yeah, it keeps you tethered, and he doesn't he didn't want to be tethered, right right exactly, and we're well, I'm two movies into this genre of film, but here i am two movies in with Burmasta being the first one to know this one, and just every scene like song and dance scene that comes up, I'm like looking forward to him.

Now, I'm like, these are fun as you should be like for me. For me, the I completely understand as a Westerner going, oh my god, this action movie has you know. Okay, So Tom who did the music for this movie, also did the title track for Doom, which is a The first one is very much a Indian response Too Fast and the Furious. It's a it's a motorcycle racing movie. But he did the music for that movie.

But it has great musical numbers too, so it does the second one. I haven't watched the third one yet, but we're gonna watch it for this show at some point. Um. What's interesting is for me, you know, the whole musical numbers in the movie, Like we always kind of talk about it as is like the musical or it's a musical. These movies aren't musicals.

Music is in these movies. There are musical numbers in these movies the same way there are giant CGI set pieces in Marvel movies. There happened to also be musical numbers. In giant MCU style movies like Brahmastra, a movie we just watched, you know, and Entheron, they had musical numbers. The most expensive Indian cinema film when it came out, two point zero, a movie that we'll be talking about eventually.

The sequel to Entheron, doesn't have musical numbers. It has won at the end. Indian cinema has now changed its format in response to Western cinema and they don't necessarily have musical numbers. A film like Toombod, a movie that I really liked, so did Father Malone when we talked about it. It doesn't have a single musical number in the entire film.

That feels like it would have been surprising if it had come out in the eighties or nineties in Indian cinema, because everything that I've seen, including Parinda, a Indian Mumbai hard boiled crime film that has a twist ending on the level of or exceeding The Departed, has musical numbers. Imagine if The Departed had musical numbers, that that's that kind of film, that genre of film. But like once you just kind of accept that they're gonna be there because this is the style of Indian filmmaking. Is music is a big part of the culture and it's a big part of filmmaking. It is some of, if not the best parts of these films.

Oh yeah, this movie is no different. The musical number that they have at the wedding, the groom's dance is fantastic, the bride's dance is fantastic, and then the Kabira number is an earworm if I've ever heard one? Oh man, Yeah, yep. And you know what, we haven't really talked about him. We've talked about his character, but we talked about him a lot when we're talking about Bromostra because he is one of the bromudge What did you think of ron Beer Kapoor in this movie versus him and Bromostra?

Way better like a night and day like I could like again, I think what's more surprising for me than anything else is that, uh, the director and writer of this movie wrote Brahmastra, not that Romber Kapoor is good, but that Ayan Mukherjee. This is a later film that he's writing nine years later. And Brahmastra is at least from a dialogue standpoint, feels like a student film compared to this movie, if like A Night and Day? Why JHD is a is a such such a well thought out, well made film from a dialogue standpoint that it made the two of us cry. And what's sad?

And what's sad? Is? Husand Lall wrote the dialogue for JHD and and I think I'm not gonna say Ayan Mukherjee needs someone else to write the dialogue for him. But he needs someone else to write the dialogue for him because we literally said, like noticeable Prince in I mean the way like in the in the moments of the movie that I really need to deliver, really need to land them like you're you're bought in in this movie. And in Bramostra, it's it's it.

They don't hit that way. They're they're so generic and stilted and feel like it feels like characters in a movie talking to each other. In y JHD, it feels like real people. And and mind you these movies. Bromoster is one hundred and sixty seven minutes and this movie ain't much shorter than that.

To me, it's just like, h Okay, so this movie is one hundred and fifty nine minutes, that movie is one hundred and sixty six minutes or whatever. Like if you have such a disparity between the two movies, Oh wait, you don't have a disparity between the time spent telling the story. And yet this movie feels like every character is a real human and Bremost feels like a just less than one dimensional character. And Hassan Deal is and should be given all of the credit for the successes of the characters in this movie. Okay, I take all of this back, and we're gonna have to rerecord this entire section.

Assay Delol wrote the dialogue for Promostra and Hussein Delol wrote the dialogue for y JHD. How is that possible? Is that just the expectations were different, Like they watched an mc is okay? Is it this? They watched MCU movies and they saw and interpreted them through the Indian cinema lens, and that's what they're getting.

And it's actually kind of hilarious in a way because it's almost a in effect kind of taken the piss out of MCU movies. Right, Yeah, it's funny, well intentionally or unintentionally, Like, are they watching MCU movies and saying, this is just action in effects? We can do that, and you know, if that's what they're getting out of it when they watch r MCU movie, so they that they put into this one be like, yeah, the action of the sex will carry it when I don't know, but I remember that scene at the beginning of Bromostro with SRK where he's doing the thing and oh, I am the monkey. I mean that was kind of fun. That was everything else is, you know, like, oh, you are a rock star man, Like okay, mister sign Oh my god, fucking Christ, mister Signing.

I just remember that. But you're a rock star man, like all right, whatever. Um yeah. I feel like, look the rom com they got it, Like DDLJ exists, right, Cooch Couch High exists, K three Gigs. It's like all these amazing romantic comedies already exist in Indian cinema.

MCU movies are kind of a new genre of creation, right, like superhero movies are a contemporary idea, Romantic comedies kind of exists since you know, h much to do about nothing, you know, like Shakespeare you know, Shakespeare would write comedies and dramas. You know, the comedies tend to have romance. And that's why I kind of always say with something it feels grandiose and Shakespearean in a way, like these people are all connected. And you know, ADDIE's husband, his sister because his sister or cousin is is the woman that Bunny was crushing on at the beginning of the movie, Like it also connected, and it feels so kind of, oh, grandiose, but like superhero movies aren't that. Like they's so they're grandiose in a like you said, CGI and big effects.

And you know I always say on the culture because of CGI fuck fest, because that's what it ends up being at the end of most of these MCU movies. I mean, we could just start naming them off, and for the most part it's just a giant CGI fuck fest, often with a mirror image version of the hero ant Man, a movie that I love yellow jacket, Yes, yellow ant Man, black panther, purple and black black panther, yellow and black black panther like in Christ. Like for the most part, all the movies that aren't the Avengers ones, at least early on MCU are just a reverse of our hero. So you know, Bramastra kind of is that. Yeah, they're fighting just bad magicians.

Yeah, but Iron Man as a movie, you know, Jon Favreau's dialogue is not that stilted. True Saint de Lull can write fantastic dialogue, as we've seen. Y JHD made me cry, clearly made you cry. Bramastra made me cry, but not in the way that they intended. I was crying from laughing at some of the really ham fisted, dorky dialogue.

You are a rock starling okay, like mister scientists. Like some of the stuff that's just like is kind of cringey and feels like it's trying to be like a catchphrase or like something something that someone else thinks someone who is cool would say, but does not understand what cool people say, but yet did at one point or at least believable people. And Ron Beer Kapoor is fantastic in this movie, and he's okay in Brahmostra, but in Why JHD he's fantastic. Yeah, very really got invested in the movie. I liked it.

Yeah, I liked this movie a lot. I enjoyed it a lot more than I was expecting, kind of given what we got out of Brahmostra. But they're they're so different. They don't even like Romoster doesn't even feel like it was made by the same director as this movie. Like it just feels so I mean, okay, even if the scenes, you know, if we think about Brahmostra, right, take the action scenes and just don't worry about those, right, because I think we both agree those were pretty good.

If the scenes between the characters were like the scenes between the characters in this movie, dude, Promoster would have been wild. Oh it would it would have been epic like Iron Man, right, Like it would have had the same impact that Iron Man did. Or it's like I'm immediately invested in these characters and I want to see more. But we I mean, we are invested in Bramoster. We still want to see the next one.

But like I needed that kind of relatable maybe not quotable, but I needed relatable characters who talked like real people. And when you're making a rom com about twenty somethings who become thirty somethings, like you need and especially if you're trying to get relatable across to your audience. You need to really nail the dialogue, and they do, and then you watch Bramoster and you're like, what happened here? Yeah? It would it would have put it over the top.

Yeah, there's so many people from that movie that are in this movie. Ron Beer Kapoor, Ian Mukherajee directing h Topika Potokone is in Bramostra in a rather small role, obviously playing ron Beer Kapoor's mom, which is kind of strange, but I just it's so weird because the reason we watch this is because we watch Bramostra, and so's there's there has to be a moment where we kind of mentioned Bromoster at least acknowledge that these movies exist. One exists because of the other. Bromoster exists because of this movie. Because of how successful this movie was.

This movie got nominated for Filmfare Awards, which is again, like we've already talked about the you know, the Indian cinema equivalent of the Oscars. So it didn't win any but it was nominated for Film and Director, and Actor and Actress and Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress and for music. So it was nominated for all of them, because it really resonated with people in India, and again, we've kind of talked about how this movie would resonate with most people I think outside of India, So as long as it's I mean again, that's the kind of the question I have as we bring this episode to a close about this movie. If you're not someone my age, if you're not someone your age, can you still enjoy this movie?

I think so. At the heart of it its relationships, you know, and even if you're someone younger early twenties into a romantic comedy type movie, I think it would still almost kind of give a glimpse into what is yet to come, you know, and kind of connect to it that way. I don't know, I think I think it could speak to a lot of people in that way. Yeah, I you know, that's kind of my always concern with these movies about like a certain generation like Daysed and Confused, right, or Empire Records, or I mean in a little way like Office Space, right, like a certain generation or group of people or Waiting even like a group of people that like are a very specific group that you can point out and say, I knew people like that, or I was that, and I'm not that anymore, or we aren't.

We aren't that anymore. And I always worry that people watching it who aren't of that generation or aren't interested will have no interest in watching it. And I think I think there may be enough in this movie to bring people back. I think Ron beer Kapoor is great. I think all the main four actors are all fantastic.

Like you mentioned, the music is. But I do think that this movie maybe resonates with a certain audience. But I do worry that I think it probably wouldn't resonate with a younger audience might find Ron bier Kapor's character a little too problematic. I think people people older than you might put off, right. I think people older than you might be kind of put off by, you know how kind of cavalier Bunny is, and you know how they might be throwing their kind of ills to the wind about you know, I don't know.

I feel like people older than us might get it by think people younger than me would definitely find problems with this movie, which is fine. I mean, I'm sure there's problems with forgetting Sarah Marshall. Rom Coms tend to be movies that don't age necessarily very well in a lot of ways, they just don't And kind of like how action movies sometimes don't age very well because you know, we're not necessarily killing all the Ruskies anymore. But god, so many movies in the eighties would really have you know, I mean again, you see what I mean. So I feel like I don't know this movie I maybe wouldn't resonate the same with everybody else, but I'm glad it exists for people my age in your age, because it is a interesting look at a time and a place that, while we didn't live there, we can definitely empathize and sympathize with and see ourselves in in these characters, or at least some of the better traits of the characters, or you know, some of the faults of the character the creed.

So yeah, final thoughts on the film, Dustin, Well, you know, as I've said, it's very relatable. I like, I just like the it checks a lot of boxes in that you've got the window to the relationships, You've got the love story not just between just two main characters, but the other characters as well that you're kind of like investigating. As the movie goes and I don't know there. You know, I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, the cheekiness throughout is just keeps it fun and light, even though there are some really deep moments like You're still You're still having fun in the movie, and hell so I also like that it, honest to God made me look up DIY recipes for that Sherwett drink and I want to make them.

So that's a success. Yeah. Yeah, Well, and you know, I'm glad that you are open minded with this with these movies because you know, I say rom com and I'm not interested in a Western rom com like for the most part. So yeah, I feel like I feel like I can say this not with absolute certainty, but with some with some prior evidence to back it up. I feel like Indian cinema has really mastered the rom com like.

I'd agree with that statement. Yeah, the best rom coms that I've seen, for the most part are Indian Cinema ones, and those are the ones that I would rather we rewatch. I'd rather rewatch D D LJ, which is a three hour movie than Fifty First Dates, which is like an hour and a half. So and that's you know, I'm fifty third States. I think is a pretty good American rom com in a lot of ways.

You know, it's like like When Harry Met Sally, another pretty well known rom com, But you know, with something like y JHD, it talks to a certain group of people in a way that they can totally understand because the people who are writing it are of that age, are of that group of people, so imminently relatable because you're you're part of that group. Man. You know, I really enjoyed this movie. I enjoy that it's a rom com of a different stripe than DDLJ, but it's still an Indian cinema rom com, so it has those things that I was hoping for while talking about some different some different cultural issues that I think are more boundary hopping than DDLJ, which I think makes this a little bit more relatable for more people, but also has some things in it that I think make this almost solely for a certain generation or group of of people.

So, you know, if it sounds interesting, definitely check it out. You can find it on eros now, which is five dollars a month for all the Indian cinema that you can consume, and Indian TV shows and original content. No, we're not sponsored by them, but this is where you can watch that movie. Yeah. Yeah, it was distributed by Euros International internationally, so that's where you can find it.

Um As for me and for this show, weirding Way Media is where you can find us. This show is available on all podcast platforms, so rate and review on iTunes or wherever you get this show. Dustin, thank you so much for joining me. Obviously. I am glad you appreciate it and enjoyed this movie.

Not that I was really worried, but I had never seen it either, so it could have just been done. We both could have not liked it. True. Yeah, so so yeah, and as always, we'll catch you on the next episode.