Dil Chahta Hai

From I Spit On Your Groove:

colette: Noel, I was reading your blog entry about bollywood pics and I was wondering why you didn't like Dil Chahta Hai . I'm no bollywood expert but I thought it was great. It had all the stuff that makes a bollywood musical well so Bollywood, fabulous locations (the city shots looked like they may have really been in Bombay) beautiful people in beautiful clothing, over the top dance numbers, broken and then mended hearts, a cad, a good guy, a fast girl, a good girl. What set this one apart for me was the story was interesting and engaging without the dancing and pop music.

It's the beautiful stuff--St. Elmo's Fire with a lot of pretty Indian youths instead of white bread. The stories were old even when St. Elmo's came out (young man in love with older woman; boy loves girl who is promised to another; so on and so forth). Guru Dutt and Raj Kapoor and Bimal Roy, they made films about everything from the poor to the filthy rich, they told them well, and they told em with real style.

Also admit I have a dislike for movies that weep over pretty people and their so-called problems; need something a little more complex to keep me from walking out. Depiction of the middle to upper class in movies is a special challenge, one not to be taken lightly; I'd say the only ones really capable (off the top of my head) were Renoir, Visconti, Bunuel, Kapoor, Dutt, and maybe at a far lower level Ang Lee.