Sunday, November 25, 2007

A Date with MonkeyBoy

MonkeyBoy and I love Bollywood movies and have gone through everything our library has as well as many of the titles available on Netflix. We've seen a lot of movies, a few more than once, but what we've never managed to do was see one of these films in a theater.

It recently came to my attention that if I was willing to make a long drive and spend and exorbitant amount of money on tickets, we could see the latest Bollywood blockbuster on the big screen. The boy and I had a date and saw Om Shanti Om which was absolutely delightful. Apart from a Latino family, we were the only non-Indians in the theater. We had a moment of panic when the film started and the narration began without subtitles but it wasn't long before the English kicked in and we were able to follow the story just fine.

What I loved was that this movie brilliantly made fun of everything that I love about the genre: the self conscious actors, the dream sequences, the silly songs, copious costume changes, and convoluted and highly improbable plot lines. We got many of the jokes and references thanks to having watched so many of these films recently. While things began to plod after the intermission, the first half was very funny. I haven't laughed so hard in a long time.

This is a second run theater--tickets normally cost $3.75 but they charge $12 for the Hindi films which seems a little bit over the top. We won't be running out there often, but this was a wonderful treat for the two of us and I'm glad I can count on Monkey Boy's company for such jaunts.

2 comments:

Elisheva Hannah Levin said...

It sounds like a great deal of fun!
Sometimes you just have to splurge.

By the way, the mosaic is awesome, especially when expanded to full size. Nice!

Karen said...

Bollywood has made some of my favorite movies. I agree that they can be over the top most of the time, but they sure are a lot of fun! I had an Indian boyfriend for a while and he introduced me to Bollywood films.