Post by odadune on May 4, 2015 0:06:13 GMT
Watched Bunty Aur Babli and LOVED it! Abhi and Rani are so cute together, and the music is very good, too. There is a moment in the song Chup Chup Ke when Rani pulls down ABhi's shirt collar so she can kiss his chest and then up. I loved that! So often the woman is passive and the man does all the kissing but in this song it really went back and forth, mirroring how equal their relationship was.
THIS is the moment I was talking about in Chup Chup Ke:
And Aish's item number with Abhi and Big B! Deliciously awkward now that she seduces her father in law!
I'm going to be buying this one on DVD.
Have seen Bunty aur Babli a couple of times. I think it is very enjoyable - lovable rogues and all that.
I just watched this, found the flaky subtitles on the dvd a bit of a stumbling block. To me, the early parts of the story were kind of slow: setting up Rakesh's (Abhishek Bachchan) and Vimmi's (Rani Mukerjee not-yet Chopra) background and crushed dreams, and the start of their joint career as con artists "Bunty and Babli". But the cons are fun, and the love story is genuinely cute (they dated briefly during the filming). The scene where Vimmi decides they need to go straight for the sake of their newborn child felt fresh and poignant and not cliched. I found Amitabh's performance kind of dodgy. There are scenes where he is really intimidating, like in his introduction, or the scene towards the end where he catches Bunty aur Babli, and then there are scenes where he's genuinely funny-mostly in the extended sequence where his character and Abhishek's character get drunk together without knowing who the other man is. But, I just feel like I've seen better Amitabh takes on all aspects of this character: the tough but decent old policeman in Khakee, the embittered but cunning old man in Aankhen, the amusing Large Ham in Bbuddah Tera Ho Baap and Aladin.
With regards to Aishwarya Rai's item number Kajra Re, which moviemavengal mentions above, well, let me post a link so everyone else can see:
To be honest, I found the irony funny and mostly innocent, compared to Amitabh's character semi-leching on prospective daughter-in-law Rani in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. Abhishek supposedly fell for Aishwarya Rai well before they started dating during the making of Guru, so her kind of blowing him off here is surprisingly symbolic. Don't care for Amitabh yelling crude comments at her after her dance number.
With regards to Chupke Chupke, which Moviemavengal linked to above, it was actually not totally unheard of in the 90s/early-mid-00s for the heroine to do that sort of thing during a song, although most of the examples I can think of off-hand were more aggressively fanservicey films than Bunty.
Anyway, it's a pretty good film; the main characters have a much more equal partnership than we usually see in Bollywood, the conflict between ambition and tradition is laid out cleverly, and the emphasis on travel and trains plays up what a large and geographically diverse country India is. If you can find a copy with better subtitles than mine, it might be a good newbie film. (Although, keep in mind that it includes an onscreen kiss and a brief bedroom scene about as explicit as a Roger Moore era Bond film; it's not necessarily the film you lead with after selling your newbie friend on Bollywood's tradition-minded social mores).
Couple of blog reviews:
So they dance: sotheydance.blogspot.com/2010/04/bunty-aur-babli-steal-your-heart.html
Carla the Filmi Geek: www.filmigeek.com/2006/10/bunty_aur_babli.html