My pre 17 look

See below for how I look like now.

My post 26 look

Now you might ask why in the world you need to see a ‘before’ and ‘after’ pic of me read a movie review about kites, and I’d give you two reasons.

1. It serves as a frame of reference to gauge how long a time has elapsed since my last view of a Hindi movie.

2. Do you really need a reason to look at my picture? No, you don’t

Now that we’ve established the background to me watching the movie, I’ll get on with the review.

Kites

Excerpt from IMDB

In the harsh terrain of the Mexican desert, a mortally wounded man is left for dead in the heat of the desert sun. This is J. Once a street smart, carefree young guy. Now, a wanted man. As death looms, the only thing that keeps him alive is the quest to find the love of his life, Natasha. A woman betrothed to another man, but surely destined for J. A woman who comes into his life like a bolt of lightning and changes it forever.

As you can see, nothing shocking or earth shattering there. And I’m told that as far as Hindi movies go, this was a below par movie for all the people involved. If you go into IMDB boards you’ll see a lot of people trashing the movie. But all that is irrelevant because I liked the movie. I don’t know what exactly made me like the movie, maybe it was the fact that it was bashed so much I went in just expecting to sit through 180 minutes of suckiness, maybe not. Anyway, the following elements can be found in Kites.

Primary Characters

He doesn't even look Indian!

Hrithik Roshan as Jesus

Don’t tell me you don’t see the resemblance. The first time I actually got to see his face (it was obscured by hay initially), I was like WTF?!

The character’s actual name was J, short for my suggestion maybe?

His acting wasn’t bad either, I was actually quite surprised by it. And he seemed to be a (believably) good dancer, which is required according to the plot line.

Spanish heat

Barbara Mori as the Fiery Spanish Spitfire

To explain the impact of this character on me, I changed the my definition of a perfect woman from “PHP coding, beer drinking, LAN gaming female assassin” to “PHP coding, beer drinking, LAN gaming female assassin with Spanish fire”. Obviously humor, wit, smarts and the rest are a given. But fire in her belly (and I don’t mean the type of fire in your belly when you’re hungry either) is prerequisite now because this character was awesome!

She plays the role of Linda in the movie.

A Bob

Kabir Bedi as Bob

Ok ok, so he’s not a primary character at all. He’s got all of 15 mins in the movie, being the father of the girl that J dupes and the father of the guy that Linda dupes. He’s an Indian named Bob. I kid you not. He’s included here purely because most of the imaginary conversations are carried out by Bob-like people.

Recurring Themes in the Movie

Hrithik’s Abs VS Barbara’s Cleavage

Obviously, neither of these pictures are from the movie, but you should get the idea. Thankfully, Hrithik is decently clothed during the latter part of the movie. Also thankfully, Barbara managed to be all cleavag’y during the whole of the movie.

EDIT : I managed to find a picture from the movie with both of them touting their stuff (Click through for full image).

Hrithik and Barbara touting their stuff

Indians

Seeing as how this is a Bollywood movie, I know I shouldn’t be surprised. But seeing as it was shot in America and Mexico (I think) I would have expected less Indians. But you’ll come across Indians in the form of Bob the owner of the biggest casino in Las Vegas, two unidentified con artists who cheat the casino, a delivery truck driver who’s truck is stolen by the dynamic duo, and the multitude of Indians serving the leading family and so on and so forth. Kites is actually the nightmare for every red necked xenophobic American out there who imagine all the Indians pouring into their country to take their jobs. Thankfully the biker gang did not have even one Indian. That would have been too much to stomach.

Another big shock to me was that they had full on lip on lip kisses. The last time I watched a movie they would never actually lip lock, it was more of a “I’m going to kiss you now, but you should quickly turn your head to the side to show that you are a chaste woman even though we are dancing in the rain and your sari may as well have been made of glass for all the hiding it does – never mind all the belly tickling”. Speaking of dancing, when did the leading ladies of Indian cinema stop wearing those ridiculous knee length biking shorts for the dance scenes? Those would have been totally out of place in the dance scenes for this movie.

And in Conclusion

I enjoyed the movie. I went in expecting a three hour rendition of the same old story of boy meets girl-girl is coy-girl warms to boy-parents are coy-parents warm to boy-boy marries girl, but instead I got to see a romancy movie that was just about 2.5 hours long and had cars blowing up. And it didn’t have too many songs either, and the soundtrack itself was pretty good.

The ending itself was quite a surprise and it actually got to me because I was in a bit of a blue funk afterward. It reminded me of the ending from the book Amber Spyglass (Book 3 of His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman), although in their case they did what they had to do because it was necessary.  In the case of the lovers in Kites, their decisions were forced upon by others.

All in all, feel free to trash the movie after you’ve watched it, because it could have been a lot worse.

Some of the images have been acquired from this site : http://satyamshot.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/an-image-from-kites/

• Military hardware
• Robots
• Gadgets
• Hot women
• Fast cars
• Indecipherable scientific jargon
• Crazy ass fight scenes
• Humor
• Bullies getting their collective asses whopped

The list goes on and on. It was highly enjoyable. I watched this movie in the afternoon on Saturday. You might not believe this, but the last time I had slept was on Thursday, and I never felt sleepy during any part of the movie.

Don’t get me wrong, this was not one those movies that make you think of the human condition and life in general. This was an ‘in-your-face-up-and-at-em-take-no-prisoners’ kind of action movie that everyone enjoys. The only people who would not enjoy this movie would be pontifical art critics, Jahufar and some dude named Ernesto.

Making a movie with robots in it would have been a hit. Making a movie with kick ass vehicles would have been an even bigger hit. Combine the best of both worlds and what did you get? We got kick ass vehicles AND robots! And these were not the lumbering clumsy robots depicted in Star Wars or War of the Worlds, no, these were robots that could do martial arts and packed enough fire power to wipe out a military or civilian installation (which they did in the movie, several times). It even had a couple of G.I. Joes sprinkled on it.

As it is, even the credits were not boring, some of you may have missed it but there was a highly sarcastic interview by Sam’s parents. The only way they could have made the movie better would have been to add a fight scene during the credits as well. And maybe have a few of the actresses could run around in bikinis. It’s a good rule of thumb to have the womenfolk running around in bikinis; this is not a sexist remark. Having a guy running around in a bikini is rather awkward to watch and is a sure fire way to alienate 75% of your audience (it’s a known fact that 25% of any amount of people are up for anything). Unless you’re Borat of course. In which case the bikini is fine.

I was actually going to write a long article about the movie praising it but I have seem to have forgotten most of the stuff since I got out of the shower (I think best when I am in the shower). At any rate I will be going to watch the movie again once the crowds have lessened. I will also buy the toys, t-shirts and posters associated with the movie. In short I am going to be a fanboy. If I’m going to be a fanboy of anything, it might as well be a fanboy of kickass robots with fast cars as alternated modes. And before you send me pointed emails detailing how Transformers are not real, let me just tell you that you have the imagination of the common doorknob.

This is as unbiased as it gets.

Trivia

• Hasbro initially planned to create a film based on their G.I. Joe line of toys but because of the Iraqi invasion they decided on Transformers instead.
• Apparently they are planning two sequels for this movie. The writers are also playing around with the idea to have a transforming aircraft carrier.
• Each of Ironhide‘s guns is made of ten thousand parts
• ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) had to upgrade their systems because some of the highly detailed parts took as much as 38 hours to render each frame

This was a copy paste job from Wikipedia