In general, Bollywood movies are pretty bad. Low budget, insane melodramatic performances, basic dialogue. Now, that’s not to say I don’t like them, I frequently do, but they are usually a last resort watch when there’s not much interesting going on at netflix.
So here, an attractive man and an attractive woman get together. See: Just about every bollywood movie ever made. The difference is, we finally add a crocodile to the mix. About time!
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So what we have is, in theory, a ‘horror movie’. Which we do, but it has nothing to do with the crocodile. The most horrifying scene happens early in the movie, where we are introduced to our attractive man: A rapper who lives in a slum. ‘Slum’ is overselling it. He ends up chilling out near a water truck. A ‘what’?? That’s right... His neighborhood has no running water, so hundreds of folks need to grab buckets and go to these massive trucks and have water doled out to them.
I know a lot of India is ‘lower class’ (or ‘caste’ as they put it). I know Calcutta is a shithole. I didn’t know that it was like *this*. Water trucks? That... Is truly horrible.
So it’s not a coincidence when our rapper, and our other ‘hero’, the rich attractive female social media influencer, end up trapped in a gigantic swimming pool while being stalked by a crocodile. Having a massive oversized *swimming pool* for the wealthy when the folks just on the other side of the tracks don’t have any running water at all is a grotesque abuse of power and complete disregard for an entire community. Fortunately, we have a hero that has come to rectify the situation: The Crocodile. The crocodile has a singular mission: To *eat* all the rich pricks that are swimming in the water that should be going to the people. Including our social media influencer. The crocodile is “The Proletariat”! I wanted to eat our rich influencer post haste and then move on to devour the other rich pricks that hoard wealth while other people don’t even have water. The problem, she is stubbornly staying alive so our hero *CAN’T CONTINUE ITS MISSION*. This makes our social media influencer the official VILLAIN of the movie. Unfortunately, our lower caste rapper is at the wrong place at the wrong time, and just gets caught in the crossfire even if he doesn’t deserve to be eaten.
Or does he?
The whole reason our rapper wants to get with our influencer (if the crocodile doesn’t actually get a name, then neither should they, so ‘rapper’ and ‘influencer’ are it, and this is absolutely not because I am too lazy to look up the characters or the actors) isn’t because she’s attractive (to be honest, she’s a Mumbai... 7.5? I actually appreciated that. Most bollywood starlets are preternaturally gorgeous, so it was nice to have a more grounded female lead, even if she is a rich asshole) it’s because she has influence. Like most folks in the lower castes, he wants clicks, followers, and he wants to “swipe the dosh on the table” (that’s british for ‘make a lot of money’, which is apropos because a huge reason why much of India is so poor is because the british empire wrung out every last resource they could while leaving the Indian people to starve, and the country *still* hasn’t fully recovered from that). That would be great if he wanted to turn around and use that dosh to help his old community out... But every indication is that *he* wants to be just like *her*, which to say once he gets the dosh, the most important thing to him isn’t helping his old neighborhood, it’s putting it in the rearview. Makes sense, because a tenet of capitalism is that you MAKE capital, you don’t spend it doing non-profitable things like not making a profit, and if there’s a country that worships at the altar of capitalism, it’s all of them. Especially India. So sure, he has an excuse for wanting to just get rich and influence people, but that don’t mean I gotta like him. ‘Cuz I am rooting for the crocodile to eat him.
So, yeah, we want Proletariat Crocodile to eat him too. Plus, his raps are nonsense. Now, I get it, ask Led Zeppelin or Def Leppard if you need actual meaningful song lyrics to make a great song. You don’t. Well, they don’t. But... His rapping isn’t exactly Kool Moe Dee, and when you add nonsense lyrics, it’s pretty bad. By the way, I didn’t google ‘random old school rapper’ to come with Kool Moe Dee, I actually have him on CASSETTE TAPE, mofos.
I would also like somebody to explain to me how this woman has two million followers. I’m am not currently and never have been on any social media (except youtube), but... To be an influencer, don’t you have to, I don’t know, do something? Sure, this woman goes to kendo practice and does other random stuff, but she doesn’t seem particularly good at any of it. She doesn’t even have disgusting melted green chocolate from dubai all over her face. Is it just a lottery? Hundreds of millions of people try to become influencers and randomly it just ‘sticks’ to a very very minor select few, regardless of whether or not they deserve it? Is that how it works? I want to know!
Let’s get to our hero, the Proletariat Crocodile. It’s only in the movie a few minutes. This model of horror movies was established back in 1975 with “Jaws”. It was a happy accident that Speilberg ran out of money, and couldn’t afford to put the shark in very many scenes. It created fear of the unknown tension, and remains legendary to this day. Well... It’s certainly not a happy accident that the crocodile isn’t in very many scenes. It’s frowny on purpose. The filmmakers certainly didn’t run out of money. What they did, was took that money and put it in their pockets. We aren’t creating dramatic tension here (which isn’t really possible when the crocodile is the hero), we’re just being cheap and taking that netflix money for ourselves. The result is, I wanted more crocodile and less nonsense rapping and influencing, and I didn’t get it.
This movie also happens to run almost two and a hours. That is a cold hour and fifteen minutes longer than it should be (this is another trait most bollywood movies share). Tighten it up, people.
So, yeah, Bollywood should have added crocodiles to their films decades ago, and the theme really resonates ESPECIALLY in the age of today, but let’s tighten it up India! Also, the thing about putting your peeps in the rearview, is that they might be closer than they actually appear. That metaphor is amazing, but nobody who drives a car made after the year 1995 is going to get it.
10/10