Bombay Talkie

A sad take on Bollywood. The plot is predictable, the space lethargic and the characters off-putting. Worst of all it is dubbed, and dubbed badly. In the second half of the C20 there was no excuse for such shoddy work, especially from film makers of such fame: compared with Shakespeare Wallah and other fine movies made by the same team it is dismal. It should have been called Bombay Dubbie. It is little consolation that many great creative artists have their lapses. Curiosity value apart the film has little or no merit.

To the point - depressing with almost no redeeming qualities. If you want to see a movie about decadent society where the characters live in their own world, totally selfish and painfully and immaturely oblivious to how their actions may affect others, or if you can at least get over this, you may enjoy the sets of a movie in the movie and perhaps some of the costumes. I picked up this video from my public library expecting something great from Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala, but was badly disappointed. Sometimes a film leaves you feeling sad and incredulous, and usually when it does, it is for good reason, causing you to focus on elements of human nature or society and perhaps moving us to action. This film left me with negative feelings, but with very little good to remember or be inspired by. I wish I hadn't seen it - but I may have missed something that others may find corresponds to good film. 3 or 4 stars out of 10.

--Dilip, written minutes after watching this video on Aug. 29, 2003

This movie is about the love affair of an western writer and an Indian film star. I liked it very much and the point I found most interesting is the western craving for eastern spirituality exemplified by the visit and internship of the heroine in an Indian guru. The movie presents the guru in a savage light, as a self-promoting socialite proud of his western connections. Whether it is questionable that all the exponents of eastern spirituality as such cranks the one in the movie is, thus a satirist perspective is adopted. The characters are shallow and self-absorbed and their lives hollow, the movie pointing to the emptiness of stardom.The end is tragic and the world-view exposed is close to that of Ecclesiastes. Despite that I found the couple of the protagonists very engaging since as Oscar Wilde said only shallow people refuse to judge by appearances.

I love the Merchant Ivory films and I love the 70s aesthetics, so I was quite drawn initially into this movie. The initial sequence around the giant typewriter is spectacular.

Unfortunately, it just fizzled out from that moment onwards. I just couldn't bring myself to care about any of the characters: the guys are stupid, the female lead vain, narcissistic and self-centered to the point of implosion.

It remains somewhat watchable as a document of an era, but it's a surprisingly poor movie.

This wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen, but it was pretty awful, and I would only recommend watching it expecting the worst so that perhaps you are pleasantly surprised by it. My least favorite thing was the main female character, Lucia, and her self-obsessed, insensitive, manipulative, passive-aggressive way of behaving. She was a terrible person and also looked much older than her supposed 32 years of age! It was difficult to understand the motivations or behaviors of most of the characters and the scenes/events seemed rather disconnected. I also was hoping for a lot more of the Bollywood movie industry and got very little of that except for the opening scenes. I'm not a fan of this movie.