I rented a Bollywood movie, saw it last night. The particular one I rented is called Main Hoon Na, but I hear they're all pretty much the same. It was in Indian, English titles. In a nutshell, if you take Schwarzenegger, Michael Jackson dance videos, Beach Party Bingo, Grease, a little Vishnu, mix it all together with a little Matrix, and make it three hours long, that's Bollywood. The plot is irrelevant. There's a lot of cartoon-like violence, with spurting blood. About half way through it (it's very, very long), we stopped reading the subtitles and and began talking for the characters ("You think it's easy being green?" "I told you to get the plumber!" Much better than the actual dialog.) I did notice some interesting things though. One is that even though they were speaking Indian, interspersed throughout were English phrases and words, concepts that could easily be said in Indian (whatever Indian is), like "I promise you I'll get you". Clearly Indians think in both Indian and English. And clearly India is a youth-oriented culture. The younger the character, the whiter their faces, to the point where they were indistinguishable from Europeans. I also learned that Indians have cheerleaders (sport unknown) who dress like American cheerleaders. Much of the action was set in a school called St. Paul's. Something that surprised me, though, is that under the fluff there peeked out some serious issues. At the end of the movie there's almost a wish fulfillment style reconciliation between the Pakistanis and the Indians. The bad guys in fact are the Indians who don't want to reconcile. They become the terrorist bad guys and are killed at the end. Reconciliation is completed with the shaking of hands between Indian and Pakistani military, and there is an exchange of prisoners between the two groups. Another issue I noticed was a tackling of father issues. The illegitimate son is raised by the father and has no mother; the legitimate son is raised by the mother and has no father and is the more wounded by his father's abandonment. His real father is unfortunately killed in the beginning, so Lachsman ("Lucky") cannot reconcile with him. The female lead character is rejected by her father for not being a son, and tearfully reconciles with him at the end. She also questions female inferiority in Indian society. The last issue that I noticed was the Koenigsberg-esq war/military life as sacrifice. In addition to visually portraying the concept, as in the abandoning father taking a bullet in slow motion in the beginning of the movie for the Indian general who was in favor of reconciliation, and thus making himself a dead hero, it was repeatedly emphasized that there is no greater glory than to sacrifice for one's country. Certainly there was no rejection of war, but there was at least a willingness to find entertaining the possibility of reconciliation with one's enemy. I suspect it's far more than the Palestinians and Israelis could do in a movie. All in all, if I were an Indian, this would probably be a feel good movie. I have to say I did like the dance sequences and the lyrics that either lost or gained in translation. It was a bit on the long side, however, especially once we crossed midnight. On the other hand, for as much as was in this movie, it was no small accomplishme nt to put it all into only three hours. Andy Amago