I spent the Thanksgiving holiday weekend with my brother and his family, watching relatively recent Hollywood fare peopled with quirky, hilarious and (mostly) heartwarming characters (A Christmas Story, I Love You, Man and Duplicity). Steeped as I am at this point in watching decades-old cinema, with only occasional and generally disastrously noisy forays into today’s offerings, it was nice to see contemporary movies with *heart* and actual stories instead of an onrush of special effects. And so it is too with Chintuji, set in the utopian village of Hadbahedi—fictional birthplace of the very not-fictional Rishi Kapoor.
Rishi himself offers a little disclaimer at the beginning: “This film is part reality, part illusion and part fact, part fiction.” How I would love to discuss this statement with him, because he plays himself as a not very nice guy—and he is great at it! In fact, my main quibble with this movie is that it wanders off in too many directions instead of staying focused on The Man. But despite some flaws, it is a sweet and funny film about a Little Village That Could, with the unwilling help of its most famous export.
MemsaabStory 