Om Shanti Om

[Drunk Monk]

I was offered a shot at interviewing Akki, but it fell through (on their end...it may still happen but not for this issue). Anyway, I thought I'd brush up on some Bollywood, so I checked this one out. It's Bollywood advanced. It's very self-referential to the genre, with homages to classic films and so many cameos, I couldn't really keep up. The first part takes place 30 years in the past and the film and fashion is all done in the style of the period, outlandish disco clothes, over-exposed shots, and some Forrest-Gump-splicing into vintage Bollywood flicks. Shah Rukh Khan spends a gratuitous amount of time shirtless, especially in the Dard-e-disco number. Deepika (from Chandni Chowk) is suitably glamorous. When Khan's mystic thread catches on her bangle, it's pure Bollywood magic. The film has this great recursive element in that they are making a film called Om Shanti Om and it gets canned due to a fatal mishap, then they are redoing it to catch a murderer. Akki has a hilarious cameo in an awards show. A film clip is shown and he catches the bullets of three machine gunners doing some crazy martial arts move, then juggles his pistol and catches it in his pants, to kill the attackers with Jacko-like pelvic thrusts.

Frankly, I couldn't keep up with all the cameos and references. I imagine those were all much funnier if you knew what they were referring to.