Bollywood for LowOiL Americans. Review on Lagaan

Plot – Good guys win, bad British Snot (and his cohorts) gets sent to darkest Africa. (Why is Africa always shown as the most horrible place for a Brit. to be sent?).

By now I am sure everyone on M.S. knows this movie, it has been out a few years and was highly hailed as a great movie, see if I agree below. This review will deal more with this American’s trivial thoughts while viewing this movie, so grab your cup of warm Java and enjoy the fireworks.

My neighbor Bobby loaded this movie to me because of my repeated questions on how Cricket was played and his not having the patience/time to explain it to this “Feringhee” in full. After several non-taxing viewings (pun intended) of Lagaan, I can honestly say “LowOiL” does have at least a greenhorn’s understanding of the game. I still haven’t figured out the exact weight/hardness of the cricket ball, so when Lakha maliciously gets whacked in the head, I just imagined it was like an American baseball hitting him.

Now I didn’t really know what to expect when I watched this movie. I was pleasantly surprised on the fine job of subtitles in English and I had no problems with the language barrier whatsoever.

I mostly expected a “bash the English” type film (or “white guys sucks” film), but this movie was above that cliché style. Yeah, there was the “Tea Drinkers, Fleabags, Boot Wearers” comments by Guran, but in the scope of the movie the comments were well warranted. Capt. Andrew Russell (played by Paul Blackthorne) was a worthy bad guy. You hated his arrogance from the get go. I personally found myself wanting to stomp the Capt. when he horsewhipped Arjan. But I was surprised with the inclusion of the Lakha Sahib (played by Yashpal Sharma), whose job was to be the Judas of the story. (Judas is the one that betrayed Jesus for a hand full of silver in the Bible). I honestly think Mr. Yashpal was the best actor in the movie.

I was further delighted with the inclusion of the Elizabeth character. She totally blew away my theory of the movie being a basher film. Yes, some details of her character were cheesy, like her learning the Indian language in a matter of days, and falling in love with Bhuvan (played by Rajendra Gupta) because “she never had a real friend before”. Good grief, as another reviewer on MS observed, it was quite a stretch to honestly believe some points.

Other random observations of concern are as follows. If it had not rained, why was everyone so clean. Good grief, I can’t go 2 hours without getting dirty at work. The white linens were spotless white (was Clorox bleach around back then?). The vivid colored belly button (midriff) showing shirts (or dresses?) worn by Gauri (played by Rajesh Vivek) were not what I would of thought of being allowed worn back in those days. Sexy to say the least. The musical scenes were also somewhat cheesy, lip-synched like a modern day live rock concert. But surprisingly, I enjoyed the music, perhaps because the sound was different from anything I had heard before.

Another flaw to me was the place where I was obviously suppose to be moved to tears when Tipu (the little kid) gets tagged out for running too soon (before the pitch). Good grief, a game is a game and rules are rules. First off, Bhuvan clearly and vocally warns Tipu NOT to run early (what is with this kid tipping his head back and forth all the time?). I am sorry, but the game was serious and running early was just asking for it. It also made me upset to see all the fielders run for the ball at the same time. Surely they would have worked this flaw out in their practices. To me, this dumbed down the heroes and was not needed. I like to root for intelligent underdogs and this act was childish.

There were a couple of other small details that I caught that should have been edited out too in the studio. First there was several scenes where clouds (in the background sky) were “accidentally” left in full view. This would not be such a big problem, but the movie makes a huge importance of “clouds” that one would of thought the director would have made sure to double-check this flaw. Also the red dot placed on everyone’s head during the dance at the temple was later missing except on Elizabeth head. (I am not sure what exactly this red dot is, but I also noticed that Gauri often had more faint tiny dots around her chin. I assume this is religious marking, but perhaps someone could explain the marking better to me in the comment sections.

In several other reviews on this film, Gauri was not given much credit for her role in this film. I tend to disagree with that assessment, I liked Ms. Vivek’s performance, far better than I liked Mr. Khan’s. Her jealousness role was well preformed in my opinion.

In conclusion, I truly liked this movie and I don’t like many movies at all nowadays. I have copied Lagaan on DVD and have loaned it to a few family members (who also liked it). It was a great first Bollywood film for this newbie from America. I highly recommend you see it if you have not.