Rangeela

I'm renting a lot of Bollywood films lately, and while they're fun as cultural exercises, they are lacking in the sophistication department. Like most (but not all) Bollywood films, the plot is your basic love story, made a little more interesting because it's set as a movie within a movie. It stars the great Aamir Khan, who can emote with the best of them, but the film seems more like an extended Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue than anything else. Many, many shots of the female lead dancing seductively on her own. Lots of suggestive poses between the female and male leads, however since it's a Hindi film there is never anything improper, i.e., no kissing (much less anything else). Which is all the more ridiculous when the leads start singing "your body turns me on" and other variations on that theme. (Ridiculous, of course, for Western eyes.) The dancing and singing sequences are fun to watch, and the leading lady truly is gorgeous, but otherwise it's pretty laughable.

year: 1995
length: 142 min.
rating: 2.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114234/combined