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Necessary But Not Sufficient Conditions
By bukkhead | October 24, 2007
FILM REVIEW: ‘NEVER SAY GOODBYE’
Written and directed by Karan Johar
Rated PG-13
193 mins.
I am now going to review a movie and just give the whole plot away. You’ve been warned. But honestly, I can’t see you actually watching this one. Maybe you will. And despite my rating (which reflects, really, my own inexperience with the genre) maybe you should see this one. Or one like it. To me, they’re all the same, but hey, I’m not what you’d call discerning.
To date, Never Say Goodbye makes the second Bollywood movie I’ve watched beginning-to-end (Monsoon Wedding doesn’t count). I’ve seen lots of clips, and caught lots of pieces-parts from movies being on at this uncles house, or that auntie’s party. But I’ve only sat through two. That Rani Mukerji is in both doesn’t really say much, trust me.
Dev, an amazing soccer player (a $5 million contract in America!) is married to Riya, a corporate exec at Diva magazine. Dev stumbles across Maya, who is unsure about her pending nuptials to childhood friend Rishi, who’s dad is the lascivious widower Sam. Dev talks Maya into going through with it, and then gets hit by a car, and 4 years later, they all stumble into each other once again.
Do I hafta say what happens next? This is Bollywood, so you know Dev and Maya fall in love, if only because they can’t get no lovin from their own spouses. But, like I said, this is Bollywood, so the impossible happens—they actually have an affair, and Sam dies, and everyone gets divorced. Shocking! Then three more years go by.
You see, Dev and Maya told each other that their spouses had taken them back, so they lived alone and sad for those three years. Finally, Rishi remarries, asks Maya to be his best man (stupid English translation) and she just happens to bump into Riya, who tells her she left Dev, and she’d better go get him before he moves to Toronto.
In an among all of this is the usual singin’ and dancin’, the fat kid, the lack of mouth-kissing, the rain scenes (no wet saris though, dag-nabbit). There’s an abandoned sub-plot, a feel-good relationship between old people… if it weren’t for that affair and divorce, this would be every Bollywood film made in the last 20 years.
Which is good, because the reason you watch these Bollywood films is for the singing and dancing and so forth. The rest is just an excuse. I know I will be chastised for comparing this nearly-sacred art from to adult-films, but Bollywood movies are just that: some kinda story on which to hook the dance scenes. That they decided to go outside the bounds of their usual decorum just proves my point more: you can break some rules in Bollywood, but you better make sure there’s singin’ and dancin’.
Here’s a final tidbit: this is the most expensive Bollywood film to date. No explosions, no car chases, no rubber-faced monsters towering hundreds of feet above a terrorized city. That’s some expensive singin and dancin’!
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