Kites: A Bollywood Rollercoaster Ride

If you have never gone to a Bollywood romantic movie, let me warn you, it’s not anything like Slumdog Millionaire. Except for the dancing and singing at the end, it’s all over the top in more ways than one. Remember those Beach Blanket Bingo movies your grandparents, parents or older brothers and sisters used to watch? Well if you’re too young to remember Annette and Frankie in their prime, let me break it down for you. There’s no explicit sex. There is some kissing and of course, plenty of singing and dancing. So when my Bengali friend told me she was going to see Kites, I said I would go with her and I knew a little of what to expect beforehand. I knew it was Bollywood but I had heard about a Mexican twist to it and I was eager to see how this cultural mix would fly. And it flies all over the place! In fact half the movie is one long chase that almost stops midway and just recharges and takes you on a longer chase. So in the middle of the movie I was laughing and screaming like I was on a rollercoaster ride. The direction of this movie was fantastic. It was wild!

It’s the story of Jai, a male dancer in Las Vegas, who teaches Gina, the daughter of a casino owner to dance. She predictably falls in love with him. Just when he thinks he has hit the jackpot with Gina and her family’s money, he meets her brother’s fiancée, Natassha, Barbara Mori. He falls in love with her and thus the chase begins with all the trappings of the mafia and the rest of what you usually get watching a Vegas movie but this time with a Mexicana driving the getaway car, conducting the bank robbery and slapping her lover into reality. The best part is when they tell each other how to say, “I love you” in their native language! Hilarious!

Seriously, what makes Kites work are the two main actors, Mexican telenovela star Barbara Mori who you may have noticed in Maxim and the like and Indian Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan. If you haven’t seen them yet, they are hot, very hot. They steam up the big screen without even speaking the same language. In fact, the whole movie they struggle to communicate to each other with symbols and broken English, Spanish and Hindi which takes the chase and the story on even a crazier ride. But like a rollercoaster, don’t expect the ride to be wild from the start. It starts slow and easy so you may ask yourself what am I doing watching this movie the first 30 minutes but if you have the patience you will be flying with Kites before you know it. Just watch it with no logic or strings attached. Great date movie!