The main actor, Sathish Ninasam, who plays Nikki/Nikhil is amazing. He is this humble sweet poor schlub Nikki, who doesn't even think he deserves a cute pizza parlor girl and then he has this amazing confident movie star air as Nikhil. The main actress who plays the pizza parlor girl and the item number girl, the love interest in both worlds, is pretty good. I especially love her as the spunky pizza parlor girl. She tries to get Nikki to learn English and get a job at a multiplex, which leads to some very humorous scenes.

The dreams are in black and white, and suddenly Nikki is Nikhil, a movie star! It's like Wizard of Oz in reverse, as all the people in his humble life are in the movie star life, which is black and white. His uncle the little theater owner, is now his trusted manager. The pizza parlor waitress girl he's crushing on as Nikki, is his item number girl in the movie he's filming.

On my https://www.quora.com/Does-anyone-besides-Indians-watch-Indian-movies/answer/Melanie-Greenberg-1?__snids__=1608506257&__nsrc__=1&__filter__=all Quora post, over and over again, the Kannada commenters listed Lucia as a recommended film. I watched the trailer

Sometimes there are movies you have been anticipating for months and you do a little prayer before it starts that it lives up to your hopes for it. This is a movie that not only exceeded my every expectation - it blew me away it was so excellent.

I don't want to spoiler this movie, because I really enjoyed going into it guessing what might happen in this intense family drama, but not knowing. I laughed, I cried, I gasped in shock at more than one point. This film puts you through the emotional wringer. I really cried at more than one moment in the film.

This is an incredible ensemble of actors. Rishi Kapoor was a hoot as a fun loving 90 year old grandfather whose sudden heart attack brings home the two brothers, played by Siddarth Malhotra and Fawad Khan. There are tensions and secrets that burst out over the family coming together again. The trailer plays up the romantic angle with Alia Bhatt's character, but that's just a small part of the drama.

I do love Siddarth, but he is the lesser actor of this stellar cast. The stand out, by far, is Fawad Khan. This Pakistani actor had his Bollywood debut in Khoobsurat in 2014, and I'll admit it, I caught Fawad Fever. I watched his entire Pakistani soap Humsafar (on ErosNow.com), and this guy can ACT. He's also incredibly generous with the actors sharing the screen with him. What a choice of a sophomore Bollywood role. It has felt like it's been forever since Khoobsurat came out, but this film was so worth the wait. When the movie was over I wanted to watch it all over again!

I really liked Arjun's performance in this dual role of two twin brothers of a gangster father. Rishi Kapoor was also good as the villain corrupt cop. Prithiraj didn't do much for me but he was okay.

This film is so great -- such a feel good heartwarming comedy film. What an absolute perfect vehicle for Sanjay Dutt. It shows his inherent warmth, his wicked humor, and also how he can intimidate and menace just from his size and intensity. I also loved that guy playing Circuit -- I didn't recognize Arshad Warsi from Ishqiya. He was awesome! Deservedly a classic.

Raja Rani is in Tamil, but some of the stars I know from other industries. I think it was released dubbed in Telugu at the same time.

The movie starts with a couple getting married in a church, and you can see that both are super reluctant. The bride even says the wrong name when it come to the "I Do's" and her dad collapses. The Dad is Sathyaraj -- Kattapa from Baahubali!! In cool super suave blue modern glasses!

The groom is played by Arya, who I saw in the Telugu rom com Size Zero. He's pretty darn cute. The bride is an actress I did not know before, Nayantara .

So, the newlyweds HATE each other, until a crisis point and then they learn each other's back stories. It's basically Mouna Ragam x 2 but with an interesting twist at the end. From the wiki article, the film was written to be an Arya vehicle, and I frankly like his back story romance better because he's paired with my favorite Nazriya Nazim from the Malayalam film Ohn Shanti Oshana!! She's just such a better actress than Nayantara.

Nazriya tortures young Arya calling him brother all the time, but secretly loving the attention and mooning over her he does.

It has some parts that are a little dragging, but it's definitely one I could rewatch as it was just adorable in some of the scenes. I don't know if the couple quite earned their happy ending as much as Mouna Ragam one did, but all the scenes of the newlyweds hating each other were mostly very funny. They used a very funny trick showing them getting ready in the morning together in front of the mirror, but they mirror showed what they really wanted to do to each other!

I was thinking yesterday that I still had one SRK movie in one of my DVD sets that I had not watched -- Baadshah! Of course, I had seen the Baadshah big dance number (and live at Slam), but I had never watched the whole movie.

There were a series of those comedy detective type movies in Hollywood in the 90s which this obviously riffs on.

I didn't LOVE it, but oh, my gosh, the music numbers!! I do like zany comedy SRK, and Johnny Lever was less annoying than usual. Twinkle was good, but she didn't knock my socks off. This is obviously not in the top tier of SRK films, but beloved for SRK's signature intro song. "I am the lover!" "I am the king!" Yes, you are, and you should always arrive from the ceiling on one of those cage things!

NOW I know what those sword whip things are called! Urumi! Ranveer had one in Bajirao Mastani, too. After seeing Baahubali, this just doesn't measure up in the same league. This is sort of the Malayalam Braveheart. The performances are pretty good, and this is my first Prithviraj film. He's no Prabhas, but still darn swoonworthy in his historical avatar. Also, the woman in this film are sometimes even MORE kickass than Baahubali -- and they stay that way even after they fall in love, which is a nice change.


What was the most fun for me was seeing Prabhudeva act in a movie close to his native language. I've only seen him in Hindi films where he at most has an extended cameo and very limited dialogue since he seems to have trouble with Hindi. Here, he is the comic side kick brother in arms, and his dancing graceful skills are put into fight choreography instead, for the most part. He was awesome in this, and it was wonderful to see him in a more comfortable language for him.

Last night I watched this Malayalam DVD I had purchased awhile back. It has the same actors in the romantic pair as OK Kanmani. These actors are so versatile doing Tamil one year, and Malayalam the next!

So, it doesn't measure up to OK Kanmani. (Or Bangalore Days) This was a debut directorial feature. It had some gem moments, and Dulquer was trying his best to be his charming self, but he's playing a guy who really is lost and trying to find his way. Just the character wasn't as appealing as the one in Bangalore or OKK.

One review I saw on Letterboxd called it 100 Days of Stalking. I didn't think it was quite that bad.

It's a riff in a way on 500 Days of Summer. The movie opens with Dulquer speaking directly to the audience, that this is going to be a story about 100 Days of his life, and that first he was miserable because of a break up. Cut to him seeing ex-girlfriend has new boyfriend on Facebook, and he posts something unwise. He does quite a few stupid things while drunk, actually, in the film.

Then he meets a girl when they both get in a taxi at the same moment in the rain. He is thunderstruck by her smile, and gives her the taxi. She has dropped her bag which has an old fashioned camera.

He has a best friend who owns a video game shop. They plot together how to find the girl, just like going through levels in a video game -- little homage to Scott Pilgrim. They develop the pictures and try to figure out where the pictures were taken in Bangalore to try to find her.

This is the part I guess they mean by the stalking, but they're trying to get an expensive camera back to someone.

They do reconnect, but in a different coincidental way, and then she realizes he was her bully tormentor back in grade school. Cute flashback scenes.

She is almost engaged to a rich Rahul -- and there's where all the DDLJ references and jokes come in. He drives a white fancy car, reminiscent of the Lamborghini at the beginning of DDLJ.

She strikes up friendship with BKN (Dulquer) -- and I had to google the wiki half way in, because his name is funny. Balan K. Nair, which evidently is the name of a character actor who was always the villain and tried to rape women all the time. Her name is Sheela -- which I learned later is the name of an old time movie heroine or actress or something. So just their names are filmi references alone. He asks her to "choose the villain for once."

The final scenes are in a train station, and then the ramp up to DDLJ time really gets in gear, with the DDLJ music swelling as a woman runs for the train with Dulquer leaning out -- and she runs past him to a white guy. Funny, but not hilarious.

There is also a crazy scene where Dulquer is dressed up as the Joker from Batman (always the villain, get it") and then shows up at her house drunk to tell her he loves her.

THIS was my favorite song. It's like her Janam Janam fantasy song with beautiful images, and references back to Shree 420 and other old Indian films. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI7UIlMgT00

So, it's not the best movie ever, but it's cute.