VEER-ZAARA
unrated, 195 mins.

Pakistan has long been the punching bag of choice for Bollywood, and the past three years have seen dozens of Paki-bashing films featuring Osama bin Laden look-a-likes twirling their beards and plotting India’s destruction, even as relations have warmed between the two countries. So it’s perhaps a positive sign of the times that the selling point for this year’s major New Year’s film, “Veer-Zaara” (playing through the weekend at ImaginAsian) is its positive portrayal of Pakistan.

Shah Rukh Khan plays Indian Air Force officer Veer, who pilots a rescue chopper. Preity Zinta plays Zaara, the headstrong young daughter of an ambitious Pakistani politician, on a mission to return her Hindu nanny’s ashes to her Indian hometown. When Zaara’s bus goes off a cliff, she’s rescued by Veer. She spends the night in his happy village, where Veer’s dad (played by Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan) chews the scenery with gay abandon and catchy musical numbers erupt spontaneously. By morning the two kids are in love. Cue Zaara’s fiance to enter and drag her back to Pakistan and their arranged marriage.

The story picks up 22 years later, while Veer languishes in a Pakistani prison, recounting the story of his romance with Zaara to a human-rights lawyer. How his love landed him in the slammer forms the backbone of the movie, but (this being a Bollywood film) there’s also time to have an entire courtroom drama about his quest for freedom.

Director Yash Chopra came out of semiretirement to direct “Veer-Zaara,” and he enjoys the cultural position that Walt Disney did for years in America: a trusted purveyor of quality family entertainment. But Mr. Chopra’s blood and thunder style hasn’t aged well. The film is directed with a cudgel and edited with a cleaver. Characters don’t speak; they declaim. And they are often so moved by their own words that they burst into tears. Preity Zinta and Shah Rukh Khan are old pros,and their performances are fine, but to what effect? While the messages of tolerance and peace are sincere, they’re also tortuously banal – one starts hoping for some intolerance and hatred, just to balance the flood of sugar onscreen.

Still, cinema this raw hasn’t been seen on American screens since the silent era, and the lack of irony is refreshing. There’s a great, melodramatic hour-and-a-half of a movie in the middle of this film; unfortunately it’s book-ended by two grueling hours of shallow sentimental chintz on either end.

– Grady Hendrix

YOU I LOVE
unrated, 83 mins.

After a 15-minute prologue, the Russian romantic comedy “You I Love” begins with popular but insecure news anchor Vera Kirillova (Lyubov Tolkalina) coming home to Timofei (Evgeny Koryakovsky), her boyfriend of almost one year, and finding him with a younger man. The younger man is Uloomji (Damir Badmaev), a naive but innocent, sometimes homeless zoo worker who met Timofiei when Timofei hit him with his car.

While the two have not been caught doing anything, Vera can tell something is amiss, and indeed it isn’t too long until Timofei and Uloomji have moved in together and entered into a love affair. Vera sticks around, trying to persuade Timofei to stay with her, but he is more interested in exploring his sexuality. Meanwhile, Uloomji’s uncle (named Vayna, of all things) has tracked him down and reported his homosexuality to his conservative parents, who go to great lengths trying to change him.

Directors Olga Stolpovskaja and Dmitry Troitsky sprinkle in some overtone satire about consumerism, globalization, and the battle amongst the classes here and there, and much of it is funny. But the actual story runs out of steam surprisingly fast. The film’s good intentions of tolerance are presented as a mixed message (the ending sports a moral that hints at an it’s-okay-if-you’re-gay-as-long-as-you’re-bi proclamation).

The film is probably more hip and offbeat in its native Russia, but for American audiences, particularly spoiled indie-cinema fans, it comes off as slightly charming, if not strikingly original.

– Eddie Goldberger