[Review] Love In Tokyo
Muffy St. Bernard
original location:
http://www.dazzled.com/dangermuff/bollybob/rloveintokyo.html
and you'll get pictures AND an expose of Mehmood's "flubber"
adventure. But if you absolutely can't get there, here's the skinny.}
Love In Tokyo (1966)
Starring: Joy Mukherjee (Ashok), Asha Parekh (Asha), Master Shaheed
(Chi Ku), Lata Bose, Mehmood, Madan Puri (Pran), Lalitha Pawar
(Gayathri Devi)
Director: Pramod Chakraborty
Playback Singers: Lata Mangeshkar, Manna Dey
Lyricist: Hasrat Jaipuri
Lesser reviewers might claim that "Love In Tokyo" is a story about
a woman who is running from her wicked uncle. Some might also mention
a plot about star-crossed lovers being kept apart, or a small
Indo-Japanese child trying to escape his destiny, or a gripping family
drama set in a foreign country. Some of the more irresponsible critics
might actually insist that this film is about...well, falling in love
in Tokyo.
Well, ha!
I'm the George Washington of Bollywood reviewers. This doesn't
mean I have wooden teeth and a wig, it just means that I can't tell a
lie, and I never believe any of those awkwardly-written,
pseudo-English plot synopses on the backs of the DVD's. This film
doesn't have anything to do with love, and it has only a touristy
"look at the Tokyo Tower!" interest in Japan. It's really a movie
about Mehmood being goofy and would be better called "A Funny Man
Performs Sketch Comedy in Tokyo, with Asha Parekh singing 'Sayonara,
Sayonara.'"
That's a long title, though, so "Love In Tokyo" will have to do.
And since the people who made the movie bothered to sandwich a plot in
between the Mehmood routines, I owe it to them to give you some idea
of what this minimal plot is about. I'll warn you in advance, though:
if you're looking for a tense family melodrama where people cry their
eyes out and find themselves caught in horribly inevitable situations,
you won't find it here. "Love In Tokyo" is not the Mahabharata. It
is a long episode of Saturday Night Live with no theme and a limited
number of performers. People who have always wanted to see Mehmood
bounce around Tokyo on rubber feet will find their ideal movie here.
What "Love In Tokyo" has in the way of plot is a potentially
interesting conceit: two runaways meeting up and...well, running away
together, protecting each other, and growing fond of each other. A
traveller falls in love with one runaway and wants to adopt the other,
despite his stone-hearted mother's objections and the evil plans of a
greedy villain. Sound good? Well, "Love In Tokyo" is much more than
that...read on and you'll understand.
The cunningly-named Asha (played by Asha Parekh) is running away
from her uncle, who is a Typically Bad Relative. Like all Typically
Bad Relatives, he insists on getting her married to Pran (Madan Puri),
who is a VERY Typically Bad Gold-Digger...the sort of fellow who
eschews all everyday concerns like happiness, playing cards, or even
conversation with his peers in order to focus his ENTIRE BEING on
marrying a rich woman and (probably) killing her off. He can't even
let one of Asha's televised dance routines go by without bugging her
about marrying him, which causes her to panic and run away. An Indian
girl all alone in Tokyo, whatever will she do?
Pran allows himself only one distraction from his get-rich scheme:
he smokes like a weirdo. He holds the cigarette between his thumb and
his first finger and points the end up at a 30-degree angle, which is
effete and scary and sort of like something Humphrey Bogart would have
done if he were playing a major villain in an Indian film.
Let's clear this villain thing up right now: according to the
regularly accepted rules of plot development, the major villain in a
movie should also have a major role, but Pran doesn't. His role is so
small that all I can remember him doing is fight in a helicopter
(which is dangerous) and smoke in that peculiar way of his. Oh, and
his hand also gets cut off, revealing one more reason why Asha didn't
want to marry him: his hands are full of dry liver. You'll never
smoke again, Pran!
Freud might say that Madan Puri's bizarre smoking manner is due to
insecurity about his small influence on the movie. One can even
picture Madan stomping back and forth in Freud's office, shouting "Why
am I even IN this film? When they're done watching it, people won't
even REMEMBER me!" while Freud politely tells him to stop smoking like
a hippy fag or that's the ONLY thing about him they'll remember, and
then asks for Mehmood's autograph.
The second runaway -- one with nothing to do with Pran -- is Chi
Ku, obviously of no relation to Chikoo from "Aan Milo Sajna" because
his name is transcribed differently and he knows karate. He knows
karate because he grew up in Tokyo, of course. But now that his
Japanese mother and Indian father are dead, his uncle Ashok (played
with a distinct lack of charisma by Joy Mukherjee) wants to take him
back to India, and even threatens him with a scale model of the very
menacing Taj Mahal. "No way!" says Chi Ku, and he engages in a series
of wild stunts that involve quick camera cuts, probably to disguise
the fact that this kid is just being abused and spun around by
stage-hands for our enjoyment. Chi Ku's best moment is his totally
inexplicable fall from a hotel, which must have been storyboarded like
this:
* Chi Ku, Asha and Ashok are arguing in a hotel room.
* Chi Ku looks to the side, then wanders off camera.
* A sudden reaction shot of Asha, screaming!
* A shot of Chi Ku appearing to spin around near the ceiling of
the room! He manages about one and a half revolutions before...
* ...an external shot of the hotel high-rise.
* Cut to Chi Ku in a hospital being bandaged by a doctor who says
something about the child suffering quite a fall. What the hell?
This print of "Love In Tokyo" must be missing something. According
to the calculations of my new, Mr. India-style fuzzy-logic computer,
we require a minimum of three more seconds of film time to explain
this scene: a motivation for Chi Ku going near a window in the first
place, a shot of Chi Ku falling OUT of a window (or at least a shot OF
a window, for goodness sake), and then him actually landing (not
strictly necessary but it would make me happy). It's unfortunate that
these images are not available for viewing, but if you watch the scene
about four times (like we did last week) you'll eventually
decide...well, yeah, Chi Ku fell out of a hotel window, for no reason
at all. Though given the amount of information presented to the
viewer, he could just have easily fallen through the floor itself, or
risen through the ceiling, hit Mars, and gotten a nasty bruise from
rebounding off the 700 Club's satellite on the way down. It's hard to
say.
I've devoted some time to explain this scene because it's typical
of the movie...it is by no means the only time that the viewer is
liable to scream "what the HECK is going on?" But that's okay because
"Love In Tokyo" is not meant to make you think, and in a radical
departure from most Bollywood films it doesn't even want to make you
cry. All it wants to do is keep looking at the screen. It's the film
equivalent of any number of Fisher Price "Shut Up, Baby!" toys whose
only purpose is to distract the child and keep him from screaming in
the middle of the night. Oh sure, "Love In Tokyo" claims to be more
than that -- it's got a harsh and inflexible mother character in it --
but even the kooky Fisher Price "Jungle Pal Music Mirror" toy insists
that it will "spark baby's senses" -- as though Mehmood wouldn't do
the job for free. It then goes on to suggest a rather ominous
activity called "tummy-time play" which doesn't happen in "Love In
Tokyo"...but only because it wasn't invented back then.
Enter Mehmood, a human incarnation of the Jungle Pal Music Mirror.
Those who've seen some of this other films will recognize that Mehmood
doesn't need a plotline, a motivation, or even a fully-defined
personality. All he needs is a chance to be weird. In "Love In Tokyo"
he gets -- by my estimate -- as much film time as all the other
characters combined, and even though his own role doesn't make any
sense in the plot context...at least he DOES STUFF. This explains why
I'm mentioning him so much, because he basically IS the movie.
Some of his routines hit the bullseye, especially his
"International Geisha" sketch where he makes a surprisingly convincing
geisha, albeit one with a larger-than-average head. When he's not
doing drag, though, Mehmood is scheming. He came all the way to Tokyo
to find a way to marry Sheila, much to the chagrin of her father.
Canny Bollywood fans will recognize this sub-plot as the comedic
portion of the masala film, the largely-transparent vehicle for
putting Mehmood, Sheila, and the reluctant father into silly dialogues
and extended vaudeville routines. What sets "Love In Tokyo" apart
from most masala films -- even the comedies -- is that the silly
subplot is more dynamic and interesting than the rest of the film.
But I've already said that, haven't I.
One thing that Mehmood does an awful lot in this film is pretend
to be other people. He's even more of a "master of disguise" than
Johny Lever, partly because he doesn't just look like Michael Jackson
all the time. In this movie he plays a Sadhu (in order to trick his
future father-in-law into jumping in a river), a geisha (in order to
trick his future father-in-law into getting drunk and falling asleep),
a rich sheik (in order to trick Asha's uncle into releasing Chi Ku),
and a famous Arab doctor (in order to trick his future father-in-law
into letting him marry Sheila). This "doctor" routine deserves
further mention because it's actually pretty funny:
Sheila pretends to be mute, which is upsetting for her father
because...well, how do you auction off a daughter who can't speak?
Not to mention that Sheila's "I can't speak" gestures are repulsive
and horrifying, consisting of a lot of near-medical shots of her
throat and tongue. She's not the sort of mute girl you feel sorry
for, she's the sort of mute girl you kick out of your house for
spitting on your dinner table. Mehmood -- the cunningly-disguised
"famous Arab Doctor" -- explains that the two halves of a woman's
heart point in different directions, and when her heart is
broken...well, one half will jump up and stick to the side of her
throat, making her mute. "I always knew that love was blind," says
the father, "but now I know it's dumb as well!" Drum roll, please!
In a later, somewhat surreal and unexpected scene, Mehmood uses a
wig and a plastic face to disguise himself as the man that Sheila is
supposed to marry: Bomikesh Chatterjee, played by the same Funny Fat
Guy that Asha Parekh killed in another, somewhat better movie from
1966 (Teesri Manzil). This disguise is so incredible that, when
Bomikesh and the imposter come face-to-face at the wedding, you'd
almost think it was a split-screen effect. Let's see Johny Lever do
that!
When I say that "Love In Tokyo" is a sketch comedy (have I already
said that?) I'm really not kidding. The scenes are disjointed and many
of them are barely related. This is never more obvious than when
Mehmood (again), while running from Sheila's disgruntled father
(again), stumbles upon a mad scientist who's invented a sort of
super-rubber substance that gets him jumping around Tokyo, rescuing
young Japanese girls and stealing soft drinks from people. This has
nothing to do with anything, but it's so fun that it deserves it's own
page. There is also an extended scene where Mehmood is almost killed
by a ceiling fan when his marriage bed starts levitating, a
sleepy-time bed feature only available in the best honeymoon suites.
Despite all this, some sensible things DO happen, but it's hard to
notice them (let alone remember them a week later when you're trying
to write a review). Asha and Chi Ku get to dress up in different
disguises and throw shoes at people while they're running away from
Pran and Ashok. You see, Ashok is still trying to track Chi Ku down so
he can take him away to the Taj Mahal, and he's been hopelessly in
love with Asha ever since he saw her dance on TV. For her part, Asha
spends part of the movie dressing up like a Japanese woman (Asha's
"Sayonara, Sayonara" features one of the oddest Oriental impressions
this side of "Funtoosh"), and the rest pretending to be a male Sikh
who Ashok seems strangely intent on sleeping with. Honestly, it's
weird. Ashok is always trying to cuddle up with this Sikh. He's
always talking about how nice this short, chubby guy smells, which
comes off as creepy (though it might have been intended to point out
that Asha's butt is unusually big for a man).
"Yeah, so what," you're saying. "We're all used to seeing
Bollywood starlets with big cans." But what's exception about this
movie -- and what struck the BollyBob Society as so extraordinarily
funny -- is that Ashok, her beloved, has a can almost as big as she
does. This is further emphasized by the way the pockets of his pants
are always sticking out. Once you notice how big this guy's ass is
you'll never see the movie the same way again.
Sorry, Joy Mukherjee, but it needed to be said.
Anyway, the two of them fall in love while dancing in a park no
doubt reserved for people with big cans. They begin to entertain
thoughts of marrying each other and adopting Chi Ku, which Ashok's
mother considers a colossally bad idea...he's already been promised to
a flippant, stupid, and utterly selfish woman back in India...the
perfect daughter-in-law! In between Mehmood doing crazy things you
might find time to wonder: how could these star-crossed lovers ever
find happiness?
Well, it all comes down to a simple plot device that you never see
in Hollywood but is a dime a dozen in India: when it comes time to
donate a pair of eyes to Ashok (who's been in that elaborate
helicopter fight with Pran, the nasty villain that we'd almost
forgotten about), would this Indian floozy be willing to make such a
sacrifice? Would her eyes even suit him as well as Asha's? What if he
needs a can transplant in the future, wouldn't Asha be a better donor?
After some time spent soul-searching at a Hiroshima monument ("hey,
my life could be worse!") Asha decides that if she can't donate her
eyes while she's alive (which the doctor says is sort of...well,
unorthodox), she'd rather be dead. Fortunately Ashok's mother comes
along to stop her before she drops an atom bomb on herself. But it's
worth noting that what might have been a half-hour segment in any
other film -- heartbreak, loyalty, fate, love, regret, a trip to
Hiroshima! -- is no more than a five-minute footnote that not even the
actors seemed particularly interested in. "Hey, where's Mehmood???"
the audience must have been shouting. I know we were.
In the end, Mehmood gets his Sheila, Ashok gets his Asha, and Chi
Ku loses his orphan status, which probably means he'll need a new
passport. Prem -- who had something to do with that helicopter fight
-- dies (I think), a fitting end for all VERY Typically Bad
Gold-Diggers. Asha's uncle undergoes a touching transformation, a
scene sandwiched somewhere between Mehmood being goofy and a sequence
featuring topless Japanese dancers.
WHAT??? Topless Japanese dancers?
I kid you not. If nothing else this movie should lead to an
intellectual discussion of HOW THE HECK THEY GOT FOOTAGE OF EXPOSED
JAPANESE BREASTS INTO THE FINAL PRINT. And I'm not just talking a
quick erotic flash, I'm talking a long, drawn-out representation of
oriental female mammaries in the middle of an otherwise touching song.
This was even weirder than Mehmood's flubber scene. In a filmmaking
culture that wouldn't even allow KISSING before the year 2000, how
could that lacivious Pramod Chakraborty slip this by in 1966?
The only explanation we can think of -- and one that is
fundamentally disturbing and damning -- is "hey, they're only JAPANESE
women." Please, please, PLEASE tell me that your average Indian censor
in 1966 didn't consider the exposure of a Japanese woman's breasts to
be comparable to showing a dog's butt on screen.
Habshi
Girish Bhat
Crossposting to RMIM for your benefit. Enjoy!
Deepaks
almost imagine it.
One question though Muffy, you say that the character Pran is played by
actor Madan Puri but in the review, you have a picture of actor Pran with
the cigarette. Was it actually Pran playing a character called Madan?
BTW, the funny fat actor is Asit Sen while Shiela, companion of Mahmood for
the funny scenes in numerous films is Shobha Khote.
Deepaks
"Muffy St. Bernard" <muf...@hotmail.com> wrote...
> Love In Tokyo (1966)
Girish Bhat
> WHAT??? Topless Japanese dancers?
> I kid you not. If nothing else this movie should lead to an
> intellectual discussion of HOW THE HECK THEY GOT FOOTAGE OF EXPOSED
> JAPANESE BREASTS INTO THE FINAL PRINT. And I'm not just talking a
Umm, because they very so distinctly unerotic? I remember them but can't
figure out whether or not they were present in the fabulous "JAPANNNNNNNNNNN,
LOVE in Tokyo." title song. Probably our Indian censors thinking went like
this - foreign == good, foreign == respectable, entertainment show in Japan ==
good and respectable. So it can't possibly be NAKED BREASTS that we are seeing
on screen. Perish the thought. As you can see, we Indians lived very sheltered
lives back in those days.
Surjit Singh
> You haven't lived till you have read a Muffy take on a classic Hindi movie.
> Crossposting to RMIM for your benefit. Enjoy!
>
> For the BEST "Love In Tokyo" experience, visit this review at it's
> original location:
>
> http://www.dazzled.com/dangermuff/bollybob/rloveintokyo.html
>
> and you'll get pictures AND an expose of Mehmood's "flubber"
> adventure. But if you absolutely can't get there, here's the skinny.}
O My God! The review is better than the movie!
Has this happened before?
--
Surjit Singh, a diehard movie fan(atic), period.
http://hindi-movies-songs.com/index.html
Deepaks
he was kind of specialist in being the bad uncle except for rare exceptions
like Dulhan wohi jo..
Deepaks
"Deepaks" <fe1...@iperbole.bologna.it> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:suRga.21549$Jg1.4...@news1.tin.it...
Karen Lofstrom
> O My God! The review is better than the movie!
> Has this happened before?
Muffy was a regular poster in rec.arts.movies.local.indian for a while,
before he/she got too caught up in dancing like Helen. We're glad to have
Muffy back!
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
----------------------------------------------------------------------
latest enthusiasm: Persian pop, Jamshid's CD Naghshe Ziba
Muffy St. Bernard
> Once again, real fun to read and even if I haven't seen this film, I can
> almost imagine it.
>
> One question though Muffy, you say that the character Pran is played by
> actor Madan Puri but in the review, you have a picture of actor Pran with
> the cigarette. Was it actually Pran playing a character called Madan?
They were definitely calling the villain "Pran" in the film, but
since they called Asha Parekh "Asha" as well, it wouldn't be
unthinkable that Pran was played by Pran.
When it comes time to put actors to characters in these films, I
usually reference http://www.indofilms.com because they have done well
in the past. The thing is, they are sometimes very wrong (they say
that the Comedian for the film is "Mohan Choti," without any reference
to Mehmood...unless that's Mehmood's real name?) and they put people
into arbitrary slots ("Comedian" "Villain") without mentioning their
character name. Hence me taking their advice on "Villain: Madan
Puri," who was really the "Very Bad Relative" character. They don't
mention Pran anywhere in the credits.
Must, must, must fix the review info!
> BTW, the funny fat actor is Asit Sen while Shiela, companion of Mahmood for
> the funny scenes in numerous films is Shobha Khote.
Oh, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! Where else could I find this out but
here? Asit Sen was going to be the next "wanted" poster in the "Who's
That?" section of the site!
And I thought Shobha Khote was a heck of a lot of fun too, if I
didn't mention it.
Muffy St. Bernard
> muf...@hotmail.com (Muffy St. Bernard) wrote in message news:<2d0226f7.03032...@posting.google.com>...
> > WHAT??? Topless Japanese dancers?
> > I kid you not. If nothing else this movie should lead to an
> > intellectual discussion of HOW THE HECK THEY GOT FOOTAGE OF EXPOSED
> > JAPANESE BREASTS INTO THE FINAL PRINT. And I'm not just talking a
>
> Umm, because they very so distinctly unerotic? I remember them but can't
> figure out whether or not they were present in the fabulous "JAPANNNNNNNNNNN,
> LOVE in Tokyo." title song.
They were in one of the less-memorable songs, while Asha and Ashok
were romancing each-other in nightclubs. That particular scene kept
on popping up, and was obviously not filmed anywhere near where the
actors were, resulting in Ashok responding to the breasts in a
somewhat inappropriate manner.
> Probably our Indian censors thinking went like
> this - foreign == good, foreign == respectable, entertainment show in Japan ==
> good and respectable. So it can't possibly be NAKED BREASTS that we are seeing
> on screen. Perish the thought. As you can see, we Indians lived very sheltered
> lives back in those days.
This must have benefited some filmmakers, who sensed the censors
would feel this way, and knew it would be a loophole for placing
nudity in their movie. I somehow doubt that the audience was sitting
there and thinking "good and respectable," especially not the guys in
the front row. They were probably coming back to see it again. :)
It might be similar to what happened with nudie cutie movies over
here in the 60's. The only way to show nudity in a movie that didn't
get an X rating was to set the film in a "Nudist Camp." That way the
film was an expose of that particular culture, it wasn't there to just
turn you on...it was a "documentary" or "art."
But this wouldn't have happened in any respectable non-arty,
non-exploitation films...it wasn't just slipped into movies, as it
appears to have been done with "Love In Tokyo."
Fascinating. You have no idea what a shock this was to us. After
years of refining "what we expect to see in a Bollywood movie," seeing
that scene was like seeing Jessica Rabbit's yoo-hoo.
Devdas
> original location:
>
> http://www.dazzled.com/dangermuff/bollybob/rloveintokyo.html
<snip>
How about doing a similar review of the film "Casablanca"
so that we can be assured that you are not biased in any
way? You can post it in rec.films.misc and cross-post it
to RAMLI for us to have fun with the wierdness and silly
antics during war time of Humphry Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.
Devdas
ps: actually "Bored of the Rings" oops "Lord of the Rings" will be
really great to read if reviewed in the fluffy style of Muffy.
Girish Bhat
>
> O My God! The review is better than the movie!
>
>
> Has this happened before?
It happens everytime Muffy writes a review! Glad you enjoyed it.
Muffy St. Bernard
> so that we can be assured that you are not biased in any
> way?
My goodness, did I EVER suggest I was unbiased? Is there such a
person? :)
I've grown up on largely Western images and film tropes, and while
I'm still capable of stepping out of them to see (and enjoy) things
from another perspective, I'm writing these reviews mainly as "an
outsider looking in." As somebody who grew up with "Casablanca" and
is now watching "Love In Tokyo." I love most of these movies and
respond to them with the usual weeping and brow-beeating, but when
it's time to review them I'm ready to pick off their wings and see how
they fly.
Biased? Of course!
> You can post it in rec.films.misc and cross-post it
> to RAMLI for us to have fun with the wierdness and silly
> antics during war time of Humphry Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.
Now now, Devdas, are you REALLY putting "Love In Tokyo" in the same
category as "Casablanca?" I'm no fan of Casablanca, and there are
plenty of Bollywood films I WOULD put in the same category with that
movie, but "Love In Tokyo" is not one of them. I enjoyed Love In
Tokyo, but...well, check out the review, it's all in there.
Comparing Casablanca with Love in Tokyo is like comparing Sholay
with an episode of "Three's Company," in my book. :)
That said, I would be happy to review Hollywood films, but people
are already doing that and I don't like Hollywood nearly as much as I
like Bollywood.
(And as a quick plug and qualifyer, there IS lots to poke fun at in
"Casablanca." For starters, Robert Coover wrote an excellent story
called "You Must Remember This," featuring the most horrifically
anatomical sex scene between Humphry & Ingrid...it's a must read!)
> ps: actually "Bored of the Rings" oops "Lord of the Rings" will be
> really great to read if reviewed in the fluffy style of Muffy.
Aw geez, it would be SO LONG! I'd have to put up a whole site for
it, and I wouldn't even know where to begin. Plus I'd need to watch
it more than once.
Incidentally, there really IS a book out there called "Bored Of The
Rings" that is an occasionally funny, National Lampoon-ish take on the
novels. Written in the 70's, I believe. So any fluffiness I could
contribute has already been done, as far as I can see.
Cheers,
Fluffy Muffy
http://www.dazzled.com/dangermuff
Habshi
Girish Bhat
> would feel this way, and knew it would be a loophole for placing
> nudity in their movie. I somehow doubt that the audience was sitting
This is like that famous quote from Goebbels - "They won't believe
your small
lies but they will swallow your big one without question".
What censor in his right mind will dare to believe that big-time
producer/diretor Pramod Charavarthy will show a shot of naked
breasts, not once, not twice, but as many as 4 times! Once, is
suspicious, but 4 times means this HAS to be good and respectable. ;-)
I really doubt any other director would have had the balls to pull a
stunt like this, though.
OTOH,check out "Tum Haseen, Mein Jaawan" for a smoking hot strip-tease
right at the beginning.
Muffy St. Bernard
>
> I really doubt any other director would have had the balls to pull a
> stunt like this, though.
Aha, so this really IS a rare thing? I was wondering if I was just
unaware of the 100's of mainstream Bollywood movies with "justifiable"
partial nudity in them. I thought I was just being naive!
And yes, maybe it was shear audacity that got the scene through...
> OTOH,check out "Tum Haseen, Mein Jaawan" for a smoking hot strip-tease
> right at the beginning.
Oh my poor, chaste Bollywood! :)