Review of Luck by Chance (2009) by Mike M — 12 Jun 2009

After the exuberance of "Om Shanti Om", a much cooler, even jaded exercise in Bollywood reflexivity, setting a budding romance between two jobbing actors against the vast, almost cosmic indifference of the wider industry.

Once again, the business's great and good (and Kareena Kapoor) turn up in self-satirising minor roles and cameos - Hrithik Roshan looks to be enjoying himself as a procrastinating star who has to be replaced by our winsome male lead - but a new element has crept in: an alien and decidedly toxic insider cynicism.

Far from the usual expression of wide-eyed innocence, this offers a grim and resistible vision of producers as penny-pinching leches prepared to pass off stale plots as brand new goods, actresses as arrogant divas prepared to sleep with those self-same producers to get a leg up the casting ladder, and directors as idiots in cowboy hats who haven't got a clue.

The Hindi film industry has been doing its level best to forge links with its US equivalent in the past few years with an eye to increasing its market share, and I wonder if this is its way of further cosying up to potential Hollywood investors: a film that, at its cold, dark heart, says hey, we're just as grasping and self-interested as you folks.

.. Mechanically proficient, and very hard to like.