TERKEL IN TROUBLE - Shameless for kids

TERKEL IN TROUBLE is what cult comedy, SHAMELESS, would look like if it were a CGI cartoon from Denmark. It's one part South Park and three parts Grange Hill. While the lead characters are kids, the movie is replete with swearing, mindless violence, unrequited love, blackmail, schoolyard bullying, suicide and kids slipping on their own piss in the bathroom. The main love song features the line "I think I've been blind until today, when you suddenly looked at me and said 'Fuck off and die - you're too ugly for me, and your mother goes for $100', you said it straight to my face."

To specifics. Terkel is a kid who is in manifest trouble. The local chav kids are bullying him: calling him "animal abuser" and "mummy's boy". The fat girl, Doris, is in love with him. His best friend, Jason, is an Ali G type from the council estate who carries an iron bar in his pocket and watches bootleg horror films that scare Terkel shitless. Terkel's mum is chain-smoking and indifferent; his father spends his whole time reading Page 3 in the same paper; and his uncle is an violent alcoholic. Worse still, Terkel is being sent threatening anonymous letters. The only hope is a new idealistic hippie teacher called Justin, who reminds the whining kids that they are still better off than little Thai prostitutes....

The movie is unflinching in portraying the brutality of school-life, and while not as laugh-out-loud funny as, say, South Park, it has a lot of perverse charm. I especially love the side-kick Jason and the psychopathic Uncle Stewart, voiced in the English language version by Johnny Vegas. Definitely an antidote to all those talking animals that Hollywood spews out.

TERKEL IN TROUBLE played in Denmark in 2004 and in London in 2006. It is now available on DVD.

Bina007's Guide to Movie Theatre Etiquette...

Far be it for me to elevate cinema into a Bayreuth closed-doors, hard wooden-benches martyrdom. If you really hate people, just buy a big-ass TV and watch movies at home. But still, is it too much to ask to go to a cinema and simply be able to watch a movie undisturbed? Unlike many of my friends, I don't want to rule the world, or at least govern the UK, but if I ruled movie theatres, this is how it would be done:

1. You can do anything you like while the adverts are running. This can be 25 minutes worth of bilge if you are in a Central London Odeon, so knock yourself out. Makes phonecalls, talk to your mates, make everyone stand up so you can get to your seat.

2. As soon as the main feature starts, NO-ONE should be allowed in the theatre. But as they are, they should at least be polite. Let me give you an example. I am sitting in a movie theatre to see a Bollywood movie. The first twenty rows are completely empty. The back row, which I am sitting in, is fairly full. But there is a space to my right and two space to my left. A family comes in late and the mother says to me "Shift up!". Not, "Do you mind moving one along?" Ordinarily I would have moved, but the gruff rudeness of this command pissed me off, especially when there were rows of empty space in front. Seriously.

3. No-one should be allowed to talk to anyone else. Laughing, gasping with horror, retching etc. are all fine. It's part of the audience experience we all love. And if you are the only two in a screening then all bets are off. But save your high-powered intellectual dissection of the craft till after the show, you moron. Nothing you have to say is so clever and world-changing that it won't survive the wait. I had this with two French guys sitting next to me in the Destricted screening - going on about modern art really loudly. They looked very offended when I asked them to be quiet. Like I had paid to listen to their art-school drivel. I've also sat in movies where one person explains the whole thing to the person they came with blow by blow. The mind boggles.

4. Mobile phone signals should be jammed. I just can't understand why anyone (that's you Nik and Katya) need to send a text or make a phone call during a movie screening. Whatever you have to say just isn't that important. If you were that important you would have a secretary field your calls while you were in the theatre. And you wouldn't be in the theatre anyway. I seriously just do not get why you would spend over ten quid and then not look at the screen. And I find nothing more annoying that seeing little white squares of light in my peripheral vision.

The ultimately insane thing I ever experienced was when a group of teenagers, who could easily have been my idiot younger cousins, came in late to a J-horror movie in the Trocadero. They sat in groups of 3 or 4 dotted around the cinema (which was about 1000 sq ft) and proceeded to call each other on their mobile phones. Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ! I actually fear for the future of this country if we are breeding kids like this. The pay as you go phonecard really is the death of civilisation.

So, all I want to say is this: people, have some courtesy. Treat others as you would be treated. And remember, if you wouldn't do it during sex, then you shouldn't do it in the movie theatre. And if you do make phone calls, talk crap about French philosophy and hassle strangers during sex, then please, please, just get a good DVD rental service.

Thank you.

KABHI ALVIDA NAA KEHNA/NEVER SAY GOODBYE - Crass Bollywood melodrama

Man. I thought I was bored watching MIAMI VICE. If you choose to disregard my advice (rant) and see this movie you will get very little change from four hours. Of course, long isn't bad all on its own. THE SORROW AND THE PITY is one of the films I admire most and it clocks in at well over four hours. But why take four hours to say something that could easily be said in the regular ninety minutes?

The plot is insultingly simple and I'm going to go ahead and tell you what it is. Don't worry, this doesn't constitute a spoiler. There is barely any plot to spoil and what does happen can be seen half an hour before it actually happens. So, we are in contemporary New York and there is an embittered ex-pro soccer player* called Dev (Shah Rukh Khan) whose career ended after an injury. He resents his high-earning wife, Rhea (Preity Zinta) and is abusive to his young son. Also in New York there is a barren primary school teacher called Maya (Rani Mukherji) who has married a man, Rishi (Abishek Bachchan) who loves her and settled for cotentment rather than love. They are sexually incompatible. An hour into the movie, Maya and Dev start hanging out and half an hour later they declare their love for each other. Then there is an intermission. After the intermission, Maya and Dev sleep with each other. Then they confess to their other halves who kick them out of their respective houses. Three years later (an hour and a half in movie time but it really does seem like three years) the other halves have moved on and found new loves. But Maya and Dev are alone and miserable because for some odd reason they didn't tell each other that they had been dumped. Rishi and Rhea tell Maya and Dev to get it together (such magnanimity!) and they do. The End.

Like I said, the plot is simple and does not need four hours. We have writer/director Karan Johar to thank for it. Karan Johar is a supreme hack with delusions of profundity. He wants to tell us that the only foundation for a successful marriage is love. Hmmm. Thanks for that, Mr. Johar, but I'm seriously not going to take any advice on adult relationships from a man who writes "I love you, mom" on a credit at the start of his film. And yes, I know that the concept of sanctioned marital infidelity is a novelty in mainstream Bollywood cinema, but KABHI ALVIDA NAA KEHNA is hardly an adult, insightful treatment of this theme. For all its pretensions, this movie is not remotely in the same league as PAGE THREE or SILSILA. I mean, come on, how can you tackle marital infidelity when you haven't got the balls to show two adults so much as kissing on screen?

So this movie sucks. The script and directing are superficial and hammy and Karan Johar cannot do discreet or subdued. Everything is egregious to the point where you want to vomit. At the key "declaration of love" scene between Maya and Dev, he says to her, tearfully: "I'll buy a blue car. I like blue. You like blue..?" She replies, tearfully, "I like blue!" (Audience laughs maniacally.) Everyone on the train platform is now miraculously wearing blue. And now Maya and Dev are wearing blue. I had this compulsion to do an Alan Patridge and keep shouting "A-ha!"

The over the top camera work and production design continue throughout. Someone should tell the photographer that he can use shots other than tight close-ups. Someone should tell the production designer that real houses don't look like pictures from the Heal's home catalogue. Real women don't wear fake eyelashes and hot curlers every day. And they don't go out in the rain without an umbrella. Someone should tell Karan Johar that great directors don't use Manhattan city scape as a vapid picture-postcard, but capture the energy and spirit of the city. They should also tell him that Burberry and Louis Vuitton aren't aspirational but chav. And while they're at it, they should point out just how crass it is to have a couple about to embark on adultery singing to each other as they walk up the aisle of a Catholic church making the sign of the cross.

In fairness, KABHI ALVIDA NAA KEHNA is delivered by a competent but hamstrung cast. That is, with the exception of lead actor Shah Rukh Khan. Khan's apparent desire to be David Beckham and/or an MTV star is induldged to the hilt and his "acting" is absurdly over the top.

All in all, KABHI ALVIDA NAA KEHNA feels like a delusional attempt at profundity from a director best known for creating crappy, melodramatic B movies. It is the most expensive Bollywood movie ever made, apparently, and that will guarantee it some publicity. Maybe it will have a large box office taking. Frankly, the whole exercise looks like a shameless cash-in. Why else would Johar give small cameos to stars such as Kajol, Arjun Rampal and John Abraham if not to lure in their respective fan-bases? Oh yeah, and the music sucks. The dance numbers are derivative and sound like shitty Euro-house with the odd tabla beat and Hindi lyrics.

KABHI ALVIDA NAA KEHNA is on release in India, the US, the UK, the Netherlands and Australia. *I know, I fell off my seat laughing at that one, too.