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Love In Tokyo
(1966) Thanks for credit corrections, Deepaks! |
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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.
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 (played by...Pran!),
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 Pran's bizarre smoking manner is due to insecurity about his small influence on the movie. One can even picture the luckless actor 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 you 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. Pran -- 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.