Bombay Talkie (1970)

A Brilliant Conflict

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

I love the Merchant Ivory films and I love the 70s aesthetics, so I was quite drawn initially into this movie. The initial sequence around the giant typewriter is spectacular. Unfortunately, it just fizzled out from that moment onwards. I just couldn't bring myself to care about any of the characters: the guys are stupid, the female lead vain, narcissistic and self-centered to the point of implosion.It remains somewhat watchable as a document of an era, but it's a surprisingly poor movie.

Sorry, I love most Merchant-Ivory films, but this was truly agonizing to watch. I only watched it all the way through because I kept thinking it had to get better...but it never did. Also, on the DVD version that I watched the sound quality was horrible. It sounded as if it were recorded on a Fisher-Price tape recorder. One thing I dislike in films is when the main characters are not at all sympathetic. Unfortunately, that's another of this films shortcomings. The three main characters are all self-obsessed, self pitying wretches, and the dialog they have been given by the screenwriter (whom I also usually adore) is simply pathetic.By the time I got to the end of the film, I was praying that they wouldn't give in to the urge to end the film with the trite senseless killing that they telegraphed earlier with close-ups of the murder weapon; but they did. Another disappointment. Even if you've set yourself a goal of watching all of James Ivory's films, you may guiltlessly excuse yourself from this one. It's just not up to his usual standards.

An early film by my favorite trio Ivory, Merchant and Jhabvala, failed to light my senses in this nonsensical musical farce. The additional content on the DVD is much better with a feature on the very talented Helen and the customary chat with the trio on making of this movie. This film seems to insult everyone: a very uncaring and self indulgent white authoress, a very lustful Indian actor with no scruples, a charlatan guru, and a mediocre poet with an obsession to murder. Mix this lot in a movie and you get the customary tale of confusion and bad acting. Some moments of the film are memorable including the beginning scene on the giant typewriter, the incredible shots of the staircase at the hotel, and the general view into Bombay film making of the 70s. The ending is, well, rather abrupt, and I was glad it was. Rent it just for the extras on the DVD.

This wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen, but it was pretty awful, and I would only recommend watching it expecting the worst so that perhaps you are pleasantly surprised by it. My least favorite thing was the main female character, Lucia, and her self-obsessed, insensitive, manipulative, passive-aggressive way of behaving. She was a terrible person and also looked much older than her supposed 32 years of age! It was difficult to understand the motivations or behaviors of most of the characters and the scenes/events seemed rather disconnected. I also was hoping for a lot more of the Bollywood movie industry and got very little of that except for the opening scenes. I'm not a fan of this movie.