I saw a fun happy Hollywood movie! Didn’t know those existed any more. And then I was talking about it with a desi friend and I realized that it’s a Masala movie! A little bit of everything for everybody.
My parents took me to the movie, which says something there. They saw it already because it sounded like I movie they would enjoy (as older folks, not the teens/twenties most movies are aimed at now). And then they thought it was something I would enjoy too (as a youngish person). In the theater where we saw it, there was a big group of teens, me and my parents, and another family group of parents and tweens. Your classic Masala audience! For a classic Masala film!
This film has really good clever action, really fun behind the scenes movie humor, cool visuals, decent soundtrack, and a light happy mature romance. Oh, and a dog! So really, something for everybody. The part that is probably the most DCIB important is the romance, that alone made me sit up and go “oh this is nice, this is new.”
It’s a romance between Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, two actors in their early 40s playing two characters in their late 30s/early 40s. They are adult people who are past being all about sex or all about commitment/not commitment or any of that stupid stuff. And they have things going on in their life beyond a relationship. It’s very cool! And way more interesting, I think, then a romance between two 20 somethings who don’t really have individual histories. And their romance isn’t about dumb misunderstandings, or wild sexual attraction, or anything. It’s about actual problems that can be solved by talking it out, and just enjoying and laughing together. You don’t have to write some crazy meet cute and over the top complication, you can just hire good actors to play good characters with good dialogue, and we will believe in it.
That’s part of the film, but there’s also a part of the film that are really really clever fight scenes, and a part that is a running gag of quoting movies, and a part that is a twisty mystery, and a part that is a statement on the film industry. It’s just….Masala! That’s the best way to describe it.
In India, Masala comes from the Rasa theory, dramatic shifts between emotional states. This isn’t that kind of Masala. There’s no moment that made me cry, it didn’t really hit on the emotions. But I guess I would say it’s Hollywood Masala? Which is more about hitting us on the entertainment level. I didn’t come out of the film feeling emotionally wrung out, more just adrenaline and HAPPY wrung out. All the different ways of making an audience feel happy hit in rapid succession. Spectacle! Laughter! Romance! EVERYTHING!!!
The movie is very much a movie-movie. It has literal quotes from classic fun hit films of the past few decades, and also visual homages, and it’s set on an actual film set. I wouldn’t say it’s making a Big S Statement, but it is making a little s statement on what Hollywood films can be. It focuses on the crew people, the costume designers, the props, the stunt crew, all of that. And how the majority of the film is build by those people, not the star actors. That is making a little s statement that the parts of the film built by all those people are the parts of the film that make it memorable, make audiences enjoy it. Movies live and die on the big stuff that takes a lot of people to make it, that’s what Hollywood is and that’s what movies are. Again, it’s just a little s statement, but I like that it is saying to pay attention to all these people and the stuff they built and stop making the Big Important Serious films.
So yeah, I liked it! I’m interested in seeing if any of y’all saw it/see it and enjoy it. And I’m interested in how it kind of shows a way for Hollywood to remember it is making movies for the whole audience, making movies that put work in to every little part instead of just sleepwalking through the bits they think the audience won’t notice.