Amrit Maghera Dies, Sarah-Jane Dias Is Gay, Sandhya Mridul Plays Michelle Rodriguez Again

These aren't spoilers. You cannot spoil Angry Indian Goddesses any further. 

Nobody I know would label me an angry person. But they don't know me. They don't know I bottle every little resentful thought I have; about them, the world, my boss, and all my muted WhatsApp groups. This works for me. I get by just fine. No episodes, no apologies.

On most days.

On other days, I can't hold it all in. It's on these days, these rare profanity-laced occasions, when I let my guard down. Two days ago, I let this happen. Two days ago, I was triggered, provoked, and spat on, by Pan Nalin's Angry Indian Goddesses.

Angry Indian Goddesses makes me angry.

Let's start with the cast: They don't really suck. The characters they play suck. Not only because they lack real personality (they do lack personality – they're one-dimensional plot elements). They suck mainly because their clichés are the script:

- The photog's gay: Does every artist / photographer / writer have to be gay? Did this one? Also, you brought out the homosexual angle so late into the movie, did it matter at all? The person I was watching the movie with (for) was hoping the 'hidden/secret groom' would be a dead groom. “I bet he's dead or something, and the wedding is also a funeral!” We were hoping for tragedy. It was.

- The CEO's an assh*le: My boss is an assh*le too. Most bosses are. But none of them are Sandhya Mridul's character, man. Don't exaggerate.

- The musician's depressed: Did she have to look like Anushka Manchanda? Granted, this one was Anushka Manchanda, but that's taking the cliché too far. 

- The housewife, bored and wondering: I'm unmarried, looking for love. These likely-to-cheat, bored housewife stereotypes frighten me. Fear leads to anger.

- The Bollywood gori was struggling, the activist – dark-skinned, the maid – takes a slap well: Why stop there though, right – the neighbour was hunky, the first goons we see turned out to be rapists, the gun was introduced as a wait-for-it, the cops were text-book, the intermission – an eye-opener.

This movie writes itself, man. Imagine the script reading:

“So a gay artist calls her friends to Goa to attend her lesbian wedding, right. But there's a catch – no one knows she's gay and they don't know it till TWO WEEKS later. Why not? Because don't ask, don't tell. The Bollywood gori gets raped, the cops are assholes, and the asshole CEO takes matter into her own hands. The End. What do you think?”

“Do they all have female issues?”

“Some of them have two.”

“OMG.”

I've watched bullshit movies before – the Fast franchise, the Resident Evil franchise, Taare Zameen Par – but those movies want to be bullshit. Angry Indian Goddesses was sent to film festivals (plural). With all of this bullshit:

1. No one cared who Sarah-Jane Dias was marrying. Not for a week.
Angry Indian Goddesses is about friends coming together for Sarah-Jane Dias' wedding. This is the point to the movie. But why (how) (what!) the f*ck did no one care who she was marrying? Sure, she deflected the question a couple of times, but come on? What friend is okay with not knowing? And these are women. They should have known he curved to the left by now. RSVP.

2. The Bollywood-gori was flat.
Impossible. I watched Hate Story 3.

3. The rapists don't flee the crime-scene.
They are Goan, so they are susegaad doesn't cut it for me. A siesta at the beach (maybe a little away from the exact crime-scene) is just bullshit. It works well for your dumb revenge plot because they're easy to find, but god damn, man? Who does that?

4. Cop out cops are cop outs.
The cops actually, literally say this, just after a rape: “Aise kapde pehenke?” Come on. Give me someone real. Not a cardboard cut-out, text-book asshole. I'll form my own opinions, please.

5. The Catholic Church condones murder, approves homosexuality.
Five murders. Now, I've been Catholic for a while. We don't condone masturbation. But this one particular church (literally) stands up for murder.

Picture this: The cops walk in to a funeral (again, who does that?) and ask the goddesses to come quietly for their five murders. Every parishioner decided they would come quietly as well? I've watched enough Actor Varun Pruthi videos to know this does not happen.
 
6. Sandhya Mridul > Sarah-Jane Dias.
Gratify me with a Sarah-Jane Dias pool scene. Not Sandhya ffs?

7. Each and every one of the protagonists were f*cked up.
We all have our crosses to bear. But did all of the goddesses have to address their issues during one little vacation in Goa? Did every scene have to feature a new issue? Were many of these, issues even? Sandhya's daughter was lonely – so what?

She followed her 'aunty' down to the beach, stood in the dark, watched, then shot a video of her 'aunty' get raped and murdered, and then kept quiet about it. Holy shit. Little-girl-watching ex machina. (What a bullshit beautiful writing gig though! Are you hiring?)

Were there any good things about the movie? Well, the first ten minutes were actually good. Some lines in between were funny too. I actually laughed out loud. The problem is, I was also laughing when Sandhya Mridul was crying.

So Pan Nalin is not a girl. I was really hoping he was. Only to make this nice, juicy, sexist closing:
“The next time you make a F*ck You movie to the men, ask a man to do it.” (But you're a man, Pan. What the f*ck? Don't discredit us.) Credit to you, though, for actually getting some emotional response from me. It's been two days, and I'm still very angry. Credit to the censors too, for censoring one Goddess out of this film.

If only you had censored them all.

Images sourced: YouTube