Hollywood vs. Bollywood (of sperm donation and sinking ships).

Watching Vicky Donor and Titanic in Kolkata, India.

Sometimes you just need a break from it all. To escape the city. To escape the heat. And so Jaime and I decided that we would spend one day in Kolkata at the movies, creating our own double feature, seeing something from Bollywood and something from Hollywood.

The first movie wasn’t playing for a couple of hours after we got there though, so we ate some Pizza Hut in the food court, walked around the mall.

Our original plan was to see Hate Story, merely because we kept seeing poster after poster for it around town. But the guy at the ticket counter said that Vicky Donor was better. And so, we took his word for it. Besides, the movie poster featured a bunch of kids and a bottle of sperm. It really didn’t seem like anything could be wrong with this plan.

And so, when the time came, we got some popcorn, found our seats, and settled in for what was to come.

The movie theaters in India have assigned seating. It’s something I’ve seen in other countries, so it wasn’t weird. But what was weird was that they started in the back and just filled in all the seats. So the entire audience was next to each other in the back couple of rows of the theater, leaving the entire front completely open.

And people seem to have no qualms about answering their cell phones and holding complete conversations at any point during the movie.

And instead of sneak previews we were treated to a few commercials. There was an anti-smoking commercial, an AIDS kills commercial, a religious tolerance commercial, and then a few for skin creams and toothpastes and the like.

Vicky Donor was, actually, pretty good. By far the best Hindi comedy about sperm donation I’ve seen in theaters this year…

Though the movie was in Hindi, some portions of it were in English, which helped us to establish a few things. And while we couldn’t understand most of what was being said, the plot was easy to get. Unfortunately we didn’t get the jokes, and Jaime and I just looked at each other, left out, when the rest of the audience would burst into laughter.

Basically it was about a guy who ends up donating sperm to make money. And then he falls in love and gets married. And then his wife finds out. It was part comedy. Part drama. At least, I think it was part comedy from the laughter of the audience.

Later in the day, after wasting a little more time in the food court and at a nearby bookstore, we returned to see a small little independent movie that you may or may not have heard of: Titanic 3D.

Of course, I’ve seen Titanic before. I’ve actually seen it a couple of times just on this trip already. But this was playing. And in English. And in 3D. And Jaime really wanted to go.

The 3D was OK. Though at times it seemed more distracting that anything. Since it wasn’t filmed to be in 3D there were too many spots with awkward random out of focus people were in the foreground and there was too much emphasis on them. And it’s not like there were any parts where the ship just sailed into the audience or people fell off the boat into us. So, I don’t know.

But it was still good. But (spoiler alert) the ship still sank. So it was still sad.

🙁

Hollywood vs. Bollywood (of sperm donation and sinking ships). Watching Vicky Donor and Titanic in Kolkata, India.

Bucket List Idea: Watch a Bollywood Movie in India. Hollywood vs. Bollywood (of sperm donation and sinking ships). Watching Vicky Donor and Titanic in Kolkata, India.