Tonight was opening night. Fight Club. The Bollywood version. You better believe I was there.

While you read my review, you can have your own Fight Club Dance Party with these hott jams from the movie!
Fight Club Rap
Boom! Boom! Boom! Fight Club!

I went with two Hindi-speaking friends so they could explain what the heck had happened when the movie ended. As soon as the credits stopped and their mouths opened, I asked them to stop. “I’m sure the movie you just watched and the movie I just watched are two completely different movies. I don’t know about the one you watched, but the one that I watched was awesome. That’s all I need to know”

Fight Club (India) is the story of four super-stylish friends with big problems. First, there’s just so many hot women throwing themselves at them they don’t know what to do about it! Secondly, every time they get into a fight at a night club, the bouncers break it up! Leaving them with no way to solve arguments about who looked at whose girl, and whose hot-pink shirt from The Gap is sexier. They find a solution for the second problem.

Vicky, (yes, Vicky) the tough guy, has heard about the idea of a Fight Club and decides to start one of his own. A place where people can fight without worrying what the man has to say.

Before every fight, Diku (the wacky one) reads out the rules. Rule #1 is you do not talk about Fight Club (despite the fact that they gather new members by walking around their college campus with clipboards). Rule #2 is you do NOT talk about Fight Club. (did I mention that the director hasn’t paid for any rights and claims that the two movies are a coincidence?) There’s also the left hand rule. If a man raises his left hand, or yells stop, the fight is over (there is no going limp in Bollywood Fight Club, they raise their hands)

However, when the rules made their way across the ocean (I can picture Tyler Durden saying “Did you hear there’s a Fight Club in India? Did you start that one?”), some of the un-numbered rules were lost in translation. Like the “Fight Club is free to all” rule. (they charge admission, both for fighters and spectators) And the men-only rule. (Girls are allowed to fight, apparently as long as they rip each other’s shirts first and then roll around on top of one another. Oh, and the unspoken “don’t fight in front of conveniently-placed billboards while enjoying the cold, refreshing taste of Pepsi” rule.

Well, at least they didn’t have any “12 dollar effects budget Matrix” fight moves. Oh wait, they did.

The first half was pretty self-explanatory, but after the intermission when the boys shut down the fight club to open a night club (and I assume all chose their levels of involvement) is when the dialogue in my head diverted pretty far from what I’m sure was actually happening. I won’t bore you with all the plot twists, since they only exist in my subtitleless imagination

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 18th, 2006 at 1:47 pm and is filed under Obscure International Film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.