Beth Loves Bollywood

Hera Pheri is another of those films that I want to keep in a perpetual state of just having begun, so that I am aware of how amazing it is yet still have more pure joy to experience. It is such a good movie in such a Beth-friendly/-appropriate way that I cannot believe I have not already seen it; simultaneously, it is such a good movie that I wish it were still out there waiting to be seen for the first time. A million kisses to Ness for finally giving me the nudge I needed to procure this top-shelf masala fun. 
In the name of full disclosure it should be stated that most of my favorite things about this film are related to Vinod Khanna. First, he is  screen-meltingly hot.
The above scene opens the film, with Vinod (as Ajay) drunk, angry, and somehow swaggering even slumped in a chair. But even better, as Ness said to me while discussing the film, is that his character seems like an actual nice guy. A devotee of Hanuman, he prays more than he drinks. He's so bashful around women …

(If you have no idea what I'm talking about, see the real Sassy Gay Friend on the Second City Network! My favorite episode is Ophelia.)

Meet Chandni from Yash Chopra's Chandni.
She is about to marry one or the other of two completely unsuitable men who seem old enough to be her father.
This fate could have been avoided if she'd had a Sassy Gay Friend.

CHANDNI (looking wistfully out the window of a train rushing towards Bombay)  Sigh.
SASSY GAY FRIEND (POSSIBLY ABHISHEK AS HIS ALTER EGO IN DOSTANA)
Prances down the aisle of the moving train wearing a conductor's cap
and punctuating his statements with his hole punch What are you doing? What, what, what are you doing?
CHANDNI Rohit...Rohit broke up with me! He says he hates me! So I'm running away from my memories to the big city.
SGF (skeptically) Rohit? Rohit. You're leaving your life behind...for Rohit.
CHANDNI I...
SGF (interrupting) The man who introduced himself by grabbing your wrist and not letting go eve…

In a masala-appropriate coincidence, Temple and I both recently selected vintage movies simply because of a hat that appeared in the film. (Hers is Yari Dushmani.) You can understand why I had to have this DVD as soon as I pulled it out of the bin at Planet M.
Fortunately, the hat was not a lie. Paapi is fantastic. Within seconds of the production banner, we have a lechy, shirtless Kamal Kapoor; an innocent, shirtless Heena Kausar; hot pink walls; a fake passport; a gold medallion; a fedora; Iftekhar as a police officer/father figure to a family of orphans; a motorcycle; and a stolen medal. If that isn't enough, someone looks out his window to see a party full of out-of-their-senses white folks dancing so suggestively that he is stirred into a murderous, rapey rage in the middle of the night/thunderstorm/a qawwali-like song led by Manmohan Krishna belting lyrics like "Clouds of sin are thundering and it is raining sin!" as the music intertwines with the firangis' hi-…