Beth Loves Bollywood

  (The above song is NSFW.) I fully expected to be underwhelmed at best and left cold and irritated at worst by Dil Dhadakne Do , mostly because the further in time I get from Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara the less I care about it. When I went back and read my review of it from four years ago , I realized I'd say most of the same things about this film, except that the problems I had with ZNMD —I didn't care about the characters, they navigate the world too easily, the women aren't written as fully—are handled much better in DDD . If Zoya Akhtar wants to make largely the same movie a second time, at least she much improves on it*, which is much more than can probably be said for someone like her cousin Sajid Khan. First off, I really appreciate the casting. Everyone is a sensible choice and everyone does well. Sure, some actors more to do than others, but those with meat make the most of it, especially Ranveer Singh, without whom I would have been far less entertain

[Spoilers! They will be marked in situ.] To get it out of the way: I like this movie a whooooooole lot. It's fun , in addition to being rich, thorough, elaborate, and engaging. I don't usually associate "fun" with wartime drug trafficking and squishy gore (there are several not-for-the-squeamish moments), but that's what Dibakar Banerjee is so consistently able to do. The story and its attendant details and visuals fold back in on themselves; things that seem throwaway as they happen pop back up later as context or stage-setting. This film strikes the balance that must be so hard for mysteries: there has to be suspense, but there also have to be clues and answers among what the author introduces, because solutions that come out of nowhere are frustrating. The world of Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! is big enough to let the questions jangle around but not so big they peter out. The acting is consistently excellent, full of moments of the actors reveling in