To be released tomorrow on DVD

For the lovers of Indian films — and they number in the hundreds of millions — the coming of Raavan held the promise of celebration: Holi and Diwali in one blast of musical drama. Its creator, Mani Ratnam, is the subcontinent’s premier writer-director, though he usually works in his home town of Madras, and in the Tamil language, not in Hindi Mumbai, a.k.a. Bollywood. The movie’s stars, Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai, are Indian cinema’s golden couple: he the son of superstar Amitabh Bachchan, she the former Miss World made her film debut in Ratnam’s Iruvar in 1997. The music director is A.R. Rahman, a Ratnam discovery whose infectious melodies in more than 100 films have made him, by some accounts, the world’s best-selling recording artist. Rahman won two Oscars for his Slumdog Millionaire score.

In 2007 this eminent quartet collaborated on the popular, well-received Guru, a fictionalized biopic of the Indian plutocrat Dhirubhai Ambani. (Abhishek and Aishwarya, known everywhere as Abhi and Ash, fell in love on the set and were married shortly after the opening.) The new film would be a modern retelling of The Ramayana, the beloved Sanskrit epic about the kidnapping of Sita, wife of the monarch Rama, by the demon king Ravana; Bachchan would play the kidnapper, Rai the abductee and the Tamil star Vikram her husband. Filmed in three versions — Hindi (as Raavan), Tamil (as Raavanan) and Telegu (as Villain) — and released June 18 on 2,200 screens around the world, including 109 in the United.States, the picture had all the makings of a critical success and international hit.

Except it wasn’t. The local reviews ranged from disappointed to scathing (though the few American critics were more indulgent). The film’s global opening weekend take, of about $11.6 million, fell far below that of the recent Indian hits 3 Idiots, My Name Is Khan (see below) and Kites. Film fans were soon jamming the Internet to express derision toward Raavan and complain about Bachchan’s outsize acting style. So noisome was the tumult that on June 20, two days after the opening, Papa Amitabh took to Twitter to blame his son’s character’s “erratic behaviour” on the director’s vigorous editing style: “Lot of merited film edited out, causing inconsistent performance and narrative.” Ratnam tweeted back, “Amitji should have conveyed me whatever he wanted to say, he has my cell no.” One of India’s all-time top film stars and its greatest living auteur were dissing each other like sophomore cheerleaders in a Facebook snit.

So how is the movie? Well, Raavan — the Hindi version, being released on DVD — is better than you’d be led to think by all the outrage; it’s just not up to the director’s high standard. It begins with a vibrant chaos of images, as Rahman’s ultra-catchy tune Beera Beera (listen to it on YouTube) accentuates the propulsive pace. The movie boasts some impressive stunt work, as the stars or their stunt doubles slide down rock faces, drop through tree branches and navigate a giant waterfall. The best action scene takes place on a rickety footbridge with the purported hero dangling over a ravine, his life literally in the hand of the purported villain. At the end, the film ventures into the territory of ethical ambiguity. But in between are wastes of creaky incident without much enriching of character or plot. And the central performance by Bachchan is either a bold stab at thespic immortality or an essay in grotesque derangement. Maybe both.

A region troubled by insurgency gets a new chief inspector: Dev (Vikram), accompanied by his faithful wife Ragini (Rai). In short order, Ragini is kidnapped by the legendary rebel Beera (Bachchan) and held for 14 days — as opposed to the 14 years of the queen’s captivity in The Ramayana — while she juggles her hatred for Beera with a growing sympathy. In a flashback, we learn that Beera has abducted Ragini in retaliation for the long-ago abuse suffered by his beloved stepsister Jamuniya (Priyamani) at the hands of the local police. Meanwhile, in his desperate search for Ragini, Dev finds an ally in the forest guard Sanjeevani (Govinda). While on the wooden bridge, Den and Beera finally clash, but what seems like the movie’s climax is just where it starts to get interesting.

While Raavan may not be not up there with Nayakan, Roja, Bombay and Dil Se, it’s very recognizably a Mani Ratnam film. His work often touches on controversial real-life figures (Mafia bosses, revolutionaries) and incendiary political issues (terrorist kidnappings, the Bombay riots of 1992-93, the Sri Lankan war), and Raavan is no exception. Ahbishek’s Beera, while clearly a version of “The Ramayana’s Ravana” character, is also reputed to be partially based on Kobad Ghandy, a Maoist leader of the ongoing Naxalite insurgency in northern India.

One big difference: Ghandy is a well-educated, world-traveled theoretician; Beera is a primitive warrior. Bachchan plays him as a creature of wild gestures and grimaces, ever slapping his cranium and making chaka-chaka-chaka grunts, with a flashing of clenched teeth not seen since Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster had their showdown at the O.K. Corral. It’s a performance both feral and mopey, as if Sly Stallone had taken a crash course in the Stanislavski method before going into the jungle to play Rambo. And when Beera holds Ragini captive, the unmistakable point of reference is the fable of Beauty and the Beast. To put it in movie-monster terms, she is Faye Wray and he the Ramayana King Kong.

What’s odd is the lack of chemistry between kidnapper and victim, considering that the actors who play them are husband and wife. The love story the audience expects to develop has no hint of physical or even emotional intimacy. That’s partly because the clash of acting styles is as large as the chasm separating Ragini and Beera and partly because Rai, while easy to look at, lacks the spark of a natural performer. In Guru, Abhishek had said moonily to Aishwarya, “You shine as beautifully as polyester,” and Rai is always a fairly synthetic actress. The genuine screen charisma here is provided by the Tamil ingénue Priyamani, who invests the supporting role of Beera’s stepsister with a flirtatious charm during her bridal scene, then aching despair when the police violate her on her wedding night. And for the film’s core emotional connection, you must look to the relationship of the stalwart policeman Dev and his loving wife Ragini.

The movie looks terrific. This bucolic melodrama is set in some of India’s most spectacular natural settings, including Kerala’s Athirappilly Falls (which Ratnam also used in Iruvar and Guru), the lush hills of Malshej Ghat near Mumbai and the forests of Karnataka. Cinematographer Santosh Sivan contrasts the lushness of nature with Beera’s monochromatic mud war paint and the chalk-smeared faces of his followers, similar to the camouflage daubs worn by Martin Sheen and the Vietnamese natives in Apocalypse Now. In familiar Ratnam fashion, the camera often does 360-degree wind sprints around the actors. When the director creates a compelling fictional universe in other films, his camerabatics express the turbulence of characters in extremis. Here, the whirling technique is a case of going nowhere fast.

As a showcase for some of Indian cinema’s most renowned talents, Raavan has to be considered a disappointment. But as a 2010 epic about a forest bandit, hey — it’s better than the Russell Crowe Robin Hood. And, thanks to A.R. Rahman’s infectious songs, this one you can dance to. Grade: B

Welcome (2010) The subject of Philippe Lioret’s compelling social drama is about those who are not — welcome, that is. The bitter irony of the title is evident from first to last in the story of a young Kurd who aims to swim to England and the swimming instructor who tries to help him get there. The movie hit French screens trailing clouds of controversy after a government minister complained of its sympathetic view of illegal immigrants and those who give them aid or shelter. But Lioret hangs his polemic on a strong, simple story line that will engage viewers and appeal even to those who take a more restrictive view than the filmmaker on such issues. Lioret is able to achieve a seamless blend of the domestic and the social — the hopeless situation of the immigrants is portrayed with near-documentary realism — thanks to an impressive performance by Vincent Lindon as the instructor, whose characteristic shamble and hangdog expression have rarely been put to better use. Laurent Dailland’s nighttime photography evokes the limbo in which the unwelcome visitors exist, while the contained performances and the sobriety of the score remind us that these are individual destinies at stake. The movie offers no simple solutions, nor even a feel-good ending, but throws a cold light on the human tragedy that underlies many of today’s headlines. Grade: B-minus

Date Night (2010) Steve Carell and Tina Fey team up for an adventure that turns a run-of-the-mill married couple’s date upside down. When you’ve got two of TV’s funniest performers front and center, you don’t need much to make things click. So some of Date Night’s best moments are simply Fey and Carell quipping, deadpanning or bantering, often all at the same time. And the duo are fine in the movie’s early, bored-with-their-lives moments. The trouble is, too much of director Shawn Levy’s ‘80s-ish lark is filled with noise, when it really needed more quietly silly stuff. Through it all, Carell and Fey are charming and sly and even manage to be genteel while bumping and grinding through a strip-club routine. Neither of them are joke hogs; as in their previous big-screen efforts, they’re happy to toss laughs back and forth (this should, however, be as high-concept as Carell gets — meaning, no more Get Smart shtick). The two of them absolutely work. It’s just a shame they’re all dressed up with nowhere to go. Grade: C-plus

The Joneses (2010) The Joneses (Demi Moore, David Duchovny, Amber Heard and Ben Hollingsworth) are rich, beautiful and seem to be the perfect family. There’s only one slight problem. They’re not actually a family, but a team of stealth marketers which moves into upscale communities in order to hook the neighbors on all its wonderful toys. Writer-director Derrick Borte has a dark vision of maxed-out 21st-century suburbia where advertising is not only inescapable, but the essential fabric that bonds friends and family. What he lacks is follow-through. The perverse dynamic within the fake family — the “daughter” unprofessionally slips into bed with daddy — gives the early scenes a satiric cold-bloodedness the film gradually fritters away. Borte also succeeds, for a time, in making the family’s lifestyle seem convincingly seductive: Why wouldn’t potential consumers be enticed by the products and gadgets that are bringing happiness to this impossibly glamorous bunch? The inevitable breakdown on this commercial façade might have led the movie into more disturbing territory, but Borte goes the other direction, away from jagged comedy and toward well-meaning homilies. Grade: C

Death at a Funeral (2010) A day in the life of an American family coming together to put a beloved husband and father to rest. Possibly setting a speed record for a remake, this movie takes a sporadically funny, little-seen 2007 British slapstick comedy and faithfully restages it with a B-list American cast. Both versions were written by Britain’s Dean Craig, who has basically changed only the dialogue for the California-set remake, efficiently if impersonally directed by playwright-director Neil LaBute with an ensemble headed by a relatively restrained Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence. It’s because of a superior cast that this version is the rare comedy remake that’s funnier than the original, however slightly. Personally, though, I’m not sure it was worth the effort. Grade: C

My Name Is Khan (2010) Rizwan Khan (Shahrukh Khan), a Muslim man with Asperger syndrome, lives happily with his wife, Mandira (Kajol), in San Francisco until a tragedy drives her away after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Now he is on a quest to recapture her heart. Traveling across America, Rizwan faces prejudice because of his religion and unusual behavior, but he also inspires the people he meets with his unique outlook on life. This is a very average, ordinary film that goes haywire. Racial biases, the aftermath of 9/11 and the war on terror are dicey topics to handle in real life, let alone on celluloid, and director Karan Johar oversimplifies the issues. The film is on a large scale and beautifully shot, but the story doesn’t live up to even half of that. The director cannot seem to decide whether he is making a love story, telling the story of a man’s journey or making a statement on the biases that pervaded the United States after 9/11. Words like jihad, 9/11 and Al Qaeda are thrown around without context. Khan’s actions seem contrived and out of line with the story. A lot of the supposed emotional moments seem gimmicky. The acting suffers as a result. Any film that underestimates its audiences and dumbs down its content is letting itself in for a failure. This is a huge disappointment. Grade: C

La Mission (2010) This was clearly a labor of love for the Bratt brothers: Peter wrote and directed it, Benjamin is the star, and both took a producer’s credit. They were born in San Francisco in the early 1960s, and the film conveys an intense nostalgia for the Mission District of their youth. The garage of Che Rivera (Benjamin Bratt), a bus driver, ex-con and middle-aged low rider, is a shrine to the post-hippie, pre-gentrification 1970s: César Chávez, Clint Eastwood, Vito Corleone, Alcoholics Anonymous, Chicano culture, the Stylistics. The distinguished cinematographer Hiro Narita (Never Cry Wolf) captures the hard San Francisco light and the burnished glow of the beautifully painted cars. Unfortunately, this care is lavished on an overwrought, predictable story of an angry ethnic father: Che discovers that his son, Jesse (Jeremy Ray Valdez), is gay, and he spends the rest of the movie hitting things, including the bottle, until he has an epiphany with the help of an Aztec ceremony. Bratt, so good as a conflicted, self-effacing drug counselor in the recently canceled television series The Cleaner, is less assured as the macho hipster Che, strutting around the neighborhood saying, “Check you later” and “Where the party people at?” Peter Bratt does his brother no favors: at the height of the father-son conflict, Che actually declares, “You’re dead to me.” Erika Alexander lends some dignity to the film as the new neighbor who catches Che’s roving eye. Grade: C

The Good Heart (2010) Why are people still making movies so beholden to creaky indie formulas? You could spend all of this film counting cliches, from the melancholy score and bleached-out tone to the quirky characters and painfully predictable conclusion. Brian Cox is Jacques, the cranky New Yorker with an unreliable ticker, while Paul Dano is Lucas, the homeless waif who teaches him to love. Together, along with French beauty Isild Le Besco, they run Jacques’ bar, planning for the day when Lucas will inherit it. Dagur Kari both wrote and directed, so he has no one else to blame for so little originality. Neither does his hard-working cast, all of whom deserve better. Grade: C-minus

Multiple Sarcasms (2010) It’s no accident that the unhappy architect played by Timothy Hutton in this 1979-set movie spends his weekday afternoons at the Cinema Village playing hooky, repeatedly watching a big film from that year, Starting Over. That film features what is arguably Burt Reynolds’ best performance, as a newly divorced man in what was a response to feminist films such as An Unmarried Woman. Hutton, who won an Oscar for 1980's Ordinary People, does fine work in Multiple Sarcasms as a man whose marriage is coming apart during his mid-life crisis. But the movie itself shows how stories like Starting Over have devolved since they were abandoned by major studios for threadbare, navel-gazing indies like this one. First-time filmmaker Brooks Branch underutilizes an estimable cast in a movie that basically sums itself up in a line of dialogue: “I love you, I really do, but this f---ing whiny white-guy s--t has got to stop.” It doesn’t. Not after Hutton, fired from his job, locks himself in the bathroom with his typewriter — and his fed-up wife Dana Delany (almost as chilly as Candace Bergen in Starting Over) flees with their precocious daughter (India Ennenga). It continues when Hutton, despite warnings from his gay male best friend (Mario Van Peebles), makes a pass at his longtime platonic female best friend (Mira Sorvino). It seems unlikely that Hutton’s loser will ever complete a play he’s been working on, and even more improbable that his agent (Stockard Channing) will find someone to produce it. Multiple Sarcasms happens to be the title of the play within the movie, and it turns out to be by far the most interesting thing in the film. Not that many people will want to suffer through the first 90 minutes of this vanity production to get there. Grade: D

Letters to God (2010) Christian filmmaking takes a turn for the worst with this treacle-y tale “inspired” by the true story of an 8-year-old boy fighting brain cancer who carries on a pen-and-paper correspondence with God. An alcoholic, substitute postman retrieves them and finds his own life transformed in the process. Basically a cinematic infomercial for the power of prayer, Letters to God is far too simplistic and pandering to find success outside of the targeted church-going family DVD renters/buyers it’s hoping to reach. Decent cash register receipts can be expected from this sector but the collection plate may be empty otherwise. Tyler Doherty (Tanner Maguire) is a spirited young man plagued with brain cancer and forced to endure endless chemotherapy sessions. His faith and ability to express his thoughts in letters addressed simply to “God” are what gets him through the experience and also eventually have a profound effect on those around him, including a part-time divorced postal worker, Brady McDaniels (Jeffrey S. Johnson), who hits the local bar when he’s not delivering mail and finds his life a mess as a result of his alcoholism. On top on his other problems he learns he is now going to lose any rights to see his son after a near-fatal traffic accident and DUI lands him in hot water. His encounters with Tyler and his letters give him a respite from the Jack Daniels and seem to have a life-changing effect on him as he grows closer to Tyler’s family and especially his widowed mom (Robyn Lively), who has a series of problems of her own including Tyler’s illness and the neglect of her older teenaged son, Ben (Michael Christopher Bolten). After a number of incidents provide the film’s desperately needed sense of drama, Brady finds a way to energize the entire community by turning Tyler’s letters into positive action. First time co-writer and co-director Patrick Doughtie used his own personal experience with the death of his-10-year old son (to whom the film is dedicated) to weave this tale of hope and faith in God and religion during the most trying times of life. While the effort is certainly laudable and understandably cathartic it’s also (sadly) a real slog for us viewers. The film’s whitebread suburban setting is so hopelessly old-fashioned and homogenized you’d swear Beaver Cleaver must live right down the street. Unlike other more sophisticated recent Christian movie successes like Fireproof with Kirk Cameron there is no complexity to these characters at all and the relentless pitch for prayer as the answer to all life’s problems is laid on like molasses. Under the circumstances performances are okay, with Greg Kinnear look-a-like Johnson and Lively getting the lions share of the big emotional breakdown scenes. Maguire does fine along with ever-smiling best friend Samantha, played by the delightful Bailee Madison (Brothers). Veterans Marie Cheeatham as Grandma and Ralph Waite don’t have much to do but offer bumper sticker platitudes or sit around on the front porch playing checkers. It’s that kind of movie. And you thought they didn’t make ‘em like this anymore. Grade: D