Cheap Bombay (DVD) (Mani Ratnam) Price

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Customer Reviews of Bombay

Watch a REAL Indian dance sequence
We begin in a small village. It is monsoon season (nearly as requisite to an Indian film as tumbleweeds in a Western). Our protagonist has returned from the big city to visit his family. His father is a pretentiously orthodox Brahmin, a pillar of his community (of which he repeatedly reminds anyone who will listen to him). One day a butterfly flaps its wings in Paris, and the resultant gust of wind blows up a Muslim woman's veil -- after a single glimpse of her face, our hero is irrevocably in love.

Several dance sequences and illicit meetings later, the parents of the two find out, and the results are as hideous and explosive as if a black man had whistled at a white woman in Mobile, Alabama. The couple go to Bombay and, after some amusing post-nuptial frustrations, have children.

At that point, the movie becomes more serious, with scenes from the Muslim-Hindu riots of Bombay in the early '90s. Being a Bollywood movie, after all, some pieces are cartoonishly done (watch the part where our hero gets to save his family), but the truth of the riots is present and terrifying.

The movie was well shot, the principals are both very charming, and the dance sequences feature plump, dark women -- a very nice slice of life if you've been watching too many Kareena Kapoor/Shah Rukh Khan extravaganzas.

This is certainly my favorite Bollywood musical, it's very sincere and sweet.

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Must see
For those you want a nice movie filled with a good story line, not heavy on emotion and above all a scintillating music this is a good movie to see.

Made with the backdrop of the Bombay communal riots, doesn't offer a solution, but instead shows the pain and suffering of common people.

the only negative was that the censor board decided to cut scenes which were objectionable to Bal Thackery and his goons nad also to appease the Muslim community.