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Romance, mobsters, and car chases

Thought exercise: Imagine Romeo and Juliet. Next, Bonnie & Clyde. Next, Thelma & Louise. OK. Now, reimagine all these doomed romantics on the same plate, add a dollop of Showgirls, a side of Dirty Dancing, a Scarface chaser and many, many, many Dukes of Hazzard car chases, and you have Kites, a Bollywood musical/gangster/melodrama romance in Hindi, Spanish and English.

Thought exercise: Imagine Romeo and Juliet. Next, Bonnie & Clyde. Next, Thelma & Louise.

OK. Now, reimagine all these doomed romantics on the same plate, add a dollop of Showgirls, a side of Dirty Dancing, a Scarface chaser and many, many, many Dukes of Hazzard car chases, and you have Kites, a Bollywood musical/gangster/melodrama romance in Hindi, Spanish and English.

Preposterous? Oh, yeah. Preposterously entertaining? You bet.

The principal attractions of this film are its gorgeous stars, Bollywood heartthrob Hrithik Roshan and Japanese-Uruguayan-Mexican bombshell Bárbara Mori, who have matching jade-green eyes and pearly smiles.

He is J, a Vegas salsa instructor fluent in Hindi. She is Linda, an illegal alien from Mexico who steals his heart. Both are engaged to the spoiled children of an Indian American casino mogul who makes Scarface look benign.

Tonally, the film from director Anurag Basu has more personalities than Sybil. Basu strictly observes the B-movie convention of giving the audience an embrace, explosion, or chase sequence at regular intervals. If you don't like the genre, wait three minutes.

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