Luck By Chance
It might seem as if Bollywood couldn’t possibly satirize itself — the genre is already so over-thetop — but Zoya Akhtar manages the trick deftly in Luck by Chance, an appealing tale of two would-be actors looking for movie stardom.
Vikram arrives in Mumbai from New Delhi hoping to crack the movie business, and he soon finds romance with Sona, who is a few years ahead of him in terms of making inroads but is still waiting for her big break. The film gets its digs in early and often, populating the movie-making universe with characters who are vacuous, weaselly or both.
Ms. Akhtar, who also wrote the screenplay, shows herself to be a master of extremes. A fabulous circus-theme musical number pulls out all the stops, but a scene in which an acting teacher explains why Hindi stars have to be more talented than those in Hollywood is a subtle comic gem.
Neil Genzlingr, New York Times
Duration: 156 min
Dialogue: English, Hindi
Subtitles: English
Age limit: K11
