Delhi Belly: The Best Comedy of 2011

Hi everyone!

What do you get when you cross "The Hangover" with "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels" with a little disco madness in the form of the great Hindi actor Aamir Khan (who also produced the film) playing a character named "The Disco Fighter"? -- the madcap Hin-glish comedy "Delhi Belly," my pick for the funniest movie of 2011.

Never heard of it? You probably haven't unless you're one of the billion people who follow Hindi cinema, otherwise known as Bollywood. "Delhi Belly" was released last summer and grossed huge box office everywhere it seems except here in the U.S. But it is now available on Netflix in both DVD and streaming formats.

I just watched it and I have to say as ridiculous and vulgar as it is, I haven't laughed this hard in a long time.

The plot is too convoluted to really summarize but I'll try in a nutshell. Three down on their luck room-mates, Tashi (Imran Khan), Nitan (Kunaal Roy Kapur), and Arup (Vin Das) find themselves in the center of a drug and diamonds crime syndicate. A case of really bad food poisoning (hence, the Delhi Belly of the title) results in a botched drop-off involving stolen diamonds and a stool sample, a lot of shooting and chasing, a double--or was that a triple?--cross resulting in a burqa-clad getaway, and a wonderfully ludicrous end credits number to the tune of a 1970s blaxploitation pastiche called "I Hate You Like I Love You." (This is where Aamir Khan's Disco Fighter comes in.)

It definitely isn't your typical Bollywood film. Ninety-five percent of the dialogue is in English (though you may want to turn on those English subtitles for the Hindi bits) and it's running time is a brisk hour and forty-two minutes. The two musical numbers don't interrupt the flow of the story and are frankly totally tongue-in-cheek. If this had been made in the U.S. it would certainly have earned an R rating and it was criticized in India for the fact that it basically throws the Hindi film formula out the window.

I loved it.

Word of warning though: next time you order Indian take-out, you may want to rethink that Tandoori Chicken. Or, more to the point, don't order Tandoori Chicken from a street vendor in Delhi. Oh, and also...beware of living in an apartment beneath a traditional Indian dance studio. I'll say no more.

Ciao.