A woman pretends to be a man to play cricket in "Dil Bole Hadippa!"

Did I just see Rani Mukherjee on AE?!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH ok I'll calm down. I've been a devout fan of hers since I was a little girl, I adore, I think she's one of the most beautiful women to walk this earth!! So this is She's the Man bollywood version? I can't wait to dance like a crazy person in front of my screen after I own the dvd.

Bollywood for life!

*Rosie, Rosa je vous aime Rosette*

and not Twelfth Night? Give the bard a break! ;)

oh and to answer the English Women's cricket question to a certain extent, check out http://www.ecb.co.uk/news/womens/ - the England & Wales Cricket Board.

but i have no idea why the leg pads are so blue; they're supposed to be white, hence cricket clothing being known as "whites"...

I was trying to find out why the lead actress looks so familiar and after googleing her name I found out she was in my all-time favorite bollywood movie Kuch Kuch Hota Hai! She is absolutley beautiful.

Even though this movie would probably be 10 times better with her ending up with a girl... this is India we're talking about. The only Bollywood movie with a lesbian in it that I know of was a complete and utter disaster. It is called Girlfriend and the lesbian character in it is a man-hater in love with her best friend. But after her best friend falls in love with a guy (who offensively pretends to be gay to get close to her) she gets jealous and tries to kill him. Oh and she took advantage of her best friend when she was drunk. Twice. Worst representation of a lesbian I have ever seen. I couldn't even finish the movie.

So, I'll take what I can get. I do like gender bending and the lead actress is a beauty. I will definitely watch this :)

I know enough to get it wrong, but the pads go all the way from the feet to mid-thigh as the batsman stands directly in front of the bails that the bowler is trying to hit.  If Pakistan's Shoab Akhtar is flinging a ball at your legs at over 100mph, you need padding.  As for coloured uniforms, a.k.a 'pyjamas', a number of competitions are played in them, but the highest profile games, such as 'Test' matches (which can last for up to five days) are played in whites. 

I think there are quite a number of women's teams in England and the national squad are World champions, regularly more succesful than our men's team in competition. Scotland and Wales do play the cricket, but the sport has a very low profile in those countries by comparison to England. 

OK- my best friend's family is actually from Punjab and if memory serves correct, her brother was telling me that the colors come from India separating itself from British colonists. In short, once India gained independence (and maybe even before then), they (the people of India) kept the sport but decided to add their own flair to it and have colored uniforms instead of the traditional British white.

If there are any Indian AE readers out there, please feel free to correct me! :0)

Though Rani is not my favorite but she is a good actress. I am going to watch this movie as soon as it comes out

Bollywood has already produced two gay films - "Dostana" ( gay in a comic way) and second "Girlfriend"-  As stated by Traci this movie was a disaster and I agree to it.

By the way, a warning for people who aren't accustomed to watching Bollywood films but plan on watching this one: Bollywood films kinda suck. Anyone who's watched Indian movies from the Kuch Kuch Hota Hai period will definitely agree that the films they're churning these days are of a lower quality. By suck I mean that they are realllly long, predictable , mindless and poor rip-offs of American films. This is pretty much an Indian copy of She's the Man.

Yay awesome. I agree with summerfield above. There's a lot of cross dressing in Indian movies, but usually of the male variety with guys dressing up as girls. I don't think there's been a mainstream male actor who hasnt cross dressed. Its not so common with the females. There is definitely a lot of gay male subtext. I have to admit i dont know of a main female lead who has dressed as a male for an entire movie but i know a lot of it has happened in songs with another female playing the male lover while the main leading girl dreams of the leading guy. It's also happened in songs where a side character dresses as a male and pretends to be the male lead while dancing with the female. I can think of a lot of movies of the main lead dressing as female though. Complete with a lot of gay jokes..and not in a good way.

So i'm so glad that they've finally got some gay female subtext happening. I think they might be trying to capitalise on the Chak de phenomenon with female sports. I have to say that Rani looks pretty cool and kinda hot in drag. Maybe I think i'm the only one thinking that but oh well. She definitely has the comic timing to pull it off.

As someone who plays cricket i have to say the pads are to cover as much of the leg area for protection against the cricket ball which is pretty hard. The blue I think is representative of the Indian team colours. In the shorter form of the game the teams wear coloured clothes instead of white and the Indian team colours are blue. So if she is representing India in the cricket world cup she would wear blue.

 Like these ladies of the Indian women's cricket team.

And off topic but the Australian team wears yellow/gold and green/gold sometimes.

Go Lisa Sthalekar !!!

Women cricketers= hotness personified. Especially the way they skilfully wield their bats. caressing the ball to the boundary line.   Seriously women's cricket has got to   be the gayest sport. :)

Amazingly attractive Indian actress graces my computer screen, I'm moving to India. I mean really, these women are soo mysterious and their eyes!! Like really, their eyes!!

Let's get one thing straight, I'm not.

I'll definately check it out when I can get hold of a copy in Australia. I love cricket and wish that Women's cricket was more prominent. Lisa Sthalekar is an amazing cricketer and the Auzzie women's side in general is pretty awesome. In terms of good Indian sport movies with gay subtext I'd definately check out CHAK DE INDIA. It's about the Indian women's hockey team who won gold in the 2002 olympics. Definately a movie that made me drool :P. 

Thank you for covering this Sarah Warn...its nice to indian movies make it on afterellen once in a while especially since..yeah like people above stated...bollywood movies do not handle homosexuality sensitively...it is just mainly used for comic relief purposes...and although I normally takes things pretty lightly...NEVER watch the movie Girlfriend...like someone else stated...it is actually insulting...

I'm not gonna get too excited about this movie cause, mainly even in women power movies in India...somehow they still come back to stereotypical indian woman image which kinda pisses me off...But if I put expectations aside it seems like it'll be a funny rip-off of She's the Man...Bollywood style lol....So if someone sees it let me know how it is...Then I'll watch it..lol

From all the Bollywood movies I've seen, Dil Bole Hadippa has never been attempted in Indian cinema before. Usually movies are repeated a lot so this is quite interesting. Nevertheles, Bollywoood cinema does tend to incorporate a lot of sport into their movies. One notable movie about a women's field hockey team is Chak De India. However, most movies involving sports usually have to do with men.

I personally think Rani Mukerji is beautiful, and one of the most talented in Bollywood. However, I'm surprised she is doing this role because she is SO short. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to seeing the result.

BTW the correct spelling of her name is Mukerji not Mukherjee she changed it to match the name on her passport but other people say she did it for luck. 

OK, you've done it! I really don't think of myself as an overexcited fangirl. But Rani on AE? *happy-dreamy-face*

Love her to pieces. The eyes. The voice. The smile. She'll always stay special to me: When I first came out to friends (also big Bollywood followers), it was about "No, I'm not really a fan of Shah Rukh Khan's, I'm more into Rani." :) 

For this movie in particular,  I'm just really happy there's a new one out with Rani,  "Thoda Pyar Thoda Magic" seems like ages ago.

If there is any gay subtext though, I'm expecting it to be extremely awkward. But the rest of the movie should just be good fun. Seeing Rani do a cool Bhangra dance will be great.

This movie has everything I like in it. I love Bollywood, I love the whole gender-swap thing in movies and last but definitely not least, I love Rani.

I'm really looking forward to seeing this. 

We've got a really strong England team in womens cricket. Really been enjoying watching the 20/20s and tests. (which is easy when you work in a Sony Centre surrounded by TVs)

Claire Taylor is an amazing batsman (forgive the term) and Sarah Taylor is rising up the ranks and turning heads now. It's awesome seeing them as batting partners. We won the world cup and we've generally been kicking some Austrailian butt. Which is a big thing in cricket. England vs Austrailia.

I was a little amused to see this blogpost!

This sort of a theme has been done till death and the statement about 'women's empowerment' do the rounds everytime such films/shows on TV come up. I can't agree with you more when you say "it's just another heterosexual film". Everytime I see a gay (lesbians are the most un-represented "species") character on TV, my heart cringes. It's for comedic relief.  There was a movie last year called "Dostana", some sort of a "I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry". 

Fire, well, it scores well on visibility but again the story line was not affirmative. Of course, for any film or art form, context needs to be taken into account. 

There are some really good Indian (not Bollywood) films around. I am personally not very fond of the "K" genre. There has been a recent movie starring Shehid Kapur called "Kaminey". It's a well made film, it drags in parts but nevertheless a lot different from the usual stuff. There are other two recent films, "Dev D" and "Gulaal" by the same director. Gulaal was a personal favorite, it's a political satire on nationalism and identity politics. Even the songs were a spoof on various political situations including America and Iraq war. 

P.S.I loved Jab We Met atleast that movie had a perspective. 

thanks Sarah, I absolutely didn't know about this. I'm an absolute cricket nut (I'm not ashamed to admit that I've shed more tears over cricket than anything else in the past 6 years) , and a Bollywood fan too - part and parcel of being part Indian.

And as Hopeless Savage mentioned above, women's cricket is absolutely brilliant, especially with the England team doing unbelievably well internationally (yes, I'm an England fan and hurray for the Ashes!) But if I may say so, Claire Taylor is impossibly gorgeously hot. Not necessarily the most talented batsman, but probably the most focused, hardworking and currently the best batsman in women's cricket. Her gorgeous forearms, her floppy brown hair and her sweet dark brown puppy dog eyes don't hurt either. sweet cheeseballs, her forearms!

...OMG..OMG..i just had a happy cricket and bollywood and rani all on AE *happy dance*

i am am majorrrr cricket fan..MAJOR....i think all this runs thru my indian blood :D

but yes i agree women's cricket is the BOMB....i watched the T20 religiously and watched the english girls bring home the cup live WOOP

i will deffo be watching this film....and it may stand side by side with my fav film of all time Lagaan....rachel shelley helped bump it up to no.1 hehe

thanks sarah for bringing this to AE

lol I had to stop and check to make sure I was on AE, cause usually that would be Maddow's face up there, but nope not today:) Umm...As a self proclaimed Bollywood expert, I don't think Bollywood's been bitten by the lazy script writing bug that's affecting Hollywood at the moment, just yet. So yeah, I believe this would be the first time they've created something like this. Am really not a fan of "She's the man" type storylines, but just because it's in bollywood format, I'm already a fan. I think they've done one with sort of like the same theme also in Chak De India, minus the singing and dancing, you know in regards to the sort of discrimination that women face in sports. And I think we can all agree that, that's definitely not a problem significant only to women in India or just cricket.

So that's awesome, but as far as seeing Lez action on there, I doubt that will happen. We just need to get Shammim Sarif (sory If that's spelt wrong) to start a new division, titled LEZZYWOOD. And she can just start by adding bollywood style of music and dance, into the continued story from The World Unseen, only this time call it The World Uncovered(?) lol Now give me that, and I'll honestly die happy. Speaking of dying, so sad about Ted Kennedy:( *hops of the Jai Ho train*

As a huge cricket and bollywood fan, i loved reading all of the comments and sarah's coverage of Dil Bole Hadippa. Im amazed by the number of people on AE who knew about cricket. I'm one of the craziest fans of cricket since i was a kid. love that sport!!

As far as i know Bollywood movies, there wont be as much gay humor as you expect, but that remains to be seen.

See now, none of this nonsense would happen if there was proper gender testing in sport. Women who look like men, men who look like women. What's the world coming to?

Eh?

Be alert.  The world needs more lerts.

Karan Johar  is one of the few Bollywood filmmakers who has been featuring gay humor in his movies. Kal Ho Na Ho had a huge gay subtext (Saif Ali Khan and Shah Rukh kept getting caught in compromising positions by the maid) and Dostaana had an out and out gay sensibility. Maybe we should ask him to feature the girls in one of his movies, he's one guy who would have the balls to do it!

Cross dressing in Bollywood cinema is mostly done by the male and leads to very crass anti transgender/ transexual humor. Sometimes the hero cross dresses to woo the heroine, sometimes because he's a conman on the run. Either way, it's not pro-gay. There are fewer instances of women cross dressing, it's mostly done in a context of adventure and escaping sexual persecution. 

In an ideal world, I wish Indian origin actresses like Shelley Con, Lisa Ray and Sheetal Sheth would get featured in Indian cinema as strong gay characters. 

Sarah, it's great to see a Hindi movie featured here and I hope after this response we will see more!

Sounds like a fun movie but have agree with *Stephanie Priety Zinta or kajol would have been awesom. Gotta love their insanly comical expressions.