Movie reviews: House, Repo! The Genetic Opera, Also, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

FASHION There are worse ways to spend two-and-a-half hours than gazing at Priyanka Chopra, the most down-to-earth of the current Bollywood goddesses. But by casting her as a naive provincial beauty who dreams of becoming India’s next top model, writer-director Madhur Bhandarkar has reduced the level of suspense to near zero in his finger-wagging slog through the Mumbai high-fashion scene. What could possibly come between this face and the cover of Vogue India? Bhandarkar has for himself carved out a niche with a series of middle-brow social dramas anatomizing clearly defined subcultures: taxi dancer night clubs in Chandni Bar (2001), gossip rags in Page 3 (2005), multinationals in Corporate (2006) and a microcosmic colony of street people in his best work to date, Traffic Signal (2007). (His next: Jail.) For all the research that supposedly goes into them, the revelations in Bhandarkar’s films are often dismayingly old hat. There are fame-is-hell clichés in Fashion that could have been “researched” from the DVD of The Valley of the Dolls — or the pulpy best-sellers of Shobhaa De, India’s Jackie Collins. Visually, this is his flashiest work, especially in the hyperactive runway scenes, and the performers make good use of a couple of sure-fire soapy moments: Chopra’s Meghna Mathur finally bonding with the stick-thin drug-addicted rival (Kangana Ranaut) she stepped over on the way up; the “gay marriage, Indian style” of a closeted designer (Samir Soni) to a female beard, while his much younger boyfriend watches from the audience. Bhandarkar has skillfully crafted his reputation as a truth-telling realist, which may be what enables him to get away with so much melodramatic hokum. (Culver Plaza; Fallbrook 7; Naz 8) (David Chute)

THE HAUNTING OF MOLLY HARTLEY From Freestyle Releasing, the self-service distributor that brought you D-War and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, comes a movie even worse than those two combined. It really makes things tough on those of us who try our damnedest to defend horror as a legitimate, meritorious genre, when crap like this gets churned out on Halloween, but perhaps this critic’s sacrifice of time and money won’t be in vain if everyone reading avoids The Haunting of Molly Hartley like vegetable sticks in a trick-or-treat bag. In the vein of the antiseptic, CW-kid-starring pseudo-horror we all thought had been left behind along with the rest of the ’90s, Molly Hartley stars 20-year-old Haley Bennett as the titular 17-year-old, a prep-school girl whose “haunting” consists of flashbacks to the time when her now-committed mother tried to kill her with a pair of scissors. Why? Well, you’ll have to wait until the end of this tedious, scareless slog to find out, but suffice it to say, Satan is involved. Too bad Ol’ Scratch doesn’t actually show up; that might have made for at least one visually interesting shot. Producer-turned-director Mickey Liddell (Everwood) evinces no talent whatsoever in his new role; he too seems to have sold his soul for this opportunity, and been shortchanged on the deal. (Citywide) (Luke Y. Thompson)

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HOUSE A few months ago, Lionsgate issued a trailer for Saw V that tried to fake out viewers into thinking they were watching an ad for a Christian film. (Sample ad copy: “His gift is life.”) House is sorta like that, but in reverse; neither a reboot of the ‘80s horror-comedy franchise nor a big-screen bow for Hugh Laurie’s dyspeptic doctor, it’s a Christian parable dressed up in horror trappings. Director Robby Henson (who previously made the serial-killer genre palatable to the faithful with Thr3e) here throws two dysfunctional couples into an old creepy house, where they confront not just a family of crazy Satanists but, more importantly (and boringly, alas), their own emotional traumas. Henson cribs from the best with a scattershot approach that includes references to The Shining, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Dead Zone among many others, but the central problem here is one common to faith-based films: The heroes (Reynaldo Rosales and Heidi Dippold) are both overly bland and poorly cast. Thankfully, the villains include Michael Madsen, Lew Temple, and former Devil’s Rejects Bill Moseley and Leslie Easterbrook, who keep things entertaining when they’re on-screen, but too often take a backseat to tediously obvious flashback sequences. (Mann Chinese 6; UA Marina; AMC Burbank; Mann Glendale Exchange) (Luke Y. Thompson)

LOINS OF PUNJAB PRESENTS The zany incomprehensibility of the title should serve as fair warning of the quirkfest to come in neophyte filmmaker Manish Acharya’s Loins of Punjab Presents. Ready to rock the South Asian community over the course of one weekend in New Jersey, “Desi Idol” — sponsored by the eponymous meat wholesalers — will bestow $25,000 and local prestige upon the winner of the talent competition. Imagining itself a stereotype-smashing Bollywood-spirited send-up of American Idol culture, the movie is, in actuality, a by-the-numbers comedy in cross-cultural clothing. Not to suggest that the largely Indian cast is nothing to celebrate or that Acharya’s attempt lacks heart: From the actress rejected by a casting agent looking for someone “more Indian”; the unemployed futures analyst whose job has been outsourced to India; and a turbaned rapper mistaken for a terrorist, each contestant’s story elucidates the ethnic and national tensions regularly encountered by Indian-Americans. But the glibness of these explorations leaves little doubt that the director wants us to walk away with a case of the warm fuzzies rather than a deeper understanding of assimilation. When the cuddliness factor even extends to the characterization of an elderly white couple convinced that every brown-skinned person they meet might bomb the place, you know Punjab has issues that need resolving. (ImaginAsian Center; Regent Showcase; Fallbrook 7) (Kristi Mitsuda)