This tweet reminds me, before Slumdog Millionaire or Darjeeling Limited, there was City of Joy. Here’s a clip from Patrick Swayze’s venture into critically acclaimed cinema territory, where Swayze’s character of American doctor Max who moves to India to India to “find himself” and ultimately ends up discovering joy in the slums of Calcutta. The movie failed. Here’s a 1992 NYT review that describes it as “simple-minded Occidental literature” and “a visit to a severely depressed Disneyland”. Maybe the movie was a couple of decades too early? After all the sensibilities of movie-going audiences has undergone a drastic evolution with globalization and the advent of the internet. Swayze’s character of Max, however, endeared him to Indian audiences, that were already familiar with him from blockbusters like Ghost. RIP.

Tags: city of joy, swayze