Friday, April 23, 2004
Shaadi Ka Laddoo
Okay, so here comes another married whiner! The wife is a half-witted shrew, the kids are a pain, even the dogs are monsters. You’d think, this is 2004, the beleaguered chap would file for divorce for on grounds of mental cruelty, but no, he slinks off to London looking for extra marital adventures.
Raj Kaushal’s Shaadi Ka Laddoo is a slightly updated Pati Patni Aur Woh and a cleaner Masti – in short, it is an empty-headed romp about nothing much.
The whiner named Som (Sanjay Suri) comes to London and meets college buddy Ravi (Aashish Chowdhry), who is a music tycoon, but lonely as hell and looking for a wife. Som tries to warn him against marriage, as he himself lies about a mentally sick wife to hook up with Ravi’s best friend Tara (Mandira Bedi).
Ravi falls in love with Menka (Samita Bangargi) a waitress and aspiring singer, and though he has had no trouble wooing his roster of ex-girlfriends, here he needs Som’s idiotic tips.
Before Som can get too far with Tara, his wife Geetu (Divya Dutta) and her uncle (Sameer Malhotra) track him down (how come he did not visit the uncle his wife is so close to?) and there are fireworks. Ravi goofs-up with Menka too and everybody is unhappy. Not that anyone in the audience would care!
Except for the character of Tara, who seems like a ‘today’ person, all the rest look like renegades from a fifties film or a particularly backward small town. To make it worse, the film drags till it snaps.
A confident performance from Sanjay Suri, a few chuckles scattered through the tedium, two good songs (Vishal-Shekhar) and super animation sequences (Kireet Khurana)—particularly the Chal Hutt number—perhaps not enough ticket-buying bait.
Raj Kaushal’s Shaadi Ka Laddoo is a slightly updated Pati Patni Aur Woh and a cleaner Masti – in short, it is an empty-headed romp about nothing much.
The whiner named Som (Sanjay Suri) comes to London and meets college buddy Ravi (Aashish Chowdhry), who is a music tycoon, but lonely as hell and looking for a wife. Som tries to warn him against marriage, as he himself lies about a mentally sick wife to hook up with Ravi’s best friend Tara (Mandira Bedi).
Ravi falls in love with Menka (Samita Bangargi) a waitress and aspiring singer, and though he has had no trouble wooing his roster of ex-girlfriends, here he needs Som’s idiotic tips.
Before Som can get too far with Tara, his wife Geetu (Divya Dutta) and her uncle (Sameer Malhotra) track him down (how come he did not visit the uncle his wife is so close to?) and there are fireworks. Ravi goofs-up with Menka too and everybody is unhappy. Not that anyone in the audience would care!
Except for the character of Tara, who seems like a ‘today’ person, all the rest look like renegades from a fifties film or a particularly backward small town. To make it worse, the film drags till it snaps.
A confident performance from Sanjay Suri, a few chuckles scattered through the tedium, two good songs (Vishal-Shekhar) and super animation sequences (Kireet Khurana)—particularly the Chal Hutt number—perhaps not enough ticket-buying bait.
Labels: Cinemaah
Bardaasht
After the eminently forgettable Kismat, there was not much reason to be enthused by a Bobby Deol film. The actor has a knack for picking turkeys. Bardaasht directed by E.Niwas is the kind of film Sunny Deol would have done a few years ago. Scripted by Vikram Bhatt, the film has echoes of Ghayal and numerous such revenge potboilers which used to be popular mainstream fare some time back.
Still, the first half is fairly gripping, in which bratty collegian Anuj (Ritesh Deshmukh) gets out of one exam paper-stealing crisis (inadvertently topical) and the next one leaves him dead—killed in a police encounter as a drug runner.
His older brother Aditya (Bobby Deol), a cashiered armyman, refuses to believe his brother was a drug peddler and demands answers from arrogant ACP Yashwant Thakur (Rahul Dev) and his two evil cohorts (Vishwajeet Pradhan-Ganesh Yadav).
A kindly constable (Virendra Saxena) and Anuj’s terrified, mentally disturbed girlfriend (Tara Sharma) reveal that the three cops had savagely murdered Anuj for no reason at all.
Now Aditya sets out to take revenge with the help of former girlfriend (Lara Dutta) who is now a lawyer. The revenge route is very predictable, a farcical court case, killing of witnesses, losing the case and then Aditya “taking the law into his own hands.”
Still, the film had enough dramatic moments, which are lost due to the slack pace and hackneyed treatment.
Bobby Deol does not have the action hero persona and is not much of an actor either, but he passes muster. Some good performances come from the supporting cast – like Ritesh Deshmukh and Virendra Saxena. Himesh Reshammiya has come up with one hit number Janabe Aali.
Bardaasht is not as unendurable as one might expect, but not a must-see either.
Still, the first half is fairly gripping, in which bratty collegian Anuj (Ritesh Deshmukh) gets out of one exam paper-stealing crisis (inadvertently topical) and the next one leaves him dead—killed in a police encounter as a drug runner.
His older brother Aditya (Bobby Deol), a cashiered armyman, refuses to believe his brother was a drug peddler and demands answers from arrogant ACP Yashwant Thakur (Rahul Dev) and his two evil cohorts (Vishwajeet Pradhan-Ganesh Yadav).
A kindly constable (Virendra Saxena) and Anuj’s terrified, mentally disturbed girlfriend (Tara Sharma) reveal that the three cops had savagely murdered Anuj for no reason at all.
Now Aditya sets out to take revenge with the help of former girlfriend (Lara Dutta) who is now a lawyer. The revenge route is very predictable, a farcical court case, killing of witnesses, losing the case and then Aditya “taking the law into his own hands.”
Still, the film had enough dramatic moments, which are lost due to the slack pace and hackneyed treatment.
Bobby Deol does not have the action hero persona and is not much of an actor either, but he passes muster. Some good performances come from the supporting cast – like Ritesh Deshmukh and Virendra Saxena. Himesh Reshammiya has come up with one hit number Janabe Aali.
Bardaasht is not as unendurable as one might expect, but not a must-see either.
Labels: Cinemaah
