Friday, September 16, 2005
4 This Week
Chocolate
Vivek Agnihotri should have attempted something simpler for his first film. But no, he takes his inspiration from The Usual Suspects and fashions a suspense thriller that moves at bullock cart pace, but tries to be so smart that it trips over its own shoe laces.
Set in London, where two Indians are arrested for a heist, hotshot Indian lawyer Krishna Pandit (Anil Kapoor) is recruited by scoop chasing journalist Monsoon (Sushma Reddy) to defend them. Haughty, cigar puffing Pandit tries to get the two, Pipi (Irrfan Khan) and Sim (Tanushree Dutta) to tell him what happened to them, but they surround him in a haze of lies and half-truths.
As multiple stories of the duo’s gang (Sunil Shetty, Arshad Warsi, Emraan Hasmi) emerge, you keep asking yourself, hullo, what’s going on and why. There is a character named Rashomon (after the Akira Kurosawa classic about subjective points of view), just in case someone did’t get the point. The names, as a matter of fact, are all bizarre—Monsoon, Chip, Sim, Rocker and so on.
The mind games between Pandit and his two clients get tiresome after a while, and what goes on is not remotely engaging. The actors? Even Anil Kapoor gets transplanted into an ill-assorted forest of teak.
The cool winter look of London is fabulously captured by the cameraman Attar Singh Saini, and the music (Pritam) is foot-tapping. But at least you don’t have to suffer the movie to enjoy the music!
James
Bits and pieces of Ram Gopal Varma’s older films keep turning up in his new films, directed by his ‘Factory’ protégés.
James, made by Rohit Jugraj is about the no-surname protagonist (Mohit Ahlawat), who comes from Goa to Mumbai, without any baggage of the past. He stays with a friend, and within a few days of being in the city, gets a job, falls in love, falls afoul of a don and is on the run with his lady love (Nisha Kothari).
James could well have turned into Satya (the eponymous hero of Satya), but he chooses to remain resolutely on the side of what is right. He actually talks about Izzat (Honour) over Life, the code of the warrior.
After a long time, we get to see a truly heroic, macho hero, who sticks his neck into other people’s business (rescuing a couple from goondas in the train), because he is strong enough to know no fear. James has influences from Bollywood potboilers starring Dharmendra, early Amitabh Bachchan, Sunny Deol ad Ajay Devgan— tough brooding men, who won’t take bullshit from anyone, old lone-ranger cowboy movies, Japanese Yakuza films and, of course Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.
What Jugraj does, however, is cut out all the flab and make James a lean, mean film. He doesn’t waste much time developing plot-- no diversions into family scenes, protracted courtship rituals, needless emotions—and gets straight to the point. Baddies chase Hero. Hero Wins.
The Baddies are powerful dons Shanti Narayan (Zakir Hussain), his power-crazed brother Radhe (Shereveer Vakil) and their gang of sniggering hoods and corrupt cops. Radhe
It may have a seen-that feel to it—the chase in the jungles, the romantic interlude in a swanky forest bungalow, James breaking tough bonds to escape the villains and the climactic sword waving fight in the rain— and you have to be a fan of old-fashioned Good-Vs-Evil action movies to enjoy James.
Kal :Yesterday and Tomorrow
Every time a new filmmaker attempts to break the mould, you stand up to applaud, even though, more often than not, you end up with the chair pulled out from under you.
Ruchi Narain, writes and directs an overly convoluted sage of love, loyalty and betrayal that leaves you thoroughly disoriented and bored. Kal: Yesterday and Tomorrow, zigzags back and forth into the lives of Bhavna (Chitrangada Singh), Tarun (Shiny Ahuja) and Maya (Smriti Mishra).
Tarun had dumped Bhavna to marry rich girl Maya Jalan, who was his ticket to wealth. A year or so later, Bhavna is still moping about heartbroken, when Tarun staggers into her apartment drunk, and Maya is reported dead. The husband is the prime suspect, and the whole sordid Jalan family saga is played out in the media. Bhavna new admirer Rohan (Ram Kapoor) is a TV reporter and narrator of the story.
Bhavna tries to protect Tarun out of some inexplicable sense of devotion, but he lands up in hospital in a coma, more people are killed, and her family is targetted for vendetta. In the end Bhavna has to figure out what’s going on and do something about it.
A germ of a good idea, ruined by too much ‘treatment’, is that is possible—constant replaying of events through video images on laptop screens, too much (un)steadycam, and too many pots over too many fires. And to add to its woes, way too many script flaws. Experimenting with form and style is all very well, provided the director doest go overboard with it.
All the young actors talk like they were in an American soap, but god knows how Hindi was coming out of their mouths. Narain does not succeed in making you care for a single character – not the self-pitying Bhavna, not the hysterical Maya, and not the social-climbing Tarun. In the untidy clutter of characters, Boman Irani (as Bhavna’s supportive father) and Ram Kapoor stand out.
Sau Jhooth Ek Sach
A girl commits suicide. A stern looking cop lands up at the home of rich industrialist Vikrant Pradhan (Vikram Gokhale) to investigate. On the surface, Pradhan and his family have nothing to do with the girl’s death, but actually, they are all directly or indirectly responsible.
Bappaditya Roy’s first feature Sau Jhooth Ek Sach is taken from JB Priestly’s classic morality tale An Inspector Calls. For most part, Roy sets the film in the Pradhan home, where the pompous man, his wife (Lillete Dubey), son (Kiran Janjani), daughter (Neha Dubey) and her fiancé (Joy Sengupta) lurk nervously under Inspector Vivek’s (Mammootty) piercing gaze.
The film is based on a 1944 play that is dated, and hammers the rich creeps- versus-angelic poor message much too heavily. Even though Roy takes the film out of the grand bungalow to tell each story, there is something stagy and pedantic about the film. There is the clever device of using a different girl, when each member of the family spills out his/her guilty secret—that makes the random cruelty of the rich towards the vulnerable look generic.
The film has a lush visual quality particularly the interior shots, and the performers are all competent enough. Audiences looking for offbeat entertainment might want to check this one out, but also be prepared for large doses of tedium interspersed with the watchable bits.
Vivek Agnihotri should have attempted something simpler for his first film. But no, he takes his inspiration from The Usual Suspects and fashions a suspense thriller that moves at bullock cart pace, but tries to be so smart that it trips over its own shoe laces.
Set in London, where two Indians are arrested for a heist, hotshot Indian lawyer Krishna Pandit (Anil Kapoor) is recruited by scoop chasing journalist Monsoon (Sushma Reddy) to defend them. Haughty, cigar puffing Pandit tries to get the two, Pipi (Irrfan Khan) and Sim (Tanushree Dutta) to tell him what happened to them, but they surround him in a haze of lies and half-truths.
As multiple stories of the duo’s gang (Sunil Shetty, Arshad Warsi, Emraan Hasmi) emerge, you keep asking yourself, hullo, what’s going on and why. There is a character named Rashomon (after the Akira Kurosawa classic about subjective points of view), just in case someone did’t get the point. The names, as a matter of fact, are all bizarre—Monsoon, Chip, Sim, Rocker and so on.
The mind games between Pandit and his two clients get tiresome after a while, and what goes on is not remotely engaging. The actors? Even Anil Kapoor gets transplanted into an ill-assorted forest of teak.
The cool winter look of London is fabulously captured by the cameraman Attar Singh Saini, and the music (Pritam) is foot-tapping. But at least you don’t have to suffer the movie to enjoy the music!
James
Bits and pieces of Ram Gopal Varma’s older films keep turning up in his new films, directed by his ‘Factory’ protégés.
James, made by Rohit Jugraj is about the no-surname protagonist (Mohit Ahlawat), who comes from Goa to Mumbai, without any baggage of the past. He stays with a friend, and within a few days of being in the city, gets a job, falls in love, falls afoul of a don and is on the run with his lady love (Nisha Kothari).
James could well have turned into Satya (the eponymous hero of Satya), but he chooses to remain resolutely on the side of what is right. He actually talks about Izzat (Honour) over Life, the code of the warrior.
After a long time, we get to see a truly heroic, macho hero, who sticks his neck into other people’s business (rescuing a couple from goondas in the train), because he is strong enough to know no fear. James has influences from Bollywood potboilers starring Dharmendra, early Amitabh Bachchan, Sunny Deol ad Ajay Devgan— tough brooding men, who won’t take bullshit from anyone, old lone-ranger cowboy movies, Japanese Yakuza films and, of course Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.
What Jugraj does, however, is cut out all the flab and make James a lean, mean film. He doesn’t waste much time developing plot-- no diversions into family scenes, protracted courtship rituals, needless emotions—and gets straight to the point. Baddies chase Hero. Hero Wins.
The Baddies are powerful dons Shanti Narayan (Zakir Hussain), his power-crazed brother Radhe (Shereveer Vakil) and their gang of sniggering hoods and corrupt cops. Radhe
It may have a seen-that feel to it—the chase in the jungles, the romantic interlude in a swanky forest bungalow, James breaking tough bonds to escape the villains and the climactic sword waving fight in the rain— and you have to be a fan of old-fashioned Good-Vs-Evil action movies to enjoy James.
Kal :Yesterday and Tomorrow
Every time a new filmmaker attempts to break the mould, you stand up to applaud, even though, more often than not, you end up with the chair pulled out from under you.
Ruchi Narain, writes and directs an overly convoluted sage of love, loyalty and betrayal that leaves you thoroughly disoriented and bored. Kal: Yesterday and Tomorrow, zigzags back and forth into the lives of Bhavna (Chitrangada Singh), Tarun (Shiny Ahuja) and Maya (Smriti Mishra).
Tarun had dumped Bhavna to marry rich girl Maya Jalan, who was his ticket to wealth. A year or so later, Bhavna is still moping about heartbroken, when Tarun staggers into her apartment drunk, and Maya is reported dead. The husband is the prime suspect, and the whole sordid Jalan family saga is played out in the media. Bhavna new admirer Rohan (Ram Kapoor) is a TV reporter and narrator of the story.
Bhavna tries to protect Tarun out of some inexplicable sense of devotion, but he lands up in hospital in a coma, more people are killed, and her family is targetted for vendetta. In the end Bhavna has to figure out what’s going on and do something about it.
A germ of a good idea, ruined by too much ‘treatment’, is that is possible—constant replaying of events through video images on laptop screens, too much (un)steadycam, and too many pots over too many fires. And to add to its woes, way too many script flaws. Experimenting with form and style is all very well, provided the director doest go overboard with it.
All the young actors talk like they were in an American soap, but god knows how Hindi was coming out of their mouths. Narain does not succeed in making you care for a single character – not the self-pitying Bhavna, not the hysterical Maya, and not the social-climbing Tarun. In the untidy clutter of characters, Boman Irani (as Bhavna’s supportive father) and Ram Kapoor stand out.
Sau Jhooth Ek Sach
A girl commits suicide. A stern looking cop lands up at the home of rich industrialist Vikrant Pradhan (Vikram Gokhale) to investigate. On the surface, Pradhan and his family have nothing to do with the girl’s death, but actually, they are all directly or indirectly responsible.
Bappaditya Roy’s first feature Sau Jhooth Ek Sach is taken from JB Priestly’s classic morality tale An Inspector Calls. For most part, Roy sets the film in the Pradhan home, where the pompous man, his wife (Lillete Dubey), son (Kiran Janjani), daughter (Neha Dubey) and her fiancé (Joy Sengupta) lurk nervously under Inspector Vivek’s (Mammootty) piercing gaze.
The film is based on a 1944 play that is dated, and hammers the rich creeps- versus-angelic poor message much too heavily. Even though Roy takes the film out of the grand bungalow to tell each story, there is something stagy and pedantic about the film. There is the clever device of using a different girl, when each member of the family spills out his/her guilty secret—that makes the random cruelty of the rich towards the vulnerable look generic.
The film has a lush visual quality particularly the interior shots, and the performers are all competent enough. Audiences looking for offbeat entertainment might want to check this one out, but also be prepared for large doses of tedium interspersed with the watchable bits.
Labels: Cinemaah
Salaam Namaste
“This is 2005, everybody has a life,” says a character in Salaam Namaste. Nice of him to remind us of the year, because it immediately makes you wonder why, even in 2005, a girl doesn’t need beauty, intelligence, talent, sex appeal to get a guy; she still has to go back to that 1940 prop—babies!
All the yuppie coolness of Siddharth Raj Anand – hugely inspired by Chris Columbus’ Nine Months -- goes for a toss, when you have a female character—a doctor at that, who is not just ignorant of contraceptive methods, but goes all gooey-eyed and rabidly pro-life at the sight of a foetus seen in somebody else’s sonography. How did she get as far as getting admitted for a surgical course without having seen a few sonographies, child births and abortions on the way?
Not just that, a magical sonography video makes a believer-in-fatherhood out of her almost militantly commitment-phobic boyfriend.
Rewind to Melbourne, where Nick (Saif Ali Khan) is an architech-turned chef, Amber (Preity Zinta) is a RJ-cum-medical student—both have broken ties with their families and live by themselves. Both are ambitious and not too keen on marriage –fine so far so good. In fact, this portion is so cute, witty, well shot and edited, that you start juggling four stars in your head. Look at the smart split-screen intros of all the characters (very Kal Ho Naa Ho); look at that really marvelous Australian wedding scene, where after the ceremony, everybody strips and dives into the azure ocean; laugh at Nick’s buddy (Arshad Warsi—funny as ever), who loves-and-marries a bridesmaid (Tania Zaetta) at first sight, and isn’t quite sure if he is regrets it later.
Nick and Amber start by squabbling (he doesn’t turn up for her radio show, she attacks him on air), getting attracted to each other, moving in together (Jaaved Jaaferi is hilarious as their Bihari-turned-Crocodile Dundee landlord) and actually going to bed. Good, you think, at least Hindi films –even those not starring Mallika Sherawat—have stopped climbing onto the moral high ground over sex.
The two learn to adjust to each other’s whims, enjoy their life and discover that what they share is really love. Then Amber discovers she is pregnant, Nick doesn’t want a baby— he told her right at the start that he was anti marriage and kids-- and a bucker of ice cold water is poured over your head and over the film.
Back to old style melodrama, emotional blackmail of the most devious kind—it’s as if the writer-director decided that motherhood is not something to be facetious about. So except for the contrived comic scene in which Amber wants a particular ice-cream at midnight and Nick obligingly drives her all over the city, the film turns deadly serious, and constantly points angry fingers at Nick, who is refusing to be a responsible father.
Of course, you are never in doubt about the outcome—Nick is a decent guy after all, he doesn’t simply vamoose, as he could have, even given the shortage of money.
The last few minutes are enlivened by the appearance of Abhishek Bachchan as the clumsy Robin Williams-ish doctor (from Nine Months), and on to the conventional happy ending.
No problems with the performances, both Saif Ali Khan and Preity Zinta are fabulous, the music is hummable (Nikhil Vinay), all the gloss is in place. Since the film is calculated to please its target of multiplex audiences, it might just continue the run of Yashraj successes, but it is manipulative, dishonest and ultimately disappointing.
All the yuppie coolness of Siddharth Raj Anand – hugely inspired by Chris Columbus’ Nine Months -- goes for a toss, when you have a female character—a doctor at that, who is not just ignorant of contraceptive methods, but goes all gooey-eyed and rabidly pro-life at the sight of a foetus seen in somebody else’s sonography. How did she get as far as getting admitted for a surgical course without having seen a few sonographies, child births and abortions on the way?
Not just that, a magical sonography video makes a believer-in-fatherhood out of her almost militantly commitment-phobic boyfriend.
Rewind to Melbourne, where Nick (Saif Ali Khan) is an architech-turned chef, Amber (Preity Zinta) is a RJ-cum-medical student—both have broken ties with their families and live by themselves. Both are ambitious and not too keen on marriage –fine so far so good. In fact, this portion is so cute, witty, well shot and edited, that you start juggling four stars in your head. Look at the smart split-screen intros of all the characters (very Kal Ho Naa Ho); look at that really marvelous Australian wedding scene, where after the ceremony, everybody strips and dives into the azure ocean; laugh at Nick’s buddy (Arshad Warsi—funny as ever), who loves-and-marries a bridesmaid (Tania Zaetta) at first sight, and isn’t quite sure if he is regrets it later.
Nick and Amber start by squabbling (he doesn’t turn up for her radio show, she attacks him on air), getting attracted to each other, moving in together (Jaaved Jaaferi is hilarious as their Bihari-turned-Crocodile Dundee landlord) and actually going to bed. Good, you think, at least Hindi films –even those not starring Mallika Sherawat—have stopped climbing onto the moral high ground over sex.
The two learn to adjust to each other’s whims, enjoy their life and discover that what they share is really love. Then Amber discovers she is pregnant, Nick doesn’t want a baby— he told her right at the start that he was anti marriage and kids-- and a bucker of ice cold water is poured over your head and over the film.
Back to old style melodrama, emotional blackmail of the most devious kind—it’s as if the writer-director decided that motherhood is not something to be facetious about. So except for the contrived comic scene in which Amber wants a particular ice-cream at midnight and Nick obligingly drives her all over the city, the film turns deadly serious, and constantly points angry fingers at Nick, who is refusing to be a responsible father.
Of course, you are never in doubt about the outcome—Nick is a decent guy after all, he doesn’t simply vamoose, as he could have, even given the shortage of money.
The last few minutes are enlivened by the appearance of Abhishek Bachchan as the clumsy Robin Williams-ish doctor (from Nine Months), and on to the conventional happy ending.
No problems with the performances, both Saif Ali Khan and Preity Zinta are fabulous, the music is hummable (Nikhil Vinay), all the gloss is in place. Since the film is calculated to please its target of multiplex audiences, it might just continue the run of Yashraj successes, but it is manipulative, dishonest and ultimately disappointing.
Labels: Cinemaah
Aashiq and Others
Aashiq Banaya Aapne
What are Emraam Hashmi, Sonu Sood and Tanushree Dutta doing in college? Shouldn’t they be out there in the real world, getting a life!
Not only does the idea of grown-ups cavorting in college put you off; what’s worse is the depressing fact that Aaditya Datt, a new filmmaker and from all accounts a young chap, chooses to make a really worn-out love triangle.
Good guy (Sood) can’t tell girl (Dutta) that he loves her and bad guy (Hashmi) sweeps the bimbette off her feet! But bad guy ain’t so bad, and good guy ain’t so good; bimbette has no two sides to her—her character is just plain boring.
Reminiscent of many films, mainly the underrated Amitabh Bchchan starrer Parwana, Aashiq Banaya Aapne offers nothing new… no surprises at all. Emraan Hashmi’s aggro lover part is already beginning to pall!
And, hullo, what’s the rumble-in-hospital all about, with the ‘triangle’ lying trussed up in bed, and tough female cop (borrowed from TV’s CID show) dropping red herrings all over the place?
None of the three lead players can act; what keeps the film afloat is the music (Himesh Reshammiya), and a couple of songs really well picturised. And yes, there is a generous show of skin—Dutta like most beauty queen/models getting into films, has no qualms about stripping!
Ramji Londonwaley
Kamal Haasan is credited with the story of Nala Damayanthi, the original Tamil version of Ramji Londonwaley, which in turn was a complicated version of Peter Weir’s sweet romantic movie Green Card.
From a Tamil cook lost in Melbourne, Madhavan is now a Bihari cook lost in London, and therein lies the problem. From Madhavan’s accent to Sanjay Dayma’s direction, everything is laboured.
The film starts on a regressive note-- a cook from a remote Bihari village is forced to go to London in order to pay the dowry demanded by his sister’s in-laws. Even inadvertent encouragement to such practices leaves one uncomfortable.
In London, Ramji’s employer dies, he is thrown out, his papers stolen, and then, in one of those impossibly filmi coincidences, the first Indian he runs into happens to be the owner of a restaurant! So Ramji has a home and job instantly, all that is needed is a work permit.
A slimy lawyer (Raj Zutshi), forces his own fiancée Sameera (Samita Bangargi) to marry Ramji, so that he can stay on in the UK. But to convince the immigration people that the marriage is genuine, they have to live together and sparks are bound to fly.
The portions that could have been comic – like the cultural differences and squabbles between Ramji and Sameera – are most unfunny! Imagine trying to force humour out of his penchant for oversized underwear! And the portions that needed an emotional touch – like Sameera’s growing regard for Ramji-- fall flat, mainly due to sloppy writing and ineffective performances.
A couple of laughs at cliché stuff like Ramji not knowing to use a Western loo, and the pretty London locales—would they be incentive enough to endure hours of hokiness? Maybe if you are a Madhavan fan.
Pyaar Mein Twist
The setting: urban, decidedly upper class. Still a mini cyclone takes place when two middle age people go on a perfectly harmless dinner and dance date! They are both—Yash (Rishi Kapoor) and Sheetal (Dimple Kapadia)—widowed, with grown-up children. But the way everybody goes on about them, you’d think two minor kids had done something terribly immoral.
In this Hriday Shetty film, Pyaar Mein Twist, not only does the innocent friendship cause a slanging match between the offspring of the two ‘delinquents’, they go about wringing their hands in despair, instead of telling every busybody to mind his/her own business!
Finally Sheetal’s sensible sister-in-law (Farida Jalal—terrific as usual) tells the two to run away and let the problem sort itself out, but it is all much ado about nothing to begin with. The changes in social and sexual attitudes of urban Indians seems to have passed Shetty by completely—the inspiration for this film, however, comes from a Kannada original Preeti Prema Pranaya. If the story had been set in a small town, middle class milieu, it might have made a little more sense.
Rishi Kapoor’s ineffable charm keeps some interest in the film alive—look at him dance to Khullan Khulla Pyar Karenge, and he lights up the screen. Dimple Kapadia is uncharacteristically subdued, as if she couldn’t believe what was going on. Sammir Dattani, Soha Ali Khan and Vikas Bhalla appear among the brood of kids, but leave no impact.
Dansh
Kanika Verma’s Dansh is probably the only Hindi film so far that talks about the Mizo problem. The adaptation of Ariel Dorfman’s play Death and the Maiden (made into a film by Roman Polaksnki) is rather unusual in that sense—it doesn’t take the easy ‘Kashmir’ route. It recognizes that there are problems in other parts of the country as well, and does well to highlight conditions in Mizoram.
However, apart from the offbeat setting, the film is unable to translate the chilling, understated terror of the original into Dansh. Sonali Kulkarni’s hysterical performance is not as disturbing as Sigourney Weaver’s nerve-wracking calm.
Mathew (Kay Kay), once a dissident, and now part of the peace process, brings home a doctor (Aditya Srivastav) one night. His wife Maria (Sonali Kulkarni), who was also part of the Mizo Liberation Front, is convinced that the doctor was the one who had raped and tortured her in prison. She ties him up and wants to kill him. Mathew is torn between his wife’s anguish and the desire to forget the past.
The films, is grim and verbose, but is unable to build up and sustain the tension required for it to work. The audience should also be see-sawing between points of view, and come out feeling disturbed or disoriented. Despite Verma’s sincere effort, the film gets tedious after a point. Kay Kay is excellent—the actor is now on a roll.
What are Emraam Hashmi, Sonu Sood and Tanushree Dutta doing in college? Shouldn’t they be out there in the real world, getting a life!
Not only does the idea of grown-ups cavorting in college put you off; what’s worse is the depressing fact that Aaditya Datt, a new filmmaker and from all accounts a young chap, chooses to make a really worn-out love triangle.
Good guy (Sood) can’t tell girl (Dutta) that he loves her and bad guy (Hashmi) sweeps the bimbette off her feet! But bad guy ain’t so bad, and good guy ain’t so good; bimbette has no two sides to her—her character is just plain boring.
Reminiscent of many films, mainly the underrated Amitabh Bchchan starrer Parwana, Aashiq Banaya Aapne offers nothing new… no surprises at all. Emraan Hashmi’s aggro lover part is already beginning to pall!
And, hullo, what’s the rumble-in-hospital all about, with the ‘triangle’ lying trussed up in bed, and tough female cop (borrowed from TV’s CID show) dropping red herrings all over the place?
None of the three lead players can act; what keeps the film afloat is the music (Himesh Reshammiya), and a couple of songs really well picturised. And yes, there is a generous show of skin—Dutta like most beauty queen/models getting into films, has no qualms about stripping!
Ramji Londonwaley
Kamal Haasan is credited with the story of Nala Damayanthi, the original Tamil version of Ramji Londonwaley, which in turn was a complicated version of Peter Weir’s sweet romantic movie Green Card.
From a Tamil cook lost in Melbourne, Madhavan is now a Bihari cook lost in London, and therein lies the problem. From Madhavan’s accent to Sanjay Dayma’s direction, everything is laboured.
The film starts on a regressive note-- a cook from a remote Bihari village is forced to go to London in order to pay the dowry demanded by his sister’s in-laws. Even inadvertent encouragement to such practices leaves one uncomfortable.
In London, Ramji’s employer dies, he is thrown out, his papers stolen, and then, in one of those impossibly filmi coincidences, the first Indian he runs into happens to be the owner of a restaurant! So Ramji has a home and job instantly, all that is needed is a work permit.
A slimy lawyer (Raj Zutshi), forces his own fiancée Sameera (Samita Bangargi) to marry Ramji, so that he can stay on in the UK. But to convince the immigration people that the marriage is genuine, they have to live together and sparks are bound to fly.
The portions that could have been comic – like the cultural differences and squabbles between Ramji and Sameera – are most unfunny! Imagine trying to force humour out of his penchant for oversized underwear! And the portions that needed an emotional touch – like Sameera’s growing regard for Ramji-- fall flat, mainly due to sloppy writing and ineffective performances.
A couple of laughs at cliché stuff like Ramji not knowing to use a Western loo, and the pretty London locales—would they be incentive enough to endure hours of hokiness? Maybe if you are a Madhavan fan.
Pyaar Mein Twist
The setting: urban, decidedly upper class. Still a mini cyclone takes place when two middle age people go on a perfectly harmless dinner and dance date! They are both—Yash (Rishi Kapoor) and Sheetal (Dimple Kapadia)—widowed, with grown-up children. But the way everybody goes on about them, you’d think two minor kids had done something terribly immoral.
In this Hriday Shetty film, Pyaar Mein Twist, not only does the innocent friendship cause a slanging match between the offspring of the two ‘delinquents’, they go about wringing their hands in despair, instead of telling every busybody to mind his/her own business!
Finally Sheetal’s sensible sister-in-law (Farida Jalal—terrific as usual) tells the two to run away and let the problem sort itself out, but it is all much ado about nothing to begin with. The changes in social and sexual attitudes of urban Indians seems to have passed Shetty by completely—the inspiration for this film, however, comes from a Kannada original Preeti Prema Pranaya. If the story had been set in a small town, middle class milieu, it might have made a little more sense.
Rishi Kapoor’s ineffable charm keeps some interest in the film alive—look at him dance to Khullan Khulla Pyar Karenge, and he lights up the screen. Dimple Kapadia is uncharacteristically subdued, as if she couldn’t believe what was going on. Sammir Dattani, Soha Ali Khan and Vikas Bhalla appear among the brood of kids, but leave no impact.
Dansh
Kanika Verma’s Dansh is probably the only Hindi film so far that talks about the Mizo problem. The adaptation of Ariel Dorfman’s play Death and the Maiden (made into a film by Roman Polaksnki) is rather unusual in that sense—it doesn’t take the easy ‘Kashmir’ route. It recognizes that there are problems in other parts of the country as well, and does well to highlight conditions in Mizoram.
However, apart from the offbeat setting, the film is unable to translate the chilling, understated terror of the original into Dansh. Sonali Kulkarni’s hysterical performance is not as disturbing as Sigourney Weaver’s nerve-wracking calm.
Mathew (Kay Kay), once a dissident, and now part of the peace process, brings home a doctor (Aditya Srivastav) one night. His wife Maria (Sonali Kulkarni), who was also part of the Mizo Liberation Front, is convinced that the doctor was the one who had raped and tortured her in prison. She ties him up and wants to kill him. Mathew is torn between his wife’s anguish and the desire to forget the past.
The films, is grim and verbose, but is unable to build up and sustain the tension required for it to work. The audience should also be see-sawing between points of view, and come out feeling disturbed or disoriented. Despite Verma’s sincere effort, the film gets tedious after a point. Kay Kay is excellent—the actor is now on a roll.
Labels: Cinemaah
