Friday, December 23, 2005
Dosti+Vaah...
Dosti: Friends Forever
Suneel Darshan’s films may have a small audience in the North, where people perhaps like old fashioned melodramas, and don’t find it queer when the two male leads weep like leaking faucets and hug each other more than they do the females! But in a city multiplex, audiences hooted with laughter every time the guys uttered emotional ‘dosti’ lines; one group of teens played a game of completing dialogues begun by characters and had a 90% hit rate. A lot more guffawing and high-fives ensued. To be able to use Bollywood clichés well is an art that very few of today’s directors have mastered
As far as this film is concerned, Darshan, is still a wannabe Raj Kapoor (Aah), Hrishikesh Mukherjee (Anand), Karan Johar (Kal Ho Naa Ho), and copying the overdone Punjabi look, that the Chopras have now abandoned.
Rich kid Karan has no friends, so adopts a poor orphan Raj. Having created this very artificial world, where Karan is neglected by family and all alone (how come? No neighbours? No friends at school?), Darshan makes the two boys swear undying love to each other, and when they grow up, Karan (Bobby Deol) and Raj (Akshay Kumar) are even more inseparable—singing duets, and claiming not be able to live without each other.
No wonder, very little time is spent over the wooing and dumping of girlfriends—Kareena Kapoor (in frumpy salwars) and Lara Dutta (supposedly a student of bio-genetics!).
Raj turns out to have an incurable illness, so before he dies, he sets about getting Karan a life, so the poor chap doesn’t drink himself to death. Only Amitabh Bachchan could do the drunken quarrel with God scene well, when Bobby Deol does it, he makes it ludicrous.
As for Akshay Kumar, his Dilip Kumar-Rajesh Khanna act of sentimental dying man evokes cruel sniggers. Even the song picturisations are so unimaginative. Not a movie one would recommend to a friend!
Vaah Life Ho To Aisi
Dead Man Talking
At: Fame and other cinemas
Directed by Mahesh Manjrekar
With: Shahid Kapoor, Sanjay Dutt, Amrita Rao and others
Rating: Two stars
Maybe for his own satisfaction Mahesh Manjrekar is trying out different genres—sitting with a pile of Hollywood DVDs to decide what to do next. Everything he did this year failed, so he picks on a film that would perhaps appeal to kids—that is if kids today are still amused by objects flying and men being hit by unseen fists.
Adi (Shahid Kapoor) looks after a huge brood of relatives, including a grandmother and a dizzying number of children. The huge house they live in is coveted by an evil builder (Sharat Saxena) – can’t get more hackneyed than that!
To get his sister married, Adi has to borrow a lot of money, and just when he is about to make a fortune by selling the patent to a solar powered car, he is killed in an accident. Yamraj, who comes to fetch him in a flying Chevy looks like a dandy gangster (Sanjay Dutt) with a soft heart. So he allows Adi and a sidekick kid to return to earth and save the mourning family.
A ‘medium’ (Arshad Warsi) gets Hauman to grant them “power” so that Adi and the kid can set the builder and his thugs right.
Till Sanjay Dutt comes on to the scene, the film is boring as hell, with too many kids creating mayhem. It sputters to life in fits and starts whenever Dutt descends – he plays the role with a funny air of self-parody, often breaking into a Jeevesian English butler accent. The other actor who adds a little spark is Warsi, with his ‘Circuit’ (from Munnabhai) number.
The romance between Adi and the kids’ teacher (Amrita Rao—over made-up) is thanda. There are two many songs and except for Teri Yaad Yaad none is hummable.
The special effects (Prime Focus) are quite well done, but Manjrekar’s mix of Brahmachari, Mr India and Ghost has no spark.
Suneel Darshan’s films may have a small audience in the North, where people perhaps like old fashioned melodramas, and don’t find it queer when the two male leads weep like leaking faucets and hug each other more than they do the females! But in a city multiplex, audiences hooted with laughter every time the guys uttered emotional ‘dosti’ lines; one group of teens played a game of completing dialogues begun by characters and had a 90% hit rate. A lot more guffawing and high-fives ensued. To be able to use Bollywood clichés well is an art that very few of today’s directors have mastered
As far as this film is concerned, Darshan, is still a wannabe Raj Kapoor (Aah), Hrishikesh Mukherjee (Anand), Karan Johar (Kal Ho Naa Ho), and copying the overdone Punjabi look, that the Chopras have now abandoned.
Rich kid Karan has no friends, so adopts a poor orphan Raj. Having created this very artificial world, where Karan is neglected by family and all alone (how come? No neighbours? No friends at school?), Darshan makes the two boys swear undying love to each other, and when they grow up, Karan (Bobby Deol) and Raj (Akshay Kumar) are even more inseparable—singing duets, and claiming not be able to live without each other.
No wonder, very little time is spent over the wooing and dumping of girlfriends—Kareena Kapoor (in frumpy salwars) and Lara Dutta (supposedly a student of bio-genetics!).
Raj turns out to have an incurable illness, so before he dies, he sets about getting Karan a life, so the poor chap doesn’t drink himself to death. Only Amitabh Bachchan could do the drunken quarrel with God scene well, when Bobby Deol does it, he makes it ludicrous.
As for Akshay Kumar, his Dilip Kumar-Rajesh Khanna act of sentimental dying man evokes cruel sniggers. Even the song picturisations are so unimaginative. Not a movie one would recommend to a friend!
Vaah Life Ho To Aisi
Dead Man Talking
At: Fame and other cinemas
Directed by Mahesh Manjrekar
With: Shahid Kapoor, Sanjay Dutt, Amrita Rao and others
Rating: Two stars
Maybe for his own satisfaction Mahesh Manjrekar is trying out different genres—sitting with a pile of Hollywood DVDs to decide what to do next. Everything he did this year failed, so he picks on a film that would perhaps appeal to kids—that is if kids today are still amused by objects flying and men being hit by unseen fists.
Adi (Shahid Kapoor) looks after a huge brood of relatives, including a grandmother and a dizzying number of children. The huge house they live in is coveted by an evil builder (Sharat Saxena) – can’t get more hackneyed than that!
To get his sister married, Adi has to borrow a lot of money, and just when he is about to make a fortune by selling the patent to a solar powered car, he is killed in an accident. Yamraj, who comes to fetch him in a flying Chevy looks like a dandy gangster (Sanjay Dutt) with a soft heart. So he allows Adi and a sidekick kid to return to earth and save the mourning family.
A ‘medium’ (Arshad Warsi) gets Hauman to grant them “power” so that Adi and the kid can set the builder and his thugs right.
Till Sanjay Dutt comes on to the scene, the film is boring as hell, with too many kids creating mayhem. It sputters to life in fits and starts whenever Dutt descends – he plays the role with a funny air of self-parody, often breaking into a Jeevesian English butler accent. The other actor who adds a little spark is Warsi, with his ‘Circuit’ (from Munnabhai) number.
The romance between Adi and the kids’ teacher (Amrita Rao—over made-up) is thanda. There are two many songs and except for Teri Yaad Yaad none is hummable.
The special effects (Prime Focus) are quite well done, but Manjrekar’s mix of Brahmachari, Mr India and Ghost has no spark.
Labels: Cinemaah
Bluffmaster
Very few caper movies have worked in Bollywood—even if there’s a Hollywood film right there to be copied, our filmmakers can seldom pull of this genre. Maybe because they try to please audiences with the usual song-dance-romance stuff and dilute the impact—plus our characters talk too much.
Take Rohan Sippy’s Bluffmaster—ok for a couple of chuckles, too many loopholes for a caper—nobody seems to have a normal conversation; they ramble, make little speeches and bury the occasional good punch line in the kilos of verbiage. For god’s sake shut up and get on with it, you want to shout when the film halts yet again for some ‘gyaan’ giving or romantic mush.
Roy (Abhishek Bacchan) is a conman who has never been caught , despite some rather extravagant swindles. When girlfriend Simmi (Priyanka Chopra) dumps him on discovering what he does, he decides to give up crime.
Dittu (Riteish Deshmukh), an aspiring cheat adopts Roy as his guru, and when Roy discovers he has a brain tumour and has very little time to live, he agrees to ‘train’ Dittu.
They plan an elaborate job to con a bigger thug Chandru (Nana Patekar) and manage to get a few crores out of him which they promptly lose. So when Chandru gets mad and wants his money back, Roy runs out of tricks.
Of course, the whole set-up is not what it seems. The end is rather clever, though you can see it coming a mile away. The problem with these convoluted scripts is that they depend on the victim behaving exactly the way the writer wants them to! Which in most cases is too contrived and not the least convincing. What if Roy did not accept Dittu as a disciple? Wouldn’t anybody get a second opinion when told they have a terminal illness? Would a smart conman who has just looted a dangerous criminal go to a dance bar carrying the suitcases of money? Wouldn’t a ‘bluffmaster’ as skilled as Roy check on the antecedents of the victim for whom he lays such an intricate trap? Would he fall for such obvious and childish tricks? Pull out one nail and the whole structure tumbles down!
Bluffmaster tries to be too clever, and the catch-a-thief aspect of it falls flat. At best it is mildly amusing, mainly because of the Bachchan-Deshmukh stand-up comedy show that the film turns out to be. Okay, so they are often funny, cool and go well together without trying to steal each other’s scenes. But heck, couldn’t Sippy have made it snappier?
Take Rohan Sippy’s Bluffmaster—ok for a couple of chuckles, too many loopholes for a caper—nobody seems to have a normal conversation; they ramble, make little speeches and bury the occasional good punch line in the kilos of verbiage. For god’s sake shut up and get on with it, you want to shout when the film halts yet again for some ‘gyaan’ giving or romantic mush.
Roy (Abhishek Bacchan) is a conman who has never been caught , despite some rather extravagant swindles. When girlfriend Simmi (Priyanka Chopra) dumps him on discovering what he does, he decides to give up crime.
Dittu (Riteish Deshmukh), an aspiring cheat adopts Roy as his guru, and when Roy discovers he has a brain tumour and has very little time to live, he agrees to ‘train’ Dittu.
They plan an elaborate job to con a bigger thug Chandru (Nana Patekar) and manage to get a few crores out of him which they promptly lose. So when Chandru gets mad and wants his money back, Roy runs out of tricks.
Of course, the whole set-up is not what it seems. The end is rather clever, though you can see it coming a mile away. The problem with these convoluted scripts is that they depend on the victim behaving exactly the way the writer wants them to! Which in most cases is too contrived and not the least convincing. What if Roy did not accept Dittu as a disciple? Wouldn’t anybody get a second opinion when told they have a terminal illness? Would a smart conman who has just looted a dangerous criminal go to a dance bar carrying the suitcases of money? Wouldn’t a ‘bluffmaster’ as skilled as Roy check on the antecedents of the victim for whom he lays such an intricate trap? Would he fall for such obvious and childish tricks? Pull out one nail and the whole structure tumbles down!
Bluffmaster tries to be too clever, and the catch-a-thief aspect of it falls flat. At best it is mildly amusing, mainly because of the Bachchan-Deshmukh stand-up comedy show that the film turns out to be. Okay, so they are often funny, cool and go well together without trying to steal each other’s scenes. But heck, couldn’t Sippy have made it snappier?
Labels: Cinemaah
