Saturday, April 22, 2006
Pyare Mohan
It must be the success of Masti that made Indra Kumar go for a comedy again. But without the touch of risqué, can he make a comedy work? Doesn’t seem so, going by the juvenile Pyare Mohan.
Pyare (Fardeen Khan) is blind and Mohan (Viveik Oberoi) is deaf— both used to be film stuntmen, who were hurt during a film shoot. They now run a card shop and hope to meet girls who will love them for what they are. Some humour is generated by Mohan misunderstanding words when he lip reads, and Pyare causing mayhem when he jogs on the road. But there are careless slips—like Mohan singing in tune, and Pyare dancing in step, when he obviously can’t see what others in the disco are doing.
When they meet the girls of their dreams (Esha Deol, Amrita Rao), their declaration of love is rejected – which girl would accept a guy with a handicap, they argue.
The light romantic mood of the first half – which contains the very hummable You are my angel number—is just a preamble for the adventure to come. And here the film gets completely derailed.
The girls are arrested in Bangkok for a murder actually committed by a gangster Tony Fernandes (Boman Irani), who had earlier faked his own death and moved to Thailand. Pyare and Mohan head there to rescue them. There are just a series of endless chases, with the cops and Tony’s brother Tiny (Snehal Dabhi) chasing them all over the city.
The action scenes, when they are not repetitive (Mohan directing Pyare who hits out accurately), they are ridiculous—Tony trying to kill them by throwing glass bottles at them; why wouldn’t he just shoot? Tiny is part of the only disgusting gag in the film, which involves a horse and is unprintable.
There are a few laughs here, but no plot to sustain the humour over the film’s running time. Boman Irani with his lisping, pretend Chinese accent is more irritating than menacing, and the absence of a strong villain ruins the thriller part of the film.
If Boman Irani gives a bad performance, do the other non-actors have a chance? Viveik Oberoi has the funniest scenes, so is the best of the poor lot.
Pyare (Fardeen Khan) is blind and Mohan (Viveik Oberoi) is deaf— both used to be film stuntmen, who were hurt during a film shoot. They now run a card shop and hope to meet girls who will love them for what they are. Some humour is generated by Mohan misunderstanding words when he lip reads, and Pyare causing mayhem when he jogs on the road. But there are careless slips—like Mohan singing in tune, and Pyare dancing in step, when he obviously can’t see what others in the disco are doing.
When they meet the girls of their dreams (Esha Deol, Amrita Rao), their declaration of love is rejected – which girl would accept a guy with a handicap, they argue.
The light romantic mood of the first half – which contains the very hummable You are my angel number—is just a preamble for the adventure to come. And here the film gets completely derailed.
The girls are arrested in Bangkok for a murder actually committed by a gangster Tony Fernandes (Boman Irani), who had earlier faked his own death and moved to Thailand. Pyare and Mohan head there to rescue them. There are just a series of endless chases, with the cops and Tony’s brother Tiny (Snehal Dabhi) chasing them all over the city.
The action scenes, when they are not repetitive (Mohan directing Pyare who hits out accurately), they are ridiculous—Tony trying to kill them by throwing glass bottles at them; why wouldn’t he just shoot? Tiny is part of the only disgusting gag in the film, which involves a horse and is unprintable.
There are a few laughs here, but no plot to sustain the humour over the film’s running time. Boman Irani with his lisping, pretend Chinese accent is more irritating than menacing, and the absence of a strong villain ruins the thriller part of the film.
If Boman Irani gives a bad performance, do the other non-actors have a chance? Viveik Oberoi has the funniest scenes, so is the best of the poor lot.
Labels: Cinemaah
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Humko...
Humko Deewana Kar Gaye
Unless the writer-director is hugely imaginative – which Raj Kanwar is not—there can be hardly any variation to the typical Indian love triangle.
Humko Deewana Kar Gaye shot in Canada on pretty locations, moves over well-worn ruts too. Right from the Bebe-puttar kind of stereotyped Punjabi family (what’s Helen doing here?) to the scenes of boy and girl slowly falling love, everything has a déjà vu feel. Then Kanwar has the gumption to lift scenes from Hollywood films—including the famous burning car rescue from Crash.
Aditya (Akshay Kumar) is engaged to Sonia (Bipasha Basu), who is career-oriented, so it makes it easier for him to ditch her later. Jia (Katrina Kaif) is a lonely rich girl, about to get into a marriage of ‘company mergers’ with Karan (Anil Kapoor), who looks and behaves more like a Mafia don than an industrialist.
Both neglected by their respective partners, both away from home in distant Canada, the accidental bumping turns into friendship and then into love. To make it easier for Jia to forget all about her betrothed, Aditya does the usual heroic things like saving her from muggers and winning cross country car races, along with cute stuff like dancing to Shammi Kapoor songs with her. All Karan does is glare menacingly with his stubbled mug (busy businessmen don’t shave or what?). There is no contest really, Aditya is a clear winner, and he does not even have a pang of conscience for dumping Sonia. In Raj Kanwar’s world, women who fly off to Paris for work and dislike howling babies ought to be dumped!
In most love stories of this kind, there is a last minute sorting out of couples, using dogs, pigeons, diaries, eavesdroppers or other deus ex machina, here the inevitable happens a little after the Jia-Karan wedding. Which extends the already overlong (and stuffed with extra songs) film for another 20 minutes, making the restless audience beg for mercy.
Except Yeh dil hua fanaa there is no hummable song in the film. The only point of interest here is the fresh Akshay Kumar-Katrina Kaif pairing—she has a charming presence, which covers up for lack of acting talent.
Unless the writer-director is hugely imaginative – which Raj Kanwar is not—there can be hardly any variation to the typical Indian love triangle.
Humko Deewana Kar Gaye shot in Canada on pretty locations, moves over well-worn ruts too. Right from the Bebe-puttar kind of stereotyped Punjabi family (what’s Helen doing here?) to the scenes of boy and girl slowly falling love, everything has a déjà vu feel. Then Kanwar has the gumption to lift scenes from Hollywood films—including the famous burning car rescue from Crash.
Aditya (Akshay Kumar) is engaged to Sonia (Bipasha Basu), who is career-oriented, so it makes it easier for him to ditch her later. Jia (Katrina Kaif) is a lonely rich girl, about to get into a marriage of ‘company mergers’ with Karan (Anil Kapoor), who looks and behaves more like a Mafia don than an industrialist.
Both neglected by their respective partners, both away from home in distant Canada, the accidental bumping turns into friendship and then into love. To make it easier for Jia to forget all about her betrothed, Aditya does the usual heroic things like saving her from muggers and winning cross country car races, along with cute stuff like dancing to Shammi Kapoor songs with her. All Karan does is glare menacingly with his stubbled mug (busy businessmen don’t shave or what?). There is no contest really, Aditya is a clear winner, and he does not even have a pang of conscience for dumping Sonia. In Raj Kanwar’s world, women who fly off to Paris for work and dislike howling babies ought to be dumped!
In most love stories of this kind, there is a last minute sorting out of couples, using dogs, pigeons, diaries, eavesdroppers or other deus ex machina, here the inevitable happens a little after the Jia-Karan wedding. Which extends the already overlong (and stuffed with extra songs) film for another 20 minutes, making the restless audience beg for mercy.
Except Yeh dil hua fanaa there is no hummable song in the film. The only point of interest here is the fresh Akshay Kumar-Katrina Kaif pairing—she has a charming presence, which covers up for lack of acting talent.
Labels: Cinemaah
Three Duds!
Banaras: A Mystic Love Story
At various moments characters in Pankuj Parshar’s Banaras: A Mystic Love Story intone ponderously, “Yeh Banaras Hai” to tell us that this is the place that has a strange spiritual power. All we can see, however, is postcard visuals of the holy city, and a weird mysticism that demands suspension of rationalism and wants you to believe that a wandering ghost (Naseeruddin Shah) can do everything from teach music to curing cancer. More absurd than mystical.
Banaras throws all kinds of pop-spirituality at us (lines like “Jo sahej hai, jo saral hai, wohi satya hai…. Meaning what?), but can’t figure out what it wants to be.
Brahmin girl Shwetambari (Urmila Matondkar) falls in love with lower caste musician Soham (Ashmit Patel). They sing songs and have supposedly profound philosophical discussions, but nothing to suggest that this is a deeply spiritual union. So when Shwetambari says lines like “Soham is not just a person, but a feeling, how can anyone live without feeling?” you wonder if she is talking about the same blank faced youth we see on screen, and who at one point has a big divine moment, that is made up of primitive computer effects!
Shwetambari’s father (Raj Babbar), who had, just a few scenes back, pulled his feet back from Soham’s respectful touch, now happily invites him home for Holi and agrees to a wedding. But Soham is found dead and Shwetambari starts behaving strangely—hystrical one minute, and the next dressing up and acting like a nautch girl.
In trying to explain Banaras to a skeptical doctor (Akash Khurana), Shwetambari probably finds her own calling and becomes a godwoman in distant Mauritius, doling out philosophy in easy bites.
Sixteen years later, she returns to her father;s deathbed and confirms from her mother (Dimple Kapadia), the truth of Soham’s death.
The problem is that the film goes off on tangents so often, that you can’t bring yourself to care for Shwetambari’s plight. There is no passion in her romance, no drama in her supposedly revolutionary step of wanting to marrying a lower caste man. And as for the film being called Banaras, the story could have happened anywhere, Parashar does not use the city as a metaphor of any kind.
Urmila Matondkar who is the centre of the film does grief and hysteria wellm but subtlety is still beyond her grasp.
Saawan: The Love Season
It’s not as if Saawan Kumar Tak was ever a great filmmaker, but after so many films, and a few of them hits, you’d think he’d have learnt how to direct. His latest Saawan: The Love Season seems to be a collection of scenes randomly put together with no sense or logic.
Salman Khan, who apparently did this film as a favour to the director (and was the reason why even those ten people wandered into the cinema hall), plays a doomsday prophet, who wanders around the film with no apparent purpose, and has conversations with God-- and God actually replies!
When Salman’s not around, Johny Lever is being chased by his ‘wife’ (Bobby Darling). When these two are not doing their painful comedy act, the official ‘hero’ and ‘heroine’ of the film are singing and dancing all over from Mumbai to Cape Town to Dubai. After all this wrapping is removed, comes a tiny plot about a girl who is told (by Salman) that she will die by Friday. So? So nothing. She sings some more and Salman sportingly allows the skinny hero to batter him to death.
Tough to decipher what Saawan Kumar Tak was trying to pull off; it’s a lot of money to blow up (foreign locations and all!) to make such a senseless film. And then it doesn’t even rain anywhere in Saawan!
Shaadi Se Pehle
Sample the humour.
Guy meets girl, says: Is your dad a terrorist?
Girl: No… why?
Guy: Because you are a bomb.
And instead of slapping guy and flouncing off, girl falls in love with him. Which is the start of our problems with Satish Kaushik’s desperate-to-succeed comedy Shaadi Se Pehle. If bikini-clad Mallika Sherawat cooing that she can teach all of India to kiss is not desperate, what is? (Sad because she looks better in Indian outfits and can even act a little when she drops the I’m-so-sexy pose.)
Ashish (Akshaye Khanna) the future advertising creative head who uttered that appalling pick-up line, makes a small fortune to impress Rani’s (Ayesha Takia) parents, then turns into a hypochondriac (inspired by the old chestnut Send Me No Flowers). Overhearing his doctor (Boman Irani-- hilarious) talking of a cancer patient, Ashish thinks it’s him and gets into a panic.
Along with friend Shayar Kanpuri (a high decibel Rajpal Yadav), he does crazy things like buying a plot for a tomb, and wood for cremation. Then he figures out that he must get Rani to hate him or she won’t be able to face his death.
Sania (Mallika Sherawat—half-dressed) turns up just when all Ashish’s plans fail, and since she takes a shine to him, Rani is finally put off. But Ashish’s troubles don’t end. Sania turns out to be the sister of mafia don Anna (Sunil Shetty), who accepts Ashish into the fold with alacrity and won’t take no for an answer. (This from Mickey Blue Eyes). By the time Ashish figures out he is not dying, he can’t shake Anna off, and Rani has taken up with his rival Rohit (Aftab Shivdasani).
Shaadi Se Pehle could boast of some funny scenes, a couple of good gags and a few chuckle worthy lines, but the comedy is mostly clunky. Akshaye Khanna, who lacks the comic panache of a Govinda, is made to wear (why didn’t he protest?), violently coloured clothes, red shoes, ridiculous looking hairstyle and a permanently puzzled expression. If at all the film does some business at the box office, it won’t be because of its merits, but because audiences are in a mood for comedy.
At various moments characters in Pankuj Parshar’s Banaras: A Mystic Love Story intone ponderously, “Yeh Banaras Hai” to tell us that this is the place that has a strange spiritual power. All we can see, however, is postcard visuals of the holy city, and a weird mysticism that demands suspension of rationalism and wants you to believe that a wandering ghost (Naseeruddin Shah) can do everything from teach music to curing cancer. More absurd than mystical.
Banaras throws all kinds of pop-spirituality at us (lines like “Jo sahej hai, jo saral hai, wohi satya hai…. Meaning what?), but can’t figure out what it wants to be.
Brahmin girl Shwetambari (Urmila Matondkar) falls in love with lower caste musician Soham (Ashmit Patel). They sing songs and have supposedly profound philosophical discussions, but nothing to suggest that this is a deeply spiritual union. So when Shwetambari says lines like “Soham is not just a person, but a feeling, how can anyone live without feeling?” you wonder if she is talking about the same blank faced youth we see on screen, and who at one point has a big divine moment, that is made up of primitive computer effects!
Shwetambari’s father (Raj Babbar), who had, just a few scenes back, pulled his feet back from Soham’s respectful touch, now happily invites him home for Holi and agrees to a wedding. But Soham is found dead and Shwetambari starts behaving strangely—hystrical one minute, and the next dressing up and acting like a nautch girl.
In trying to explain Banaras to a skeptical doctor (Akash Khurana), Shwetambari probably finds her own calling and becomes a godwoman in distant Mauritius, doling out philosophy in easy bites.
Sixteen years later, she returns to her father;s deathbed and confirms from her mother (Dimple Kapadia), the truth of Soham’s death.
The problem is that the film goes off on tangents so often, that you can’t bring yourself to care for Shwetambari’s plight. There is no passion in her romance, no drama in her supposedly revolutionary step of wanting to marrying a lower caste man. And as for the film being called Banaras, the story could have happened anywhere, Parashar does not use the city as a metaphor of any kind.
Urmila Matondkar who is the centre of the film does grief and hysteria wellm but subtlety is still beyond her grasp.
Saawan: The Love Season
It’s not as if Saawan Kumar Tak was ever a great filmmaker, but after so many films, and a few of them hits, you’d think he’d have learnt how to direct. His latest Saawan: The Love Season seems to be a collection of scenes randomly put together with no sense or logic.
Salman Khan, who apparently did this film as a favour to the director (and was the reason why even those ten people wandered into the cinema hall), plays a doomsday prophet, who wanders around the film with no apparent purpose, and has conversations with God-- and God actually replies!
When Salman’s not around, Johny Lever is being chased by his ‘wife’ (Bobby Darling). When these two are not doing their painful comedy act, the official ‘hero’ and ‘heroine’ of the film are singing and dancing all over from Mumbai to Cape Town to Dubai. After all this wrapping is removed, comes a tiny plot about a girl who is told (by Salman) that she will die by Friday. So? So nothing. She sings some more and Salman sportingly allows the skinny hero to batter him to death.
Tough to decipher what Saawan Kumar Tak was trying to pull off; it’s a lot of money to blow up (foreign locations and all!) to make such a senseless film. And then it doesn’t even rain anywhere in Saawan!
Shaadi Se Pehle
Sample the humour.
Guy meets girl, says: Is your dad a terrorist?
Girl: No… why?
Guy: Because you are a bomb.
And instead of slapping guy and flouncing off, girl falls in love with him. Which is the start of our problems with Satish Kaushik’s desperate-to-succeed comedy Shaadi Se Pehle. If bikini-clad Mallika Sherawat cooing that she can teach all of India to kiss is not desperate, what is? (Sad because she looks better in Indian outfits and can even act a little when she drops the I’m-so-sexy pose.)
Ashish (Akshaye Khanna) the future advertising creative head who uttered that appalling pick-up line, makes a small fortune to impress Rani’s (Ayesha Takia) parents, then turns into a hypochondriac (inspired by the old chestnut Send Me No Flowers). Overhearing his doctor (Boman Irani-- hilarious) talking of a cancer patient, Ashish thinks it’s him and gets into a panic.
Along with friend Shayar Kanpuri (a high decibel Rajpal Yadav), he does crazy things like buying a plot for a tomb, and wood for cremation. Then he figures out that he must get Rani to hate him or she won’t be able to face his death.
Sania (Mallika Sherawat—half-dressed) turns up just when all Ashish’s plans fail, and since she takes a shine to him, Rani is finally put off. But Ashish’s troubles don’t end. Sania turns out to be the sister of mafia don Anna (Sunil Shetty), who accepts Ashish into the fold with alacrity and won’t take no for an answer. (This from Mickey Blue Eyes). By the time Ashish figures out he is not dying, he can’t shake Anna off, and Rani has taken up with his rival Rohit (Aftab Shivdasani).
Shaadi Se Pehle could boast of some funny scenes, a couple of good gags and a few chuckle worthy lines, but the comedy is mostly clunky. Akshaye Khanna, who lacks the comic panache of a Govinda, is made to wear (why didn’t he protest?), violently coloured clothes, red shoes, ridiculous looking hairstyle and a permanently puzzled expression. If at all the film does some business at the box office, it won’t be because of its merits, but because audiences are in a mood for comedy.
Labels: Cinemaah
Chand Ke Paar...
There's something so quaint about Mustafa Engineer’s Chand Ke Paar Chalo that had it been a better written and directed film it might even have been watchable. But as it is now, it belongs to the sixties, with characters that are totally anachronistic.
Inspired by films like Sitara and (godhelpus!) Guide, Chand Ke Paar Chalo is about a Nainital tourist photographer Chander (Saahib), who befriends a street dancer (Preeti Jhangiani) and dreams of making her a film star.
His parents are not just cool about letting him go off to Bombay with a strange girl, but also mortgage their house without a fuss. Such a selfless hero who wants nothing for himself, is of course asking to be kicked for his troubles.
Garima becomes a star much too easily, not so hassle free for an illiterate village girl but let that pass. What is convincing is her ingratitude towards Chander, and
getting influenced by her secretary Kapoor (Shakti Kapoor). Very off the mark, however, is Engineer’s portrayal of the film industry today. Garima rises rapidly to superstardom, and it looks as if she is the only female star in Bollywood. The supporting characters whether in Nainital or Mumbai are too far-fetched to be true.
Kapoor creates a rift between the two and sees to it that Chander is thrown out. It's not hard to guess that a girl, even in 2006, would give up her career for a man-- whether it is this or a Ram Gopal Varma film (Rangeela, Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon)
The performances-- newcomer Saahib vaguely resembles Akshay Kumar but can't act and speaks his lines in a flat monotone, while Preeti Jhangiani overacts.
Chand Ke Paar Chalo is the kind of film that is derogatorily described as filmi-- which stands for theatrical, artificial and cheesy.
Inspired by films like Sitara and (godhelpus!) Guide, Chand Ke Paar Chalo is about a Nainital tourist photographer Chander (Saahib), who befriends a street dancer (Preeti Jhangiani) and dreams of making her a film star.
His parents are not just cool about letting him go off to Bombay with a strange girl, but also mortgage their house without a fuss. Such a selfless hero who wants nothing for himself, is of course asking to be kicked for his troubles.
Garima becomes a star much too easily, not so hassle free for an illiterate village girl but let that pass. What is convincing is her ingratitude towards Chander, and
getting influenced by her secretary Kapoor (Shakti Kapoor). Very off the mark, however, is Engineer’s portrayal of the film industry today. Garima rises rapidly to superstardom, and it looks as if she is the only female star in Bollywood. The supporting characters whether in Nainital or Mumbai are too far-fetched to be true.
Kapoor creates a rift between the two and sees to it that Chander is thrown out. It's not hard to guess that a girl, even in 2006, would give up her career for a man-- whether it is this or a Ram Gopal Varma film (Rangeela, Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon)
The performances-- newcomer Saahib vaguely resembles Akshay Kumar but can't act and speaks his lines in a flat monotone, while Preeti Jhangiani overacts.
Chand Ke Paar Chalo is the kind of film that is derogatorily described as filmi-- which stands for theatrical, artificial and cheesy.
Labels: Cinemaah
