Sunday, June 22, 2008
3 This Week
De Taali
They are in their twenties but lead an adolescent life, hanging out in a tree house and doing no real work. Director E Niwas inspired by Dawson's Creek?
Abhi's (Aftab Shivdasani) wealth seems to fund the idle lifestyles of his best pals Amu (Ayesha Takia) and Paglu (Riteish Deshmukh). Abhi keeps falling in live with kinky gals (his encounters are really funny), but Paglu convinces Amu that she is right for him. Just when Amu realizes that she is in love with Abhi, he flips for Kartika (Rimi Sen). Like My Best Friend's Wedding, Paglu and Amu do all they can to stop Abhi from marrying Kartika, who is smart, ruthless, bitchy and, as they fear, a gold-digger.
De Taali (written by Abbas Tyrewala) has a cheerful, fast-moving first half, but a very long and dragging second half, as Paglu keeps opening the cans of worms in Kartika's life and she keeps outwitting him. The actors do well — Ritiesh Deshmukh in particular, whose comic flair improves with every film. With some ruthless editing De Taali could have been a fairly enjoyable romp. As it is now, it struggles to reach the finishing line.
Haal-E-Dil
It's all very well to cast star kids in films, but at least they should be deserving or better prepared. Producer Kumar Mangat introduces his daughter Amita Pathak and Shekhar Suman's son Adhyayan in Haal-e-Dil, a film in which everything from the title to the plot to the style of direction (Anil Devgan of Raju Chacha infamy) is old-fashioned.
Sanjana (Pathak), meets the garrulous Shekhar (Nakuul Mehta) on the train home to Kalka. She is a sullen sort, he is a livewire, and at some point, she gets off the train and can't get back on, he gets off to be with her. If this sounds like Jab We Met rip-off, it is—there's even the helpful cabbie to take them to the next station, and in between an encounter with a Veerappan-like bandit (a South Indian fellow, when the train was going North).
Once they reach home Shekhar finds that Sanjana is mourning for her dead boyfriend Rohit (Adhyayan Suman), and to win her over, decides to go on a hunger strike outside her house for seven days, in the bitter cold. Does she relent? Does the audience, dying of boredom, even care?
Amita Pathak, badly in need of proper make-up and styling, is too homely for anyone to believe two men were willing to lay down their lives for her. Suman is hardly there, while there's too much of the chirpy Mehta, whose high-energy act isn't enough to save this film from sinking.
Khushboo
Another Jab We Met rip-off is a bit much—if Haal-E-Dil borrowed the missing-the-train episode from last year's hit, Rajesh Ram Singh's debut film Khushboo picks the portion of the heroine's large, bhangra-dancing, interfering Sikh family.
It also seems to be inspired by A Walk in the Clouds, Kya Kehna and Knocked Up, but it's mostly just lost in its own maze of plot devices designed to throw lots of obstacles into the part of Pinky (Avantikka—passable) and Raghu Iyer (Rishi Rehan—not quite there). So by the end of the film, when they decide that they are really, truly, actually in love, the viewer is relieved that all possible problems have been dealt with. And no more will crop up to bop them on the head.
Pinky, supposedly studying photography and painting in Chandigarh (though you never see her with a brush of camera) has a one night stand with Raghu (Rishi Rehan), becomes pregnant and decides to keep the baby. Raghu is taken to meet her huge clan, after which he proposes to her. Once they are married, needless complications arise—her family, his parents, his career, their regional and religious differences, and so on. Anyone who watches enough films would know the when it's the question of a job in New York and changing diapers in Chandigarh, what a guy will pick.
In its own dizzy way, the film does touch up some contemporary youth issues—like unsafe sex, family vs career-- but it need not have been clichéd in so many other ways. Could do with better defined characters and better actors. And when the leading pair is established as ordinary, what is that faintly obscene Gud chakha dream sequence doing here?
They are in their twenties but lead an adolescent life, hanging out in a tree house and doing no real work. Director E Niwas inspired by Dawson's Creek?
Abhi's (Aftab Shivdasani) wealth seems to fund the idle lifestyles of his best pals Amu (Ayesha Takia) and Paglu (Riteish Deshmukh). Abhi keeps falling in live with kinky gals (his encounters are really funny), but Paglu convinces Amu that she is right for him. Just when Amu realizes that she is in love with Abhi, he flips for Kartika (Rimi Sen). Like My Best Friend's Wedding, Paglu and Amu do all they can to stop Abhi from marrying Kartika, who is smart, ruthless, bitchy and, as they fear, a gold-digger.
De Taali (written by Abbas Tyrewala) has a cheerful, fast-moving first half, but a very long and dragging second half, as Paglu keeps opening the cans of worms in Kartika's life and she keeps outwitting him. The actors do well — Ritiesh Deshmukh in particular, whose comic flair improves with every film. With some ruthless editing De Taali could have been a fairly enjoyable romp. As it is now, it struggles to reach the finishing line.
Haal-E-Dil
It's all very well to cast star kids in films, but at least they should be deserving or better prepared. Producer Kumar Mangat introduces his daughter Amita Pathak and Shekhar Suman's son Adhyayan in Haal-e-Dil, a film in which everything from the title to the plot to the style of direction (Anil Devgan of Raju Chacha infamy) is old-fashioned.
Sanjana (Pathak), meets the garrulous Shekhar (Nakuul Mehta) on the train home to Kalka. She is a sullen sort, he is a livewire, and at some point, she gets off the train and can't get back on, he gets off to be with her. If this sounds like Jab We Met rip-off, it is—there's even the helpful cabbie to take them to the next station, and in between an encounter with a Veerappan-like bandit (a South Indian fellow, when the train was going North).
Once they reach home Shekhar finds that Sanjana is mourning for her dead boyfriend Rohit (Adhyayan Suman), and to win her over, decides to go on a hunger strike outside her house for seven days, in the bitter cold. Does she relent? Does the audience, dying of boredom, even care?
Amita Pathak, badly in need of proper make-up and styling, is too homely for anyone to believe two men were willing to lay down their lives for her. Suman is hardly there, while there's too much of the chirpy Mehta, whose high-energy act isn't enough to save this film from sinking.
Khushboo
Another Jab We Met rip-off is a bit much—if Haal-E-Dil borrowed the missing-the-train episode from last year's hit, Rajesh Ram Singh's debut film Khushboo picks the portion of the heroine's large, bhangra-dancing, interfering Sikh family.
It also seems to be inspired by A Walk in the Clouds, Kya Kehna and Knocked Up, but it's mostly just lost in its own maze of plot devices designed to throw lots of obstacles into the part of Pinky (Avantikka—passable) and Raghu Iyer (Rishi Rehan—not quite there). So by the end of the film, when they decide that they are really, truly, actually in love, the viewer is relieved that all possible problems have been dealt with. And no more will crop up to bop them on the head.
Pinky, supposedly studying photography and painting in Chandigarh (though you never see her with a brush of camera) has a one night stand with Raghu (Rishi Rehan), becomes pregnant and decides to keep the baby. Raghu is taken to meet her huge clan, after which he proposes to her. Once they are married, needless complications arise—her family, his parents, his career, their regional and religious differences, and so on. Anyone who watches enough films would know the when it's the question of a job in New York and changing diapers in Chandigarh, what a guy will pick.
In its own dizzy way, the film does touch up some contemporary youth issues—like unsafe sex, family vs career-- but it need not have been clichéd in so many other ways. Could do with better defined characters and better actors. And when the leading pair is established as ordinary, what is that faintly obscene Gud chakha dream sequence doing here?
Labels: Cinemaah
