Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Jannat
Jannat
A diamond ring plays such an important role in Jannat, it should have been listed in the credits!
Kunal Deshmukh’s debut film has a somewhat unusual plot (probably inspired by sources as disparate as the play Three Men on a Horse and films The Gambler and Two for the Money). Emraan Hashmi plays Arjun, the reckless son of an honest bookseller (told not shown), who hated his poverty stricken childhood with no toys and no scented soap. So he becomes a gambler-- the kind of guy who can look anyone in the eye and lie, as his father (Vipin Sharma) says.
Even when he is being threatened by creditors, he can coolly pick up and apple and chew while making false promises. Hardly the kind of guy who would let his life be dictated by an almost unhealthy obsession for a quite ordinary girl, Zoya (Sonal Chauhan-- vapid), but the writer-director makes him so, and gives his film a fatal flaw.
Every conflict and twist in the tale has to do with his relationship with Zoya—it’s as if the otherwise bright and ambitions Arjun has no will of his own and is in a tug-of-war game between Zoya and a powerful crime boss Abu Ibrahim (Javed Sheikh). One offers him a middle class life of hard work and deprivation, the other offers wealth and jannat. Not an even match-- seems as fake and fixed as the cricket matches in the movie.
Arjun has the magical ability to make correct predictions about cricket, which lead him to Abu’s domain in South Africa, where he makes unimaginable amounts of money as a match fixer. Zoya lives with him and is dumb enough to believe that so much cash came from “import and export” of sporting goods. At least it she were a greedy, grasping bitch, her character would be realistic, but she is just a shrieking, sanctimonious bore who enjoys Arjun’s money, but also gets him arrested because she loves him (odd!) and then works as a pole dancer to make a living! Films never seem to explain what happens all the money a character has already made in the past; when he hits a rough spot, it’s straight to skid row!
There’s a cop from India (Samir Kocchar) who eats non-stop and parks himself in South Africa for months on end to arrest not the kingpin, but the henchman Arjun—since when does the Mumbai Police has such generous resources?
Cricket is just a device to bring a bit of contemporary realism into the film—like the Bob Woolmer murder—but otherwise it could be anything that encourages gambling. The story is about Arjun’s greed, arrogance and downfall, with too many plot holes to make it likable or convincing. Emraan Hashmi is left to do all the acting for the whole cast of pine trees! Not fair to him. Some of the double meaning dialogue is cringe-worthy; on the plus side is Pritam’s excellent music, though the songs are not well-picturised.
A diamond ring plays such an important role in Jannat, it should have been listed in the credits!
Kunal Deshmukh’s debut film has a somewhat unusual plot (probably inspired by sources as disparate as the play Three Men on a Horse and films The Gambler and Two for the Money). Emraan Hashmi plays Arjun, the reckless son of an honest bookseller (told not shown), who hated his poverty stricken childhood with no toys and no scented soap. So he becomes a gambler-- the kind of guy who can look anyone in the eye and lie, as his father (Vipin Sharma) says.
Even when he is being threatened by creditors, he can coolly pick up and apple and chew while making false promises. Hardly the kind of guy who would let his life be dictated by an almost unhealthy obsession for a quite ordinary girl, Zoya (Sonal Chauhan-- vapid), but the writer-director makes him so, and gives his film a fatal flaw.
Every conflict and twist in the tale has to do with his relationship with Zoya—it’s as if the otherwise bright and ambitions Arjun has no will of his own and is in a tug-of-war game between Zoya and a powerful crime boss Abu Ibrahim (Javed Sheikh). One offers him a middle class life of hard work and deprivation, the other offers wealth and jannat. Not an even match-- seems as fake and fixed as the cricket matches in the movie.
Arjun has the magical ability to make correct predictions about cricket, which lead him to Abu’s domain in South Africa, where he makes unimaginable amounts of money as a match fixer. Zoya lives with him and is dumb enough to believe that so much cash came from “import and export” of sporting goods. At least it she were a greedy, grasping bitch, her character would be realistic, but she is just a shrieking, sanctimonious bore who enjoys Arjun’s money, but also gets him arrested because she loves him (odd!) and then works as a pole dancer to make a living! Films never seem to explain what happens all the money a character has already made in the past; when he hits a rough spot, it’s straight to skid row!
There’s a cop from India (Samir Kocchar) who eats non-stop and parks himself in South Africa for months on end to arrest not the kingpin, but the henchman Arjun—since when does the Mumbai Police has such generous resources?
Cricket is just a device to bring a bit of contemporary realism into the film—like the Bob Woolmer murder—but otherwise it could be anything that encourages gambling. The story is about Arjun’s greed, arrogance and downfall, with too many plot holes to make it likable or convincing. Emraan Hashmi is left to do all the acting for the whole cast of pine trees! Not fair to him. Some of the double meaning dialogue is cringe-worthy; on the plus side is Pritam’s excellent music, though the songs are not well-picturised.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Bhoot+Jimmy
Bhoothnath
Big movie star seldom read scripts, but the narration of Bhoothnath must have sounded pretty interesting for stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Juhi Chawla and Shah Rukh Khan to sign up, and the BR Films banner to produce.
Unfortunately, there is a slip between narration and execution, because Vivek Sharma’s debut film is not only boring for most part, but also manages the near-impossible feat of getting an indifferent performance from Bachchan.
It starts out well enough, a chirpy young couple is spooked out of a haunted Goa mansion in the midst of their romantic dinner. Next, a family moves into Nath Villa—Aditya (Shah Rukh Khan), his wife Anjali (Juhi Chawla—surprisingly listless) and kid Banku (Aman Siddiqui—spirited enough). They are warned about the resident ghost, but pay no heed.
The kid is told there are no ghosts, only angels, so when he comes across the scruffy Kailash Nath (Bachchan), he is not scared. Of course, it’s odd that the ghost wants to drive away the new tenants (shades of Casper), but plays tricks only on the kid and the drunk (Rajpal Yadav) hired to clean the house, since Anjali can’t find domestic help.
There are some faintly amusing scenes of Banku in school with a gluttonous principal (Satish Shah) who steals the kids’ lunch boxes; and the usual flying objects kind of spooky stuff, but nothing that audiences haven’t seen before, and done better, even in the days when special effects weren’t so advanced (Chamatkar and Mr India, for example), not to mention the really fancy CGI they see in Hollywood films and TV serials.
What really kills the film, however, more so for kids, is the sudden turn in the second half towards heavy duty melodrama. Looks like the Chopras haven’t forgotten the success of Baghban, because there is a condensed repeat here—Kailash Nath’s neglectful son (Priyanshu Chatterji) abandons grieving parents (Neena Kulkarni as the sobbing mother) and goes to America. When he returns, it’s only to sell the house. No wonder his dad dies and turns into a ghost!
Bhoothnath sorely lacks the humour and lightness of touch that a film for children should ideally have, and when it comes to the songs, Sharma does a set piece in which kids dress and dance like adults; and in another scantily clad girls turn up to dance with the bhoot.
There is some inconsistency in the ghost’s powers as well—he can levitate the kid and move through walls at will, but can’t save Banku from taking a lethal toss down the stairs!
Having yawned through this one, what really makes your hair stand on end is the threat of a sequel with that fatal ‘to be continued’ line in the end.
Jimmy
Most star sons get launched with a a bit of fanfare by their fathers, some of them continue to ride on their star dads’ names much after their debuts. If nepotism in the industry is an accepted thing, then poor Mimoh Chakraborty deserved a better film than this tawdry Jimmy, which looks well past its sell-by date.
Mimoh playing Jimmy an automobile engineer by day and DJ by night, is given a lot of dances—but the Michael Jackson style ‘Moonwalk’ steps are not just horribly outdated, but look ridiculous on his large frame.
His bulked up body is topped by his mother Yogita Bali’s round face, long, stringy hair and a voice that sounds like an adolescent’s breaking croak. With so many disadvantages to begin with, he needed a really great script and director to salvage his ill-fated debut.
Raj NC Sippy is still stuck in the seventies—the plot is borrowed from Majboor, the dialogue is so awful that the film turns unintentionally funny in places, and the visual style extremely shoddy.
Today’s films may not be high on logic, but it’s hard to beat the senseless plot of this one, in which the villain easily manipulates the hero and everyone else. Jimmy is told he has a “last stage” brain tumour and only one week to live, but nobody in our films ever takes a second opinion. Then he is offered a large sum to pay off his dead father’s debts if he will take on a murder rap, and he accepts.
It gets worse, but only the very brave or the very kinky will last through Jimmy—it will definitely make it to the list of cult bad films, like some of Mithun Chakraborty’s C–grade actioners.
Mimoh is cast opposite a non-descript girl (Vivana) in huge hoop earrings, and to keep him company is a very hammy Zulfi Sayed, an uncredited actress playing the stereotyped mother, constantly offering her son breakfast and Shakti Kapoor turns up in a guest appearance to utter some sleazy lines.
Big movie star seldom read scripts, but the narration of Bhoothnath must have sounded pretty interesting for stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Juhi Chawla and Shah Rukh Khan to sign up, and the BR Films banner to produce.
Unfortunately, there is a slip between narration and execution, because Vivek Sharma’s debut film is not only boring for most part, but also manages the near-impossible feat of getting an indifferent performance from Bachchan.
It starts out well enough, a chirpy young couple is spooked out of a haunted Goa mansion in the midst of their romantic dinner. Next, a family moves into Nath Villa—Aditya (Shah Rukh Khan), his wife Anjali (Juhi Chawla—surprisingly listless) and kid Banku (Aman Siddiqui—spirited enough). They are warned about the resident ghost, but pay no heed.
The kid is told there are no ghosts, only angels, so when he comes across the scruffy Kailash Nath (Bachchan), he is not scared. Of course, it’s odd that the ghost wants to drive away the new tenants (shades of Casper), but plays tricks only on the kid and the drunk (Rajpal Yadav) hired to clean the house, since Anjali can’t find domestic help.
There are some faintly amusing scenes of Banku in school with a gluttonous principal (Satish Shah) who steals the kids’ lunch boxes; and the usual flying objects kind of spooky stuff, but nothing that audiences haven’t seen before, and done better, even in the days when special effects weren’t so advanced (Chamatkar and Mr India, for example), not to mention the really fancy CGI they see in Hollywood films and TV serials.
What really kills the film, however, more so for kids, is the sudden turn in the second half towards heavy duty melodrama. Looks like the Chopras haven’t forgotten the success of Baghban, because there is a condensed repeat here—Kailash Nath’s neglectful son (Priyanshu Chatterji) abandons grieving parents (Neena Kulkarni as the sobbing mother) and goes to America. When he returns, it’s only to sell the house. No wonder his dad dies and turns into a ghost!
Bhoothnath sorely lacks the humour and lightness of touch that a film for children should ideally have, and when it comes to the songs, Sharma does a set piece in which kids dress and dance like adults; and in another scantily clad girls turn up to dance with the bhoot.
There is some inconsistency in the ghost’s powers as well—he can levitate the kid and move through walls at will, but can’t save Banku from taking a lethal toss down the stairs!
Having yawned through this one, what really makes your hair stand on end is the threat of a sequel with that fatal ‘to be continued’ line in the end.
Jimmy
Most star sons get launched with a a bit of fanfare by their fathers, some of them continue to ride on their star dads’ names much after their debuts. If nepotism in the industry is an accepted thing, then poor Mimoh Chakraborty deserved a better film than this tawdry Jimmy, which looks well past its sell-by date.
Mimoh playing Jimmy an automobile engineer by day and DJ by night, is given a lot of dances—but the Michael Jackson style ‘Moonwalk’ steps are not just horribly outdated, but look ridiculous on his large frame.
His bulked up body is topped by his mother Yogita Bali’s round face, long, stringy hair and a voice that sounds like an adolescent’s breaking croak. With so many disadvantages to begin with, he needed a really great script and director to salvage his ill-fated debut.
Raj NC Sippy is still stuck in the seventies—the plot is borrowed from Majboor, the dialogue is so awful that the film turns unintentionally funny in places, and the visual style extremely shoddy.
Today’s films may not be high on logic, but it’s hard to beat the senseless plot of this one, in which the villain easily manipulates the hero and everyone else. Jimmy is told he has a “last stage” brain tumour and only one week to live, but nobody in our films ever takes a second opinion. Then he is offered a large sum to pay off his dead father’s debts if he will take on a murder rap, and he accepts.
It gets worse, but only the very brave or the very kinky will last through Jimmy—it will definitely make it to the list of cult bad films, like some of Mithun Chakraborty’s C–grade actioners.
Mimoh is cast opposite a non-descript girl (Vivana) in huge hoop earrings, and to keep him company is a very hammy Zulfi Sayed, an uncredited actress playing the stereotyped mother, constantly offering her son breakfast and Shakti Kapoor turns up in a guest appearance to utter some sleazy lines.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Anamika+MWMB+Pranali
Anamika
A call centre gets a call for an escort for a visitor from Rajasthan. Oh-oh, you think, Hitckcock meets Bhandrakar in Ananth Narayan Mahadevan’s Anamika.. what now?
No such luck, they just don’t the difference between a secretarial help and escort service! Jia (Minissha Lamba) is the escort provided to Vikram Sisodiya (Dino Morea), and so dumb is she, that he proposes marriage! And do desperate is she, living in an overcrowded hostel, that she accepts.
He takes her to his Gajner Palace, magnificent if desolate structure in the middle of the desert. You already know that the film has been inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, which was based on Daphne du Maurier’s splendid novel and has already been made into the watchable dark musical Kohra by Biren Nag.
How could anyone go wrong with this film? Unfortunately, Mahadevan does. The setting is perfect, but the eeriness just does not build up. Instead of the spooky housekeeper, Mrs Denver, there’s Malini (Koena Mitra), who hangs around the palace, without any purpose, dressed in skimpy clothes.
The palace, which is meant to be converted into a hotel, is severely understaffed, and there’s an inexplicable suited-booted mad man in a twig hut in the desert. Everyone talks about Vikram’s dead wife Anamika, who was so perfect, that the naïve Jia cannot match up to her. Sniffing around for leads to Anamika’s disappearance is Vikram’s cop brother-in-law (Gulshan Grover).
Anamika is not about the innocent young girl being driven mad, it never gives you goosebumps, you just can’t feel for Jia’s plight, because no matter how much she tries, Minissha comes across as silly rather than helpless. And both women seem to be competing in a sexy dress competition (all those bare shoulders and cleavage on display), rather than acting.
If Jia had to be in almost every frame, she needed to be played by an actress far superior to Minissha Lamba in beauty and talent. Dino Morea can carry suit well, that’s about all, and Koena Mitra looks as if her make-up would crack if she showed any emotion.
There’s the grand palace as an attraction, but might as well buy a ticket to Bikaner and see the real thing!
Mr White Mr Black
If by the end of Mr White Mr Black, you forget how it began, it doesn’t matter, director Deepak Shivdasani doesn’t have a clue either.
He just seems to have rounded up any actor he could find wandering around Film City and told them to do anything—he would find a way to fit it into the film later! There isn’t any plot that can you can see or even a rough screenplay. Whoever turned up for the shoot probably ad-libbed his or her lines and hoped their scenes would end up in the same film—once called Gopi Kishen and then renamed Mr White Mr Black, which must refer to the two lead actors’ character traits and not their complexions!
Gopi (Suniel Shetty), in orange dhoti, white kurta, oily hair and silver mace in hand (why?) comes to Goa to look for Kishen (Arshad Warsi) and take him back to Hoshiarpur, where he is to get a piece of inherited land.
Among the many sub-plots is one about three bikini babes (Sandhya Mridul being one of them) stealing a don’s diamonds. The don called Laadla (Ashish Vidyarthi), with a squeaky-voiced sidekick, has a major Oediopus complex and bursts into tear at the sound of the word ‘Ma.’ Funny? Not really!
Kishen has invented a twin, so that his girlfriend (Rashmi Nigam) doesn’t figure out that he is a conman. There is also a crooked taxi river called Tulsi (Manoj Joshi), an inept cop called Mr Brown (Sharad Saxena)—the only one in all of Goa, since everyone goes to him!
There is resort owner’s daughter (Anishka Khosla), who falls in love with the illiterate Gopi, because he lectures her on her wild ways and refuses to kiss her. When you settle down for a caper, suddenly there’s a sister angle – Kishen’s sister has been studying in London, while he pretends to be a hotel magnate. So when she has to get married everyone pretends Gopi and Kishen own the resort, which gives the entire cast an excuse to assemble there for a Priysdarshan style mad scramble climax. In the midst of all this the real owner (Sadashiv Amrapurkar) returns, and instead of just calling his daughter and asking what’s up, he skulks about the premises. There’s also a pointless Sardar character with his spendthrift wife, who must have walked in from another film.
By the time, the heroes, the various girls, villains, sidekicks, cops, dads and the large floating population assembles for the climax, it’s a wonder someone remembered who was playing what, and the continuity department deserves kudos for keeping track of Suniel Shetty’s silver mace, though the bag of diamonds keeps changing shape and colour.
Arshad Warsi is just about the only decent actor in the bunch, and it really isn’t fair to him to have to carry so much deadweight. He tries hard and almost collapses with the strain. Hope someone will give him an award for valour.
Pranali: The Tradition
Pranali: The Tradition claims to be “a never ending journey of a devdasi,” but if unfortunate viewers who stray into the cinema expect a sensitive Ahista Ahista kind of movie, they will be shocked to find a C-grade exploitative film, which, if the makers were honest about its intention, would have had a less pretentious title.
The devdasi bit is dispensed quickly, with a lascivious looking priest, forcing a poor girl into become one, and then keeping her in the temple to ‘serve’ him. He passes her on to a minister in return for land and Pranali (Nargis) ends up in the red light district.
The film then piles on the clichés—the madam, the helpful cabbie, girls giggling and exchanging notes about their ‘exploits’, Pranali’s kid not getting admission in school and a token ‘mad’ woman, who looks rather well-scrubbed. Director Hridesh Kamble avoids obvious vulgarity, there are no extended rape scenes, for instance, but the camera is still made to go lecherously over women’s bodies—even that of a little girl skipping rope.
What is kept off screen is far worse than what is shown on screen –like the death of a child at the home of a pervert. It was punishment sitting through the film beyond the interval, and wait for “Vijay NRI” (Raman Trikha) to come and work with the sex workers and write a book on them. The brochure, full of hilarious glitches puts it thus, “he brought the lives of other helpless sex workers alongwith (sic) Pranali back on track, who were waiting desperately for a reformation which could change their lives for better.” Indeed!
If a film about the flesh trade has be made, it needs sympathy, fresh insights and definitely more taste than Pranali manages—this one just dishes out the dirt and then pretends to be holier-than-thou.
A call centre gets a call for an escort for a visitor from Rajasthan. Oh-oh, you think, Hitckcock meets Bhandrakar in Ananth Narayan Mahadevan’s Anamika.. what now?
No such luck, they just don’t the difference between a secretarial help and escort service! Jia (Minissha Lamba) is the escort provided to Vikram Sisodiya (Dino Morea), and so dumb is she, that he proposes marriage! And do desperate is she, living in an overcrowded hostel, that she accepts.
He takes her to his Gajner Palace, magnificent if desolate structure in the middle of the desert. You already know that the film has been inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, which was based on Daphne du Maurier’s splendid novel and has already been made into the watchable dark musical Kohra by Biren Nag.
How could anyone go wrong with this film? Unfortunately, Mahadevan does. The setting is perfect, but the eeriness just does not build up. Instead of the spooky housekeeper, Mrs Denver, there’s Malini (Koena Mitra), who hangs around the palace, without any purpose, dressed in skimpy clothes.
The palace, which is meant to be converted into a hotel, is severely understaffed, and there’s an inexplicable suited-booted mad man in a twig hut in the desert. Everyone talks about Vikram’s dead wife Anamika, who was so perfect, that the naïve Jia cannot match up to her. Sniffing around for leads to Anamika’s disappearance is Vikram’s cop brother-in-law (Gulshan Grover).
Anamika is not about the innocent young girl being driven mad, it never gives you goosebumps, you just can’t feel for Jia’s plight, because no matter how much she tries, Minissha comes across as silly rather than helpless. And both women seem to be competing in a sexy dress competition (all those bare shoulders and cleavage on display), rather than acting.
If Jia had to be in almost every frame, she needed to be played by an actress far superior to Minissha Lamba in beauty and talent. Dino Morea can carry suit well, that’s about all, and Koena Mitra looks as if her make-up would crack if she showed any emotion.
There’s the grand palace as an attraction, but might as well buy a ticket to Bikaner and see the real thing!
Mr White Mr Black
If by the end of Mr White Mr Black, you forget how it began, it doesn’t matter, director Deepak Shivdasani doesn’t have a clue either.
He just seems to have rounded up any actor he could find wandering around Film City and told them to do anything—he would find a way to fit it into the film later! There isn’t any plot that can you can see or even a rough screenplay. Whoever turned up for the shoot probably ad-libbed his or her lines and hoped their scenes would end up in the same film—once called Gopi Kishen and then renamed Mr White Mr Black, which must refer to the two lead actors’ character traits and not their complexions!
Gopi (Suniel Shetty), in orange dhoti, white kurta, oily hair and silver mace in hand (why?) comes to Goa to look for Kishen (Arshad Warsi) and take him back to Hoshiarpur, where he is to get a piece of inherited land.
Among the many sub-plots is one about three bikini babes (Sandhya Mridul being one of them) stealing a don’s diamonds. The don called Laadla (Ashish Vidyarthi), with a squeaky-voiced sidekick, has a major Oediopus complex and bursts into tear at the sound of the word ‘Ma.’ Funny? Not really!
Kishen has invented a twin, so that his girlfriend (Rashmi Nigam) doesn’t figure out that he is a conman. There is also a crooked taxi river called Tulsi (Manoj Joshi), an inept cop called Mr Brown (Sharad Saxena)—the only one in all of Goa, since everyone goes to him!
There is resort owner’s daughter (Anishka Khosla), who falls in love with the illiterate Gopi, because he lectures her on her wild ways and refuses to kiss her. When you settle down for a caper, suddenly there’s a sister angle – Kishen’s sister has been studying in London, while he pretends to be a hotel magnate. So when she has to get married everyone pretends Gopi and Kishen own the resort, which gives the entire cast an excuse to assemble there for a Priysdarshan style mad scramble climax. In the midst of all this the real owner (Sadashiv Amrapurkar) returns, and instead of just calling his daughter and asking what’s up, he skulks about the premises. There’s also a pointless Sardar character with his spendthrift wife, who must have walked in from another film.
By the time, the heroes, the various girls, villains, sidekicks, cops, dads and the large floating population assembles for the climax, it’s a wonder someone remembered who was playing what, and the continuity department deserves kudos for keeping track of Suniel Shetty’s silver mace, though the bag of diamonds keeps changing shape and colour.
Arshad Warsi is just about the only decent actor in the bunch, and it really isn’t fair to him to have to carry so much deadweight. He tries hard and almost collapses with the strain. Hope someone will give him an award for valour.
Pranali: The Tradition
Pranali: The Tradition claims to be “a never ending journey of a devdasi,” but if unfortunate viewers who stray into the cinema expect a sensitive Ahista Ahista kind of movie, they will be shocked to find a C-grade exploitative film, which, if the makers were honest about its intention, would have had a less pretentious title.
The devdasi bit is dispensed quickly, with a lascivious looking priest, forcing a poor girl into become one, and then keeping her in the temple to ‘serve’ him. He passes her on to a minister in return for land and Pranali (Nargis) ends up in the red light district.
The film then piles on the clichés—the madam, the helpful cabbie, girls giggling and exchanging notes about their ‘exploits’, Pranali’s kid not getting admission in school and a token ‘mad’ woman, who looks rather well-scrubbed. Director Hridesh Kamble avoids obvious vulgarity, there are no extended rape scenes, for instance, but the camera is still made to go lecherously over women’s bodies—even that of a little girl skipping rope.
What is kept off screen is far worse than what is shown on screen –like the death of a child at the home of a pervert. It was punishment sitting through the film beyond the interval, and wait for “Vijay NRI” (Raman Trikha) to come and work with the sex workers and write a book on them. The brochure, full of hilarious glitches puts it thus, “he brought the lives of other helpless sex workers alongwith (sic) Pranali back on track, who were waiting desperately for a reformation which could change their lives for better.” Indeed!
If a film about the flesh trade has be made, it needs sympathy, fresh insights and definitely more taste than Pranali manages—this one just dishes out the dirt and then pretends to be holier-than-thou.
Tashan+Sirf
Tashan
The credits read “The Saif Ali Khan” “The Kareena Kapoor” etc. That is perhaps supposed to indicate that the ‘ishtyle’ of this ‘phormula phillum’ is like that only.
Vijay Krishna Acharya (dialogue writer of Dhoom) directing his first feature film, is like a kid at the candy store who makes himself sick eating everything in sight, and with fond ‘uncle’ Tashraj films indulging him, he gets to gobble a lot of candy; what does he have to show for it—multi-colour barf.
Acharya also seems to belong to the Seveties Bollywood fan club, so there’s a wafer thin plot, an outlandish villain (who has to marry the heroine before he can touch her) his oddball sidekicks, and a couple of childhood sweethearts, who are mercifully not given a song like ‘Jab hum jawaan honge”, a revenge motive, lack of logic and coincidences galore.
You wait for the seventies films allusions to come, and get hit on the head with the “Khush to bahut honge tum” soliloquy from Deewar, delivered by Anil Kapoor in pidgin English. By this time, you have forgotten the rather cool and likeable opening scenes, in which call centre executive Jimmy (Saif Ali Khan) is so bewitched by Pooja (Kareena Kapoor) that he agrees to teach English to her gangster boss Bhaiyyaji (Anil Kapoor). This guy is supposed to be funny—he wears garish clothes, bashes his victims to death and has for sidekicks two guys with a permanent wardrobe malfunction.
Pooja gives Jimmy a sob story, makes him steal 25 crores of Bhaiyyaji’s money and runs off with it. The gangster summons from Kanpur, an illiterate aspiring hitman Bacchan Pande (Akshay Kumar) to take Jimmy and go in search of Pooja. Bachchan is given a long drawn intro, which is when the film, that had started to unravel after Bhaiyyaji’s English lessons, comes apart completely.
How could Acharya even think that a Ram Leela gone wrong sequence with Bachchan playing a be-goggled Ravan had any novelty in it? When the guys trace Pooja, she says she has hidden the money all over the country, so they have to zig zag from Rajastan to Ladakh to Kerala to Greece (for the songs) and UP (for the bachpan ka flashbacks).
Remember how in the old movies, couple on the run used to get into a drama company, borrow costumes do a just-like-that dance number? In Tashan, the three hijack a foreign film unit and force them to shoot a song, because a cop is after them! In the end there is a typical seventies style action sequence when fire, metal or bullets don’t even scratch the heroes, while the villain’s henchmen drop like flies. In an earlier sequence, cops drop like flies too, and nobody seems to be concerned about the high body count.
Like the recent Race, everybody in this film is crooked, so the good guys are bad, and maybe the bad not so horrid. In fact, Anil Kapoor does his part with so much zest, he might become the next kinky villain in Hindi films. While Kareena (at her best) and her two suitors provide the sex appeal.
Okay, so Acharya gives the film an over-the-top visual appeal and some extravagant set pieces (just like Jhoom Barabar Jhoom—same producer, same DOP, Ayananka Bose), which, however, do nothing to make the film more endurable.
Sirf
Sirf comes with a tagline ‘Life Looks Greener on the other side’ – but Rajaatesh Nayar’s debut film seems to be set in arid Mumbai landscape with no greenery anywhere.
The four couples who inhabit the film, are miserable in their own way. One can’t get married because there’s no money to rent a house; the other has a kid with a hole in her heart; two have marital problems that involve major bickering.
The common factor in their lives is a big ad campaign that is to be launched and they are all somehow involved with D-day. Nayar makes some kind of attempt to portray the problems of the middle class in Mumbai—of train and bus commutes, space crunch, sidey real estate agents, endless work pressures. Unfortunately, this has all been done with much greater polish in Anurag Basu’s Metro.
A couple of the tracks are even similar -- Kay Kay Menon reprises his role as top honcho in a big company, whose wife (Manisha Koirala) complains of neglect. Like in Metro, he picks up a young protégé Rahul (Ankur Khanna) to do some unsavoury work for him; again like in Metro, the wife is attracted to, but not involved with a younger man (Parvin Dabas), whose small town wife (Rituparna Sengupta) is an unbearable shrew. There are neighbours of the couple (Sonali Kulkarni-Ranvir Shorey) whose kid is ill, and that leaves Rahul’s whiny girlfriend (Nauheed Cyrusi). Annoyingly, all four woman nag and all four men are misunderstood beasts of burden. Not at all a fair picture of people in the city.
Understanding the woes of the middle class requires the sympathy, delicacy and a touch of humour that Basu Chatterjee of Hrishikesh Mukherjee brought to their films—Nayar just blunders through riding on clichés like city women being scantily dressed, booze-guzzling harridans as compared to the demure wife from Jabalpur. If the overdressed and hideously made-up Rituparna was his idea of comic relief, then he left the audience grinding their teeth in irritation.
Kay Kay Menon and Sonali Kulkarni (badly styled) manage to bring some strength to their parts, Ranvir Shorey is wasted in a hopeless role.
The credits read “The Saif Ali Khan” “The Kareena Kapoor” etc. That is perhaps supposed to indicate that the ‘ishtyle’ of this ‘phormula phillum’ is like that only.
Vijay Krishna Acharya (dialogue writer of Dhoom) directing his first feature film, is like a kid at the candy store who makes himself sick eating everything in sight, and with fond ‘uncle’ Tashraj films indulging him, he gets to gobble a lot of candy; what does he have to show for it—multi-colour barf.
Acharya also seems to belong to the Seveties Bollywood fan club, so there’s a wafer thin plot, an outlandish villain (who has to marry the heroine before he can touch her) his oddball sidekicks, and a couple of childhood sweethearts, who are mercifully not given a song like ‘Jab hum jawaan honge”, a revenge motive, lack of logic and coincidences galore.
You wait for the seventies films allusions to come, and get hit on the head with the “Khush to bahut honge tum” soliloquy from Deewar, delivered by Anil Kapoor in pidgin English. By this time, you have forgotten the rather cool and likeable opening scenes, in which call centre executive Jimmy (Saif Ali Khan) is so bewitched by Pooja (Kareena Kapoor) that he agrees to teach English to her gangster boss Bhaiyyaji (Anil Kapoor). This guy is supposed to be funny—he wears garish clothes, bashes his victims to death and has for sidekicks two guys with a permanent wardrobe malfunction.
Pooja gives Jimmy a sob story, makes him steal 25 crores of Bhaiyyaji’s money and runs off with it. The gangster summons from Kanpur, an illiterate aspiring hitman Bacchan Pande (Akshay Kumar) to take Jimmy and go in search of Pooja. Bachchan is given a long drawn intro, which is when the film, that had started to unravel after Bhaiyyaji’s English lessons, comes apart completely.
How could Acharya even think that a Ram Leela gone wrong sequence with Bachchan playing a be-goggled Ravan had any novelty in it? When the guys trace Pooja, she says she has hidden the money all over the country, so they have to zig zag from Rajastan to Ladakh to Kerala to Greece (for the songs) and UP (for the bachpan ka flashbacks).
Remember how in the old movies, couple on the run used to get into a drama company, borrow costumes do a just-like-that dance number? In Tashan, the three hijack a foreign film unit and force them to shoot a song, because a cop is after them! In the end there is a typical seventies style action sequence when fire, metal or bullets don’t even scratch the heroes, while the villain’s henchmen drop like flies. In an earlier sequence, cops drop like flies too, and nobody seems to be concerned about the high body count.
Like the recent Race, everybody in this film is crooked, so the good guys are bad, and maybe the bad not so horrid. In fact, Anil Kapoor does his part with so much zest, he might become the next kinky villain in Hindi films. While Kareena (at her best) and her two suitors provide the sex appeal.
Okay, so Acharya gives the film an over-the-top visual appeal and some extravagant set pieces (just like Jhoom Barabar Jhoom—same producer, same DOP, Ayananka Bose), which, however, do nothing to make the film more endurable.
Sirf
Sirf comes with a tagline ‘Life Looks Greener on the other side’ – but Rajaatesh Nayar’s debut film seems to be set in arid Mumbai landscape with no greenery anywhere.
The four couples who inhabit the film, are miserable in their own way. One can’t get married because there’s no money to rent a house; the other has a kid with a hole in her heart; two have marital problems that involve major bickering.
The common factor in their lives is a big ad campaign that is to be launched and they are all somehow involved with D-day. Nayar makes some kind of attempt to portray the problems of the middle class in Mumbai—of train and bus commutes, space crunch, sidey real estate agents, endless work pressures. Unfortunately, this has all been done with much greater polish in Anurag Basu’s Metro.
A couple of the tracks are even similar -- Kay Kay Menon reprises his role as top honcho in a big company, whose wife (Manisha Koirala) complains of neglect. Like in Metro, he picks up a young protégé Rahul (Ankur Khanna) to do some unsavoury work for him; again like in Metro, the wife is attracted to, but not involved with a younger man (Parvin Dabas), whose small town wife (Rituparna Sengupta) is an unbearable shrew. There are neighbours of the couple (Sonali Kulkarni-Ranvir Shorey) whose kid is ill, and that leaves Rahul’s whiny girlfriend (Nauheed Cyrusi). Annoyingly, all four woman nag and all four men are misunderstood beasts of burden. Not at all a fair picture of people in the city.
Understanding the woes of the middle class requires the sympathy, delicacy and a touch of humour that Basu Chatterjee of Hrishikesh Mukherjee brought to their films—Nayar just blunders through riding on clichés like city women being scantily dressed, booze-guzzling harridans as compared to the demure wife from Jabalpur. If the overdressed and hideously made-up Rituparna was his idea of comic relief, then he left the audience grinding their teeth in irritation.
Kay Kay Menon and Sonali Kulkarni (badly styled) manage to bring some strength to their parts, Ranvir Shorey is wasted in a hopeless role.
Hope & A Little Sugar
Saloni, the leading lady of Tanuja Chandra’s film believes that there’s nothing that cannot be fixed with hope and a little sugar. That’s the name of her mithai shop in New York and the title of the film. Cute, sort of..
Chandra’s first English-language film, portraying the trauma of an Indian family post 9/11 tries too hard to say something, but it’s as if the words come out in slurred sentences.
Ali (Amit Sial) is a photographer who works as a messenger in New York, when he is mistaken for a Sikh and befriended by the Oberois. He falls in love with Saloni (Mahima Chaudhary), who is married to Harry (Vikram Chatwal), the son of the Oberoi couple (Anupam Kher-Suhasini Mulay).
The Oberois are the usual noisy, bhangra dancing family, and the father, Colonel Oberoi lives in his 1971 Bangladesh war era. The friendship between Ali and Saloni is as half-baked as the romance later, when Harry dies in the World Trade Centre tragedy.
Saloni recovers quickly, but the Colonel refuses to accept the fact of his son’s death and then takes his fury out on Ali, because he is a Muslim. Rather unnecessarily, Ali is given a past—he suffered the Mumbai riots as a child.. Chandra seems to imply that Muslims suffer everywhere—as victims or perpetrators of terrorism, but the deadpan Ali’s face barely registers emotion, leave aside the pain of the community in two continents.
However undeveloped, it is an attempt to understand prejudices, though it looks like a telefilm of the kind seen on HBO. It’s nicely shot, with adequate performances and it’s relief to hear characters speak English with normal Indian accents, not the exaggerated sing-song they are made to put on. It seems as if no NRI film can be made without the presence of Ranjit Chowdhry and here he pops up as the sad Mr Ghosh, who looks as if is wondering whether he is in the right film.
Chandra’s first English-language film, portraying the trauma of an Indian family post 9/11 tries too hard to say something, but it’s as if the words come out in slurred sentences.
Ali (Amit Sial) is a photographer who works as a messenger in New York, when he is mistaken for a Sikh and befriended by the Oberois. He falls in love with Saloni (Mahima Chaudhary), who is married to Harry (Vikram Chatwal), the son of the Oberoi couple (Anupam Kher-Suhasini Mulay).
The Oberois are the usual noisy, bhangra dancing family, and the father, Colonel Oberoi lives in his 1971 Bangladesh war era. The friendship between Ali and Saloni is as half-baked as the romance later, when Harry dies in the World Trade Centre tragedy.
Saloni recovers quickly, but the Colonel refuses to accept the fact of his son’s death and then takes his fury out on Ali, because he is a Muslim. Rather unnecessarily, Ali is given a past—he suffered the Mumbai riots as a child.. Chandra seems to imply that Muslims suffer everywhere—as victims or perpetrators of terrorism, but the deadpan Ali’s face barely registers emotion, leave aside the pain of the community in two continents.
However undeveloped, it is an attempt to understand prejudices, though it looks like a telefilm of the kind seen on HBO. It’s nicely shot, with adequate performances and it’s relief to hear characters speak English with normal Indian accents, not the exaggerated sing-song they are made to put on. It seems as if no NRI film can be made without the presence of Ranjit Chowdhry and here he pops up as the sad Mr Ghosh, who looks as if is wondering whether he is in the right film.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
U Me @ Krazzy
U Me Aur Hum
The credits begin with quotes from Einstein, Gandhi, Emily Dickinson, etc written with clouds in the sky.. which give an indication that the film to follow will either be too cute or too pretentious, Ajay Devgan’s U Me Aur Hum is a bit of both.
Still, it must be said, that just like Aamir Khan took up the subject of dyslexia for his first film Taare Zameen Par, Devgan picks the dreaded Alzheimer’s disease; so if nothing else, it’s a first in Bollywood mainstream cinema. Now senile dementia, the most prevalent cause of the illness, would be too unglamorous—so the young woman in the film is one of the rare ones who gets it at age 28. Like Khan, Devgan too has the vanity to cast himself as an angel of compassion.
Before the film reaches this tragic point, there’s a ghastly portion on a cruise ship to be sat through, where Dr Ajay Mehra (Devgan), with an irritating entourage of two couples (Sumeer Raghavan-Divya Dutta, Karan Khanna-Isha Sharvani) in tow, is having a blast when he falls in love at first sight with a waitress Piya (Kajol). He woos her rather aggressively, going to the extent of reading her childish diary and doing everything she likes (now where have we seen this before?)
This part has an uncomfortable resemblance to Mann (which was inspired by An Affair to Remember), and almost stuns the viewer with its riotous treatment, candy visuals and profusion of unflattering close-ups.
By the time Ajay and Piya get married and she shows signs of memory loss—terrific scene in the rain when she forgets her address and even her husband’s name—Devgan calms down, so to say. The entourage is still around, and another doctor (Sacin Khedekar) is added to it— one who recommends a care facility for Piya.
Her memory lapses get acute and dangerous for her and her newborn, and Ajay is persuaded to send her away. But it is a love story and has to have some kind of happy ending, since the disease has no cure.
One grouse is that Devgan has taken the trouble to select an unusual (for Bollywood), given it a partially realistic touch, then airily wandered off into the improbable. In India, there is no such fancy life-long care facility for the mentally ill, and the issue is not even raised, because here there is a brightly painted, five-star hotel like asylum.
Except for a couple of scenes, Devgan never even goes into the problems even a devoted husband (see the gut-wrenching film Iris) and child could face with a family member with this traumatically degenerative disease—typically escapist Hindi film approach, where the real ugliness and pain is kept off screen, because the newly-developed audience for pseudo ‘cause’ films might not be able to take it.
Still Devgan is forgiven most lapse for a few really emotionally stirring scenes he ably handles in the last half hour or so of the film, and the performance he delivers himself plus gets out of Kajol. They are both fine actors anyway, but they have surpassed themselves.
Krazzy 4
The producer of this film had to pay up for plagiarizing a tune, what about the whole film, that is picked up from The Dream Team and ‘Indianised?’
Like the original, in Jaideep Sen’s debut film, four men from a mental asylum are taken by their doctor to watch a cricket match. Dr Sonali (Juhi Chawla) gets kidnapped and the four and left to their own devices.
Raja (Arshad Warsi) has anger management problems, Gangadhar (Rajpal Yadav) believes he is a freedom fighter, Dr Mukherjee (Irrfan Khan) has obsessive compulsive disorder, Daboo (Suresh Menon) is retarded—would the four even be in the same group for therapy? That kind of fine distinction between various kinds of mental illness, our filmmakers cannot be bothered about.
The four eventually figure out that their doctor has been kidnapped, there’s a conspiracy behind it and they have to save her and themselves.
The film relies on their quirks for its laughs—like Mukherjee takes off on anyone who litters; Gangadhar gives patriotic speeches and so on. Some of their lines are really funny and unlike the recent comedy One Two Three, there no vulgarity. Except maybe Rakhi Sawant’s raunchy item number, that ends with Mukherjee trying to wipe the tattoo on her waist.
If it’s not uproariously funny, it’s because there are too many complications (who kidnapped the doc and why?) and ridiculous script shortcuts. For instance, the four have no money (there’s a song in which they try to borrow a rupee for a phone call) but get around the city with remarkable ease. And at a crucial juncture, Mukherjee just happens to run into his daughter, and Raja into his former girlfriend (Dia Mirza), who is now a TV reporter.
You wait for the predictable “They are not mad, society is” line, and voila, it comes at the end. Some things just never change!
Anyway, what the script does not deliver, the actors do—Irrfan Khan is fabulous as the control freak, and Rajpal Yadav’s effortlessly comical as the Gandhian misfit (watch the scene in which he meets a man in Gandhi costume on the street). Arshad Warsi, of course, can tackle such a role without a strain, Suresh Menon is unfairly mute, so his real-life mimicry skills are not utilized.
Sen has managed to fit song breaks into the film, apart from the item dance, there’s Shah Rukh Khan’s appearance that brings the house down. Since audiences probably have no expectations from this film, they won’t be disappointed at least.
The credits begin with quotes from Einstein, Gandhi, Emily Dickinson, etc written with clouds in the sky.. which give an indication that the film to follow will either be too cute or too pretentious, Ajay Devgan’s U Me Aur Hum is a bit of both.
Still, it must be said, that just like Aamir Khan took up the subject of dyslexia for his first film Taare Zameen Par, Devgan picks the dreaded Alzheimer’s disease; so if nothing else, it’s a first in Bollywood mainstream cinema. Now senile dementia, the most prevalent cause of the illness, would be too unglamorous—so the young woman in the film is one of the rare ones who gets it at age 28. Like Khan, Devgan too has the vanity to cast himself as an angel of compassion.
Before the film reaches this tragic point, there’s a ghastly portion on a cruise ship to be sat through, where Dr Ajay Mehra (Devgan), with an irritating entourage of two couples (Sumeer Raghavan-Divya Dutta, Karan Khanna-Isha Sharvani) in tow, is having a blast when he falls in love at first sight with a waitress Piya (Kajol). He woos her rather aggressively, going to the extent of reading her childish diary and doing everything she likes (now where have we seen this before?)
This part has an uncomfortable resemblance to Mann (which was inspired by An Affair to Remember), and almost stuns the viewer with its riotous treatment, candy visuals and profusion of unflattering close-ups.
By the time Ajay and Piya get married and she shows signs of memory loss—terrific scene in the rain when she forgets her address and even her husband’s name—Devgan calms down, so to say. The entourage is still around, and another doctor (Sacin Khedekar) is added to it— one who recommends a care facility for Piya.
Her memory lapses get acute and dangerous for her and her newborn, and Ajay is persuaded to send her away. But it is a love story and has to have some kind of happy ending, since the disease has no cure.
One grouse is that Devgan has taken the trouble to select an unusual (for Bollywood), given it a partially realistic touch, then airily wandered off into the improbable. In India, there is no such fancy life-long care facility for the mentally ill, and the issue is not even raised, because here there is a brightly painted, five-star hotel like asylum.
Except for a couple of scenes, Devgan never even goes into the problems even a devoted husband (see the gut-wrenching film Iris) and child could face with a family member with this traumatically degenerative disease—typically escapist Hindi film approach, where the real ugliness and pain is kept off screen, because the newly-developed audience for pseudo ‘cause’ films might not be able to take it.
Still Devgan is forgiven most lapse for a few really emotionally stirring scenes he ably handles in the last half hour or so of the film, and the performance he delivers himself plus gets out of Kajol. They are both fine actors anyway, but they have surpassed themselves.
Krazzy 4
The producer of this film had to pay up for plagiarizing a tune, what about the whole film, that is picked up from The Dream Team and ‘Indianised?’
Like the original, in Jaideep Sen’s debut film, four men from a mental asylum are taken by their doctor to watch a cricket match. Dr Sonali (Juhi Chawla) gets kidnapped and the four and left to their own devices.
Raja (Arshad Warsi) has anger management problems, Gangadhar (Rajpal Yadav) believes he is a freedom fighter, Dr Mukherjee (Irrfan Khan) has obsessive compulsive disorder, Daboo (Suresh Menon) is retarded—would the four even be in the same group for therapy? That kind of fine distinction between various kinds of mental illness, our filmmakers cannot be bothered about.
The four eventually figure out that their doctor has been kidnapped, there’s a conspiracy behind it and they have to save her and themselves.
The film relies on their quirks for its laughs—like Mukherjee takes off on anyone who litters; Gangadhar gives patriotic speeches and so on. Some of their lines are really funny and unlike the recent comedy One Two Three, there no vulgarity. Except maybe Rakhi Sawant’s raunchy item number, that ends with Mukherjee trying to wipe the tattoo on her waist.
If it’s not uproariously funny, it’s because there are too many complications (who kidnapped the doc and why?) and ridiculous script shortcuts. For instance, the four have no money (there’s a song in which they try to borrow a rupee for a phone call) but get around the city with remarkable ease. And at a crucial juncture, Mukherjee just happens to run into his daughter, and Raja into his former girlfriend (Dia Mirza), who is now a TV reporter.
You wait for the predictable “They are not mad, society is” line, and voila, it comes at the end. Some things just never change!
Anyway, what the script does not deliver, the actors do—Irrfan Khan is fabulous as the control freak, and Rajpal Yadav’s effortlessly comical as the Gandhian misfit (watch the scene in which he meets a man in Gandhi costume on the street). Arshad Warsi, of course, can tackle such a role without a strain, Suresh Menon is unfairly mute, so his real-life mimicry skills are not utilized.
Sen has managed to fit song breaks into the film, apart from the item dance, there’s Shah Rukh Khan’s appearance that brings the house down. Since audiences probably have no expectations from this film, they won’t be disappointed at least.
Shaurya & Bhram
Shaurya
Samar Khan’s Shaurya deals with an important subject of communalisation of the armed forces, but without the compassion or detailing of, say Govind Nihalani’s Dev, which was about communal prejudice in the police.
Khan and his writers shamelessly rip-off Hollywood film A Few Good Men, and Swadesh Deepak’s Hindi play Court Martial, of course, without acknowledging either source.
Captain Siddhant (Rahul Bose) is a lawyer in the army, but seems to do nothing, except bungee-jumping. When he is actually given an “open and shut case” he is bewildered (doesn’t present too good a picture of the army!).
He is posted to Srinagar, to defend Javed Khan (Deepak Dobriyal) who is accused of killing a fellow officer. The prosecuting lawyer Akash (Jaaved Jaffrey) is a buddy and wants Siddhant to “grow up.”
A byline chasing journalist Kavya (Minissha Lamba), gives his conscience a wake-up call and he starts to investigate the case in earnest. Though the accused does not say a word, Siddhant makes a “not guilty” plea and angers not just his friend, but also Brigadier Pratap (Kay Kay Menon), the commanding officer of the regiment to which the accused and the dead man belonged.
Since Khan has not given his borrowed material too much thought, it is not clear why Javed Khan does not protest his officer’s behavior earlier, or complain of human rights violations. One of his men chooses to desert rather than speak up for the truth. (In the original film and play, the accused men’s silence was a matter of honour.) Also giving a personal motive to the officer’s attitude towards Javed, dilutes the message.
Siddhant faces no personal animosity for what he does – the journalist faces the rap—he gets crucial evidence falling into his lap, and at no point is there a feeling that he might not be able to save his client, because he is so clueless.
Rahul Bose, with his eye-popping, twitching, shrugging ‘cute’ act almost brings the film down, it’s the other actors’ (Deepak Dobriyal and Jaaved Jaffrey excel) dignified performances that save the day. And ultimately the film hinges on Kay Kay Menon’s statement in the witness box and a finer example of perfectly pitched acting has not been seen in a long time. Unfortunately, it comes too late in the film to undo the earlier damage.
Bhram
It opens backstage at a fashion show, with bitchy models, gay designer and nosy journalists all lined up, dropping risqué lines—this is presumably how models speak!
Then, with a title like Bhram (illusion) you wait for a Madhur Bhandarkar-like expose on the fashion world.
A few scenes later, that illusion is broken-- all the four letter words, drinking, coke-snorting the main model Antara (Sheetal Menon) and her men indulge in, are just to spice up a trite murder mystery.
Many years ago, producer Nari Hira and director Pavan Kaul used to make video films on fairly bold subjects – Bhram uses that language (censors go deaf?) but not the daring that resulted in films on subjects unusual for the time (the eighties).
Antara, for no other reason but that she is and looks stoned, charms Shantanu (Dino Morea), the younger brother of financial tycoon Dev (Milind Soman). When the girl and the brother come face to face, she accuses him of having raped and killed her sister in Manali many years ago.
A troubled Shantanu takes off to Manali with his friend (Chetan Hansraj) find out if “bro” did it, and Dev’s wife (Simone Singh) utters dialogue about love and trust that seem to have come out of a very bad women’s magazine.
The story moves back and forth between “that day” when the incident happened—which nobody in Manali wants to talk about it—and the present, as Antara gets even more stoned and lands up in hospital.
Did big big brother do it? Does anyone care by the end of it?
Using all the clichés of a thriller—constant rain, obvious red herring, wrong person answering a phone—the film is stylishly shot and packed with good-looking, well-dressed people who cannot act!
Samar Khan’s Shaurya deals with an important subject of communalisation of the armed forces, but without the compassion or detailing of, say Govind Nihalani’s Dev, which was about communal prejudice in the police.
Khan and his writers shamelessly rip-off Hollywood film A Few Good Men, and Swadesh Deepak’s Hindi play Court Martial, of course, without acknowledging either source.
Captain Siddhant (Rahul Bose) is a lawyer in the army, but seems to do nothing, except bungee-jumping. When he is actually given an “open and shut case” he is bewildered (doesn’t present too good a picture of the army!).
He is posted to Srinagar, to defend Javed Khan (Deepak Dobriyal) who is accused of killing a fellow officer. The prosecuting lawyer Akash (Jaaved Jaffrey) is a buddy and wants Siddhant to “grow up.”
A byline chasing journalist Kavya (Minissha Lamba), gives his conscience a wake-up call and he starts to investigate the case in earnest. Though the accused does not say a word, Siddhant makes a “not guilty” plea and angers not just his friend, but also Brigadier Pratap (Kay Kay Menon), the commanding officer of the regiment to which the accused and the dead man belonged.
Since Khan has not given his borrowed material too much thought, it is not clear why Javed Khan does not protest his officer’s behavior earlier, or complain of human rights violations. One of his men chooses to desert rather than speak up for the truth. (In the original film and play, the accused men’s silence was a matter of honour.) Also giving a personal motive to the officer’s attitude towards Javed, dilutes the message.
Siddhant faces no personal animosity for what he does – the journalist faces the rap—he gets crucial evidence falling into his lap, and at no point is there a feeling that he might not be able to save his client, because he is so clueless.
Rahul Bose, with his eye-popping, twitching, shrugging ‘cute’ act almost brings the film down, it’s the other actors’ (Deepak Dobriyal and Jaaved Jaffrey excel) dignified performances that save the day. And ultimately the film hinges on Kay Kay Menon’s statement in the witness box and a finer example of perfectly pitched acting has not been seen in a long time. Unfortunately, it comes too late in the film to undo the earlier damage.
Bhram
It opens backstage at a fashion show, with bitchy models, gay designer and nosy journalists all lined up, dropping risqué lines—this is presumably how models speak!
Then, with a title like Bhram (illusion) you wait for a Madhur Bhandarkar-like expose on the fashion world.
A few scenes later, that illusion is broken-- all the four letter words, drinking, coke-snorting the main model Antara (Sheetal Menon) and her men indulge in, are just to spice up a trite murder mystery.
Many years ago, producer Nari Hira and director Pavan Kaul used to make video films on fairly bold subjects – Bhram uses that language (censors go deaf?) but not the daring that resulted in films on subjects unusual for the time (the eighties).
Antara, for no other reason but that she is and looks stoned, charms Shantanu (Dino Morea), the younger brother of financial tycoon Dev (Milind Soman). When the girl and the brother come face to face, she accuses him of having raped and killed her sister in Manali many years ago.
A troubled Shantanu takes off to Manali with his friend (Chetan Hansraj) find out if “bro” did it, and Dev’s wife (Simone Singh) utters dialogue about love and trust that seem to have come out of a very bad women’s magazine.
The story moves back and forth between “that day” when the incident happened—which nobody in Manali wants to talk about it—and the present, as Antara gets even more stoned and lands up in hospital.
Did big big brother do it? Does anyone care by the end of it?
Using all the clichés of a thriller—constant rain, obvious red herring, wrong person answering a phone—the film is stylishly shot and packed with good-looking, well-dressed people who cannot act!
Saturday, March 29, 2008
One Two Three
Thinking up a good idea is just part of the movie battle—what to do with the idea is the tough part.
Ashwani Dhir's One Two Three (takes the prize for unimaginative title) is about three disparate men with the same name—Laxmi Narayan, who check into the same hotel and cause major confusion.
The situation is rife for a really good comedy of errors, but Dhir is quite content to dip into a bag of vulgarities and turn out a cringe-making film, instead of a funny one—his inspiration clearly being Kya Kool Hain Hum rather than a clean comedy like Angoor.
When one of the three Laxmi Narayans (Paresh Rawal) is a lingerie salesman, it is obvious which track the film is going to move on. It's a miracle that Rawal manages to lend a certain befuddled simplicity to the character, who, due a mix-up at the hotel's reception desk, thinks he is meeting a lingerie designer, but the girl (Sameera Reddy—no improvement) thinks he has come to look at a car he intends to buy. The barrage of double entendre that follows is not even remotely amusing.
One of the Laxmi Narayans (Tussar Kapoor) is an aspiring gangster, who, gets the picture of the lingerie designer (Esha Deol), instead of the don (Mukesh Tiwari) he is supposed to kill. And the don, captures the third Laxmi Nayaran (Suniel Shetty), thinking he is the hitman sent to shoot him.
On paper, it sounds better than it is, but on film, it's exasperating, because Dhir had gone overboard in trying to make all the characters weird. Like the don adds an 's' to every word, the Suniel Shetty fellow is a moron who asks too many questions, there's one henchman who talks like old actor Jeevan, another who lisps and enough gay jokes to invite a lawsuit from the alternate sexuality lobby!
There's a Haryanvi female cop (Neetu Chandra), who is no better than an item girl for all the footage she gets, and Upen Patel-Tanisha are reduced to junior artistes.
Dhir ends the film in Priyadarshan fashion with all the characters – too many of them—gathering at one place and squabbling over a stolen diamond.
The checklist would read 'not applicable' for performances, music, camerawork, etc. A few chuckles, few and far between, may not be worth the price of a ticket.
Ashwani Dhir's One Two Three (takes the prize for unimaginative title) is about three disparate men with the same name—Laxmi Narayan, who check into the same hotel and cause major confusion.
The situation is rife for a really good comedy of errors, but Dhir is quite content to dip into a bag of vulgarities and turn out a cringe-making film, instead of a funny one—his inspiration clearly being Kya Kool Hain Hum rather than a clean comedy like Angoor.
When one of the three Laxmi Narayans (Paresh Rawal) is a lingerie salesman, it is obvious which track the film is going to move on. It's a miracle that Rawal manages to lend a certain befuddled simplicity to the character, who, due a mix-up at the hotel's reception desk, thinks he is meeting a lingerie designer, but the girl (Sameera Reddy—no improvement) thinks he has come to look at a car he intends to buy. The barrage of double entendre that follows is not even remotely amusing.
One of the Laxmi Narayans (Tussar Kapoor) is an aspiring gangster, who, gets the picture of the lingerie designer (Esha Deol), instead of the don (Mukesh Tiwari) he is supposed to kill. And the don, captures the third Laxmi Nayaran (Suniel Shetty), thinking he is the hitman sent to shoot him.
On paper, it sounds better than it is, but on film, it's exasperating, because Dhir had gone overboard in trying to make all the characters weird. Like the don adds an 's' to every word, the Suniel Shetty fellow is a moron who asks too many questions, there's one henchman who talks like old actor Jeevan, another who lisps and enough gay jokes to invite a lawsuit from the alternate sexuality lobby!
There's a Haryanvi female cop (Neetu Chandra), who is no better than an item girl for all the footage she gets, and Upen Patel-Tanisha are reduced to junior artistes.
Dhir ends the film in Priyadarshan fashion with all the characters – too many of them—gathering at one place and squabbling over a stolen diamond.
The checklist would read 'not applicable' for performances, music, camerawork, etc. A few chuckles, few and far between, may not be worth the price of a ticket.
Race
It's no wonder stars of Race talk mostly about their styling in their many interviews—that's all there is to say.
They all have to dress nattily, and strut around on swanky South African locations, trying to look cool; every once in a while, they break into sexy song-and-dance numbers—acting displays if any, are purely accidental.
Race is the kind of suspense thriller Abbas-Mustan have been making of late, some like Ajnabee have worked, others like Naqaab haven't—the kind of film in which all the characters are greedy and venal, and thoroughly despicable, so the viewer would find it tough to root for any one.
Ranbir (Saif Ali Khan) is a Durban stud-farm owner and Rajeev (Akshaye Khanna) his alcoholic brother. When Rajeev falls for his brother's girlfriend Sonia (Bipasha Basu), Ranbir sacrifices his love, but the actual game plan turns out to be quite different. The fourth pawn on the chessboard is Ranbir's secretary Sophia (Katrina Kaif).
There is endless scheming and plotting, at some point there's a murder, and an Inspector Robert D'Costa (Anil Kapoor) jumps into the picture, eating fruit all the time, accompanied by his dumb assistant Mini (Sameera Reddy). Inspired by the old serial Karamchand, this cop tries too hard to be funny and succeeds only in being vulgar.
To their credit, even with a too-convoluted script, which stops making sense the minute you stop to think, Abbas-Mustan do throw up a few surprises and unexpected twists. It takes patience to view, because all the skeins they unravel, need knitting again with rambling explanations, flashbacks and, of course, song breaks.
Abbas-Mustan have modest aims, they don't strive for originality or even extravagant creativity—it's enough to collect stars together, add a dash of glamour and hope the package works. If the audience is in a particularly undemanding mood, it does.
It's not so much a race as a game of chance.
They all have to dress nattily, and strut around on swanky South African locations, trying to look cool; every once in a while, they break into sexy song-and-dance numbers—acting displays if any, are purely accidental.
Race is the kind of suspense thriller Abbas-Mustan have been making of late, some like Ajnabee have worked, others like Naqaab haven't—the kind of film in which all the characters are greedy and venal, and thoroughly despicable, so the viewer would find it tough to root for any one.
Ranbir (Saif Ali Khan) is a Durban stud-farm owner and Rajeev (Akshaye Khanna) his alcoholic brother. When Rajeev falls for his brother's girlfriend Sonia (Bipasha Basu), Ranbir sacrifices his love, but the actual game plan turns out to be quite different. The fourth pawn on the chessboard is Ranbir's secretary Sophia (Katrina Kaif).
There is endless scheming and plotting, at some point there's a murder, and an Inspector Robert D'Costa (Anil Kapoor) jumps into the picture, eating fruit all the time, accompanied by his dumb assistant Mini (Sameera Reddy). Inspired by the old serial Karamchand, this cop tries too hard to be funny and succeeds only in being vulgar.
To their credit, even with a too-convoluted script, which stops making sense the minute you stop to think, Abbas-Mustan do throw up a few surprises and unexpected twists. It takes patience to view, because all the skeins they unravel, need knitting again with rambling explanations, flashbacks and, of course, song breaks.
Abbas-Mustan have modest aims, they don't strive for originality or even extravagant creativity—it's enough to collect stars together, add a dash of glamour and hope the package works. If the audience is in a particularly undemanding mood, it does.
It's not so much a race as a game of chance.
Friday, March 14, 2008
26th July at Barista
If there is a story just waiting to be told, be sure there will be a director just waiting to slaughter it. 26th July at Barista is one of those—amazing, that nobody before Mohan Sharma (and his writer Rahil Qazi) saw the potential of making a movie with the great deluge of July 26, 2005 as a backdrop, and what a pity the film turns out to be such an unwatchable dud.
If there were any people in the cinemahall at all, it must have been because a) they had nothing better to do b) remembered that day of horror and wanted to see what the filmmaker had done with it. After the mandatory voiceover, Sharma collects a rather clueless bunch of random people at a coffee shop, with kind and helpful staff (the likes of which this reviewer has never encountered at Barista!). You don't know what hour of the day it is, presumably late afternoon, by which time the city was already deep under water; but some people walk in and out, as if nothing happened, and some look terror struck. The ones inside the café wake up in fits and starts.
There's a worried Sikh couple, waiting for new of their kids, who went for a picnic, a film writer, a struggler, two singles looking for love, some others, who wander away never to be seen again. The struggler sits like a statue in corner with her legs crossed, the Sikh woman wails sporadically, the writer glares at everyone, and the singles alternately flirt with each other or try to help others caught in the downpour.
It is obviously a shoe-string budget effort, so there are a couple of very fake looking flood scenes staged, some news footage, a couple of scenes of families worrying for those marooned in the café. At some point the power goes off, but since they couldn't shoot in the dark, an urchin drops by a cache of fat candles, because, as he says, his life is in the dark. "Oh, and you still spread light," says someone.
Absurdly, a cop strolls in to investigate a robbery in a bank next door and terrorizes everyone; a gang-rape victim comes in sobbing to express concern for the men who did it, because she has AIDS! And so on.. everything about the film so laughably inept. As a break from the bunch of unknowns cast, Rohini Hattangady, Raju Kher and Amita Nangia get a scene each. And then the film ends as abruptly as it started, with none of the stories getting any closure.
If the film was meant as a branding exercise for the café in its title, then it badly misfires!
