Saturday, April 14, 2007
3 This Week
Bheja Fry
Sagar Ballary’s debut feature Bheja Fry is based on a French farce The Dinner Game by Francis Veber, cleverly ‘adapted’ with suitably Indianised characters.
Bharat Bhushan (Vinay Pathak) is the annoying pest anybody can meet in a bus or train—one who will share his life story, demand to know yours and then sing aloud in a cracked voice in the hope of entertaining the listener. His love for music extends to trivia of the astounding kind—he know exactly how many times the word ‘aayega’ is repeated in the famous ‘Aayaga Aanewala’ song.
Ranjeet Thadani (Rajat Kapoor) is the rich, arrogant music company honcho, whose equally rich buddies amuse themselves by inviting the biggest ‘idiot’ they can find to dinner. The guest, of course does not realize what he’s there for and is flattered by the attention. Bharat Bhushan is Thadani’s prize find, but before he can take him to dinner, he hurts his back, his wife Sheetal (Sarika) leaves in a huff and he is at the mercy of this braying idiot, who messes up things in his eager desire to help.
The film was originally a stage play, so it is set mostly on one location (Thadani’s house) it picks up elements of the classic farce, mistaken identities, the wrong message given to the wrong person, lovers and ex-lovers turning up and a general air of mayhem—all in one night.
Reasonably funny, though not the laugh-aloud kind, the appeal of the film lies in the choice of actor to play the idiot and Ballary hits a gold mine with Vinay Pathak. Oily hair, battered brief case, bush shirt and an over-eager manner, Pathak evokes mirth with simple things – like proudly showing his precious scrap book to everybody, taking it out and unwrapping it from its noisy plastic bag with a precise ceremony. He is irritating but there is also a kind of innocence about him that redeems him.
In between the mad encounter between Thadani and his idiot, are his wife’s ex-husband (Milind Soman) who is hugely amused by his rival’s predicament; Thadani’s bimbo girlfriend (Bhairavi Goswami), and a mean-looking tax inspector (Ranvir Shorey playing him with a scrunched up face), all of who add to the man’s woes, though he never gets the audience’s sympathy. Unpardonable however, is the gags about the Muslim tax guy supporting the Pakistani cricket team.
For want of anything better this week, the bi-lingual multiplex crowd could catch this one. It’s not a total waste of money.
Life Mein Kabhie Kabhhiee
Five friends (none of whom look the requisite age!) get out of college after the mandatory dance number together and state their purpose in life. Rajeev (Dino Morea) wants success, Monica (Nauheed Cyrusi) wants fame, Ishita (Anjori Alagh) wants money, Jai (Sameer Dattani) wants power and Manish (Aftab Shivdasani) wants nothing but to keep track of everybody’s happiness metre, so that they can meet five years later and decide who turned out happiest.
Not bad as plots go—inspired by such Hollywood flicks as Big Chill and St Elmo’s Fire—but Vikram Bhatt goes about dealing with the stories of the five with a checklist, out to prove that ambition of any kind only causes misery and that “happiness is just the absence of sadness”. Indeed! And to get to this profound observation one has to watch all traces of the characters’ ambitions cruelly destroyed. Like career success means loss of love, power comes with guilt and so on… Humourless, badly acted, ploddingly directed and completely inane.
The amusement is delivered inadvertently – like in every scene Rajeev has with his brother, the wife stands around looking morose; in a scene where Manish is getting fired from his journalistic job, the boss is eating chips like he just came out of a drought stricken area. When Jai goes for counselling, the shrink is a weird mini-skirted specimen. What about the woman who complains that Rajeev just comes to her when he is troubled, and he later smashes her TV! Too many such clunky scenes to list.
Is it just coincidental that the actress who is forced to sleep around, the pushy girl who marries for money and the unscrupulous socialite are right out of Page 3, or does it have something to do with the fact that both films have the same writer Manoj Tyagi.
This Life… ain’t worth living/ watching!
Big Brother
Big Brother is one of those long-in-the-making films, dusted out of the cans, renamed and released, in the vain hope that Sunny Deol has some fans left. It started out being titled Deodhar Gandhi, which explains the bursts of ‘Hey Ram’ in the background whenever the hero goes on a goonda-bashing rampage.
This Guddu Dhanoa film almost makes you nostalgic for those uncomplicated action films of the seventies and eighties, when the hero’s sister got molested and he got an excuse to wipe out half the population of baddies in the city, with the cops looking befuddled as usual.
Deodhar Gandhi (Sunny Deo: standard scowl-funny wig) goes one step further, when his sister had acid thrown in her face, he forms a vigilante gang and goes about doling his eye-for-an-eye instant justice. Top cop Negi (Danny Denzongpa) launches a counter attack, at which Deodhar and his family migrate to Mumbai. He drives an autorickshaw and tries to live incognito, but there are hoodlums in Mumbai and there is the sister as catalyst, the same cop has been transferred to the city and it’s action time again.
If Big Brother weren’t so tacky it might have been okay for a few laughs—like when Deodhar hits anyone, the guy doesn’t just fall down, he goes flying miles into the air! Priyanka Chopra has the coy “suniye ji” wife role and a couple of songs early on--good thing this film did not get released earlier, or her career would have gone for a toss.
Sagar Ballary’s debut feature Bheja Fry is based on a French farce The Dinner Game by Francis Veber, cleverly ‘adapted’ with suitably Indianised characters.
Bharat Bhushan (Vinay Pathak) is the annoying pest anybody can meet in a bus or train—one who will share his life story, demand to know yours and then sing aloud in a cracked voice in the hope of entertaining the listener. His love for music extends to trivia of the astounding kind—he know exactly how many times the word ‘aayega’ is repeated in the famous ‘Aayaga Aanewala’ song.
Ranjeet Thadani (Rajat Kapoor) is the rich, arrogant music company honcho, whose equally rich buddies amuse themselves by inviting the biggest ‘idiot’ they can find to dinner. The guest, of course does not realize what he’s there for and is flattered by the attention. Bharat Bhushan is Thadani’s prize find, but before he can take him to dinner, he hurts his back, his wife Sheetal (Sarika) leaves in a huff and he is at the mercy of this braying idiot, who messes up things in his eager desire to help.
The film was originally a stage play, so it is set mostly on one location (Thadani’s house) it picks up elements of the classic farce, mistaken identities, the wrong message given to the wrong person, lovers and ex-lovers turning up and a general air of mayhem—all in one night.
Reasonably funny, though not the laugh-aloud kind, the appeal of the film lies in the choice of actor to play the idiot and Ballary hits a gold mine with Vinay Pathak. Oily hair, battered brief case, bush shirt and an over-eager manner, Pathak evokes mirth with simple things – like proudly showing his precious scrap book to everybody, taking it out and unwrapping it from its noisy plastic bag with a precise ceremony. He is irritating but there is also a kind of innocence about him that redeems him.
In between the mad encounter between Thadani and his idiot, are his wife’s ex-husband (Milind Soman) who is hugely amused by his rival’s predicament; Thadani’s bimbo girlfriend (Bhairavi Goswami), and a mean-looking tax inspector (Ranvir Shorey playing him with a scrunched up face), all of who add to the man’s woes, though he never gets the audience’s sympathy. Unpardonable however, is the gags about the Muslim tax guy supporting the Pakistani cricket team.
For want of anything better this week, the bi-lingual multiplex crowd could catch this one. It’s not a total waste of money.
Life Mein Kabhie Kabhhiee
Five friends (none of whom look the requisite age!) get out of college after the mandatory dance number together and state their purpose in life. Rajeev (Dino Morea) wants success, Monica (Nauheed Cyrusi) wants fame, Ishita (Anjori Alagh) wants money, Jai (Sameer Dattani) wants power and Manish (Aftab Shivdasani) wants nothing but to keep track of everybody’s happiness metre, so that they can meet five years later and decide who turned out happiest.
Not bad as plots go—inspired by such Hollywood flicks as Big Chill and St Elmo’s Fire—but Vikram Bhatt goes about dealing with the stories of the five with a checklist, out to prove that ambition of any kind only causes misery and that “happiness is just the absence of sadness”. Indeed! And to get to this profound observation one has to watch all traces of the characters’ ambitions cruelly destroyed. Like career success means loss of love, power comes with guilt and so on… Humourless, badly acted, ploddingly directed and completely inane.
The amusement is delivered inadvertently – like in every scene Rajeev has with his brother, the wife stands around looking morose; in a scene where Manish is getting fired from his journalistic job, the boss is eating chips like he just came out of a drought stricken area. When Jai goes for counselling, the shrink is a weird mini-skirted specimen. What about the woman who complains that Rajeev just comes to her when he is troubled, and he later smashes her TV! Too many such clunky scenes to list.
Is it just coincidental that the actress who is forced to sleep around, the pushy girl who marries for money and the unscrupulous socialite are right out of Page 3, or does it have something to do with the fact that both films have the same writer Manoj Tyagi.
This Life… ain’t worth living/ watching!
Big Brother
Big Brother is one of those long-in-the-making films, dusted out of the cans, renamed and released, in the vain hope that Sunny Deol has some fans left. It started out being titled Deodhar Gandhi, which explains the bursts of ‘Hey Ram’ in the background whenever the hero goes on a goonda-bashing rampage.
This Guddu Dhanoa film almost makes you nostalgic for those uncomplicated action films of the seventies and eighties, when the hero’s sister got molested and he got an excuse to wipe out half the population of baddies in the city, with the cops looking befuddled as usual.
Deodhar Gandhi (Sunny Deo: standard scowl-funny wig) goes one step further, when his sister had acid thrown in her face, he forms a vigilante gang and goes about doling his eye-for-an-eye instant justice. Top cop Negi (Danny Denzongpa) launches a counter attack, at which Deodhar and his family migrate to Mumbai. He drives an autorickshaw and tries to live incognito, but there are hoodlums in Mumbai and there is the sister as catalyst, the same cop has been transferred to the city and it’s action time again.
If Big Brother weren’t so tacky it might have been okay for a few laughs—like when Deodhar hits anyone, the guy doesn’t just fall down, he goes flying miles into the air! Priyanka Chopra has the coy “suniye ji” wife role and a couple of songs early on--good thing this film did not get released earlier, or her career would have gone for a toss.
Labels: Cinemaah
Monday, April 09, 2007
Shakalaka Boom Boom
Suneel Darshan has some nerve, he takes the story of Amadeus and sets in contemporary New York (and shoots it in South Africa), where two Indian singer-composers slug it out for the top slot.
In the first place, who in the American mainstream music industry would care about two guys doing some hybrid work and singing in Hindi. Forget cover stories and primetime TV, the media wouldn’t give them the time of day, and their ‘fame’ probably wouldn’t go past New Jersey.
Secondly, for a film about music wars, at least the music should be fantastic. The guy who is called a genius by everybody composes some junk like Shakalakalakalakalaka Boom Boom!
Thirdly, a film stuffed with non-actors struggling with badly written scenes and cheesy lines is bound to turn out ridiculous.
AJ (Bobby Deol) is a music star in New York (indeed!) and in love with aspiring singer Ruhi (Kangana Ranaut), when an arrogant, ambitious club singer Reggie (Upen Patel—odd oily look) crashes into the scene, showing up AJ for the mediocrity he is, while stealing Ruhi from him, in public.
In a jealous rage, AJ decides to wreck Reggie’s career, and succeeds with help of PR woman (Celina Jaitley) used and dumped by Reggie. Then a chance look at Reggie’s compositions (in Jodhpur his Indian father taught him western notations for songs like Thade Vaaste?) makes AJ aware of his own shortcomings and the fact that Reggie is truly talented. Then he comes up with an even more devious plan to destroy Reggie, which you have to suffer to believe!
Bobby Deol, playing the envious and evil older man is shot in unflattering close-ups, and his inner conflict is depicted through a series of conversations with his stoic guru (Govind Namdeo). Meanwhile Reggie’s problems are portrayed through his tantrums and rudeness towards Ruhi (who is quite happy being a sidekick) and his father (Anupam Kher).
Because the whole milieu and the plot seems so artificial, and Darshan’s style of direction so old-fashioned, the film is unwatchable. It could have been a fifties’ melodrama, but for the trendy costumes worn by the stars. If set in the Hindi film music industry, where an older singer would try to abort the career of a competitor, it might have made some sense; but portraying AJ as a one-man music industry in the US, and passing off Himesh Reshammiya’s tinny tunes as work of genius is stretching the audience’s credulity a bit too much.
In the first place, who in the American mainstream music industry would care about two guys doing some hybrid work and singing in Hindi. Forget cover stories and primetime TV, the media wouldn’t give them the time of day, and their ‘fame’ probably wouldn’t go past New Jersey.
Secondly, for a film about music wars, at least the music should be fantastic. The guy who is called a genius by everybody composes some junk like Shakalakalakalakalaka Boom Boom!
Thirdly, a film stuffed with non-actors struggling with badly written scenes and cheesy lines is bound to turn out ridiculous.
AJ (Bobby Deol) is a music star in New York (indeed!) and in love with aspiring singer Ruhi (Kangana Ranaut), when an arrogant, ambitious club singer Reggie (Upen Patel—odd oily look) crashes into the scene, showing up AJ for the mediocrity he is, while stealing Ruhi from him, in public.
In a jealous rage, AJ decides to wreck Reggie’s career, and succeeds with help of PR woman (Celina Jaitley) used and dumped by Reggie. Then a chance look at Reggie’s compositions (in Jodhpur his Indian father taught him western notations for songs like Thade Vaaste?) makes AJ aware of his own shortcomings and the fact that Reggie is truly talented. Then he comes up with an even more devious plan to destroy Reggie, which you have to suffer to believe!
Bobby Deol, playing the envious and evil older man is shot in unflattering close-ups, and his inner conflict is depicted through a series of conversations with his stoic guru (Govind Namdeo). Meanwhile Reggie’s problems are portrayed through his tantrums and rudeness towards Ruhi (who is quite happy being a sidekick) and his father (Anupam Kher).
Because the whole milieu and the plot seems so artificial, and Darshan’s style of direction so old-fashioned, the film is unwatchable. It could have been a fifties’ melodrama, but for the trendy costumes worn by the stars. If set in the Hindi film music industry, where an older singer would try to abort the career of a competitor, it might have made some sense; but portraying AJ as a one-man music industry in the US, and passing off Himesh Reshammiya’s tinny tunes as work of genius is stretching the audience’s credulity a bit too much.
Labels: Cinemaah
