Friday, October 07, 2011
Love Breakups Zindagi
Marry-Go-Round
Guy and gal, committed to other gal and guy, meet up, fall in love, and play romantic tic-tac-toe. Easy, breezy urban romcom, directed by Sahil Sangha, but similar stuff has been done so many times in so many variations, that yet another case of dilly-dallying people with emotions as shallow as their costumes are designer, is just a bit tough to take…and the meet cute is at a wedding in Punjab. Oh no!
Love Breakups Zindagi is a reasonably well made but very formulaic story. It’s still good to see more films about urban professionals. They are well-off, have ‘cool’ parents, drink and smoke, without guilt, have relationships, get divorced, chat on Facebook, and all the rest. That old world with its disapproving clans, clandestine romance and chastity is thankfully gone.
Jai (Zayed Khan) and Govind (Cyrus Sahukar) who work in a marketing company, go to Chandigarh to attend a common friend Arjun’s (Satyadeep Mishra) wedding to Gayatri (Auritra Ghosh). Jai, who has a control freak girlfriend (Pallavi Sharda), meets and gets along with Naina (Dia Mirza), who has a workaholic boyfriend Dhruv (Vaibhav Talwar). Twice-divorced Govind falls for an older Sheela (Tisca Chopra). Both the guys are waiting for the “bell to ring” ie, for true love to make itself felt.
There is the usual gaggle of relatives, song and dance, squabbles, games and even a funeral before they all return to their respective home and routines. While an unencumbered Govind quickly starts dating Sheela, but Jai and Naina have to deal with, first their own feelings, and then their existing partners.
For Jai it is relatively easy—his girlfriend is an iceberg for whom marriage is a ‘plan.’ For Naina to understand that Jai is better suited than Dhruv takes a long time in the film, plus a dog, an ice-cream guzzling friend (Umang Jain) and a diary.
In most romcoms of this nature, where people are not really meant to suffer, and the end is pre-ordained, it would be nice if the journey from beginning to end was a little less clichéd and a little more emotionally stirring. Better performances would help too.
Since the stars are the producers, their friendly Bollywood clique makes guest appearances, which makes their own lack of acting chops even more glaring.
LBZ is not bad, in fact, it’s okay as a date movie. It will probably last in the mind as long as the popcorn in the stomach.
Labels: Cinemaah
Rascals
As Crass As Can Be
David Dhawan has made some comedy hits in the past, and not many of them have been original or tasteful, but his latest Rascals would easily count among his worst.
So you grimace through lewdness unlimited, as the overage ‘rascals’ of the title, try to con people, but mostly just paw women—in particular one bimbo called Khushi (Kangana Ranaut), who is only to happy to get her clothes off. The other bimbo Dolly (Lisa Haydon) is a hooker, so she hardly every wears any. The dancers in the background are, as can be expected, semi-nude white girls.
Chetan (Sanjay Dutt, who produced this piece of trash) and Bhagat (Ajay Devgan, who ought to have had more sense) are rival conmen, who rob from a gangster Anthony (Arjun Rampal, et tu dude?) and escape to Bangkok. Chetan steals from Bhagat and then the two then vie for the favours of shrieky, underdressed Khushi. The plot, of course, owes its origins to Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) which has already been cannibalised (Deewana Mastana, Jodi No 1, etc) so the smart crooks believe she is an heiress; an up-to-date conman would have at least done a Google check.
Chetan pretends to be an Art of Giving social worker, and Bhagat a blind navy man. Each tries to outdo the other in trying to impress Khushi, but all they do is ogle and manhandle. After some time it is discomfiting to watch this, more so, since the film is just so unfunny. Even the working class or single screen frequenting men these films are obviously aimed at, would have to be particularly misogynistic (or repressed, or both) to enjoy this sort of thing.
Maybe it will do well, who can tell—worse films have—but as far as Dhawan’s work goes, this is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Is this recycling of old stuff necessitated by the fact that it is getting increasingly difficult to plagiarise from Hollywood? And that generation of Bollywood writers and filmmakers were so used to stealing that they probably forgot how to use their own brains… Our brains they tell us to leave at home. Even if we did, we’d still expect better films than Rascals.
Labels: Cinemaah
