Saturday, November 03, 2018
Lupt
No Scares Here
A family driving down a dark winding road see a stroller with a strange looking doll in it, and are quite unperturbed by it, even though after Chucky the killer doll of the Child’s Play movies, they should have been warned of the horrors to follow. The audience, however, knows exactly how the story of Lupt will play out; to make it easier, director Prabhuraj starts leaving clues right at the start.
Harsh Tandon (Jaaved Jaafferi) is an overambitious businessman, who wants to be at the very top; so he snaps at everyone in the office, and at his unhappy-looking wife Shalini (Niki Walia) at home. But when he starts hallucinating, a friendly shrink tells him insomnia is causing his mind to see things, and suggests a vacation.
Lupt must be the mildest horror movie ever made, with flickering lights, a creaking , a spooky log cabin in the middle of nowhere and pasty-faced ghosts, meant to scare audiences, who have undoubtedly seen worse.
For some reason, Jaaferi copies Amitabh Bachchan; Vijay Raaz looks suitably blank since he doesn’t really have much to do; the other actors just carry on gamely, probably aware that like the road in the film, Lupt won’t take them anywhere.
Jack And Dil
No Brain, No Heart
This is how it must have gone, the director or writer of Jack And Dil, while channel surfing one day, must have come across Carol Reed’s lovely film, Follow Me (based on a Peter Shaffer play), starring Topol as a detective hired by a rich man to spy on his wife, played by the enigmatic Mia Farrow. She is not having an affair, as the husband suspects, so the pursuit takes an unexpected turn.
Jack And Dil (somebody thought it was a clever title) takes the idea and mangles it beyond recognition. So, “unemployed by choice” Jack (Amit Sadh) lives in trendily messy Goa pad, is obsessed with detective stories, and is struggling to write one. He “falls in love at first sight” with a pug on TV and wants one for himself. Rich guy, no-first-name Walia (Arbaaz Khan) has one to sell for a lakh, which Jack does not have. So Walia strikes a deal, if Jack follows his wife Shilpa (Sonal Chauhan) and producers proof of her infidelity, he will give the amateur detective the money.
Shilpa spots Jack in no time, and he starts hanging out with her, to save time and effort, realizing that she is lonely, because Walia is too busy making strange deals with a Japanese team. He no longer does the “idiotic” things he used to when they were dating, so she spends her time painting or wandering around scenic Goa. Jack, who has broken up with his girlfriend, model Lara (Evelyn Sharma), is attracted to Shilpa, but prods Walia into wooing his wife again.
On paper, it sounds like a doable romcom, but with an indifferent script, uninspired performances, forgettable music, Jack And Dil is just a lot of hot air—no heart, no brain.
