annavetticadgoes2themovies

REVIEW 125: EKK DEEWANA THA

2012-02-18T20:52:00.001+05:30

Release date:	February 17, 2012
Director:	Gautham Vasudev Menon
Cast:	Prateik Babbar, Amy Jackson, Manu Rishi

Truth be told, I’m so tense about my book deadline that I was planning to skip reviewing Ekk Deewana Tha. But writer-director Gautham Vasudev Menon has created such a silly myth about Malayali Christians in this film, and in the past 24 hours I’ve read so many conversations on Twitter by authorities of half-baked knowledge, that I couldn’t resist.

Stereotyping apart, Ekk Deewana Tha is an excellent case study for the worst way to remake a lovely film. Quite literally, it is a carbon copy of Menon’s own hit 2010 Tamil film Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa (VTV / Will You Cross The Skies With Me). But you cannot Xerox a story, transport it to a completely different setting, and make no adjustments for the new milieu!

VTV was the story of the love between a Tamil Hindu boy and a Malayali Christian girl in Chennai, his unwavering feelings, her confusion and indecisiveness especially in the face of her family’s opposition, and an impetuous decision she takes in a fit of anger/irritation that changes their lives. It was a very poignant, very mellow film about two very real people whose longing for each other gave me an ache in my own heart. When Karthik is burning with desire for Jessie, you see it in the way his fingers surreptitiously brush against her feet as they sit chatting on a train. When he tells her their chemistry is undeniable, you see him seated across a table from her, locked in an argument, while in his mind’s eye he’s with her on her chair locked in a passionate embrace. Jessie was not a girl I entirely liked or respected, but of course such muddled-up, dithering women do exist. VTV was excellently acted by Silambarasan and Trisha Krishnan, impeccably written and directed by Gautham Menon, complemented by a top-class technical team, featured one of A.R. Rahman’s best ever soundtracks … and I loved every bit of it!

The Hindi remake Ekk Deewana Tha, on the other hand, works in places, but is filled with so many incongruities and strikes so many discordant notes that it is hard to get entirely drawn into the story.

The problems begin with the casting. British actress Amy Jackson plays Ekk Deewana Tha’s heroine Jessie, a Malayali Christian girl based in Mumbai. Is it just me or are there others out there who agree that Jackson does not look Indian? Dark hair doth not a desi beauty make! Her features are a tad too European to be convincing. While that may be debatable, what’s not debatable is that the poor girl has been bestowed with the worst make-up you’ve ever seen on a Bollywood heroine! Through parts of the film her face looks orange, elsewhere she has a light chin with dark cheeks and forehead, in one close-up it seems as though no effort was made to mask the dark circles around her eyes, and she looks oily faced almost throughout! It’s as if the entire technical team (make-up, lighting, camera) conspired against her in the film!

Prateik Babbar in Ekk Deewana Tha is Sachin, a Marathi Hindu unemployed engineer who wants to work in films. Playing a man who falls irrationally in love with Jessie, Babbar makes up somewhat for his shockingly bad performances in last year’s Aarakshan and My Friend Pinto. There’s a spark somewhere in there no doubt, so let’s not write him off just yet.

Those who’ve seen VTV may agree that Rahman’s lovely music is not used one-tenth as effectively here as it was in the original film. But the biggest issue with Ekk Deewana Tha is the writing. Menon is credited with the story and screenplay, while Manu Rishi has written the dialogues. Both of them seem strangely disconnected from the setting of their film, and that disconnect is exemplified by their portrayal of Jessie’s people. In VTV, the heroine’s Chennai-based family with their roots in Alappuzha seemed true-to-life … Malayali Christians tend to be conservative, and it’s quite believable that her family would frown upon love marriages and consider filmmaking a useless profession. Why just Malayali Christians? A large percentage of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs share these views too. But in the Hindi Ekk Deewana Tha, Messrs Menon and Rishi have a rather weird way of showcasing Jessie’s family’s orthodoxy. When she meets Sachin for the first time, Jessie explains that she was born and brought up in Mumbai. Since she’s 23, I guess I can safely assume that her entire family was based in Mumbai for at least 23 years? Yet an earlier conversation reveals that Jessie’s father does not know who Amitabh Bachchan is! And when Sachin asks Jessie about Malayalam megastar Mohanlal, she has not heard of him either! Her explanation: among us, watching films is considered “a sin”! She does not say “in my family”, she says “among us”. The implication being that Malayali Christians consider film-viewing a sinful pastime! Huh? That’s not true! Besides, how stupid and insular is this family that has lived in Mumbai for over two decades (in Juhu which is Bachchan’s neighbourhood) but is clueless about the Big B?!! And how lousy is this girl’s general knowledge that, despite being a Malayali, she is not aware of Mohanlal’s existence?!! Perhaps Gautham Menon would also like us to believe that Malayali Christians (even software firm employees like Jessie) don’t read newspapers, don’t watch TV, don’t notice hoardings, don’t talk to neighbours and colleagues, and in fact live in isolated settlements of the sort conceived by Manoj Night Shyamalan in The Village!

Sadly, because Menon is a south Indian himself and because he reportedly claims that Ekk Deewana Tha is his own story, there are Hindi film viewers out there who will assume that the picture he’s painted is correct. Sadder still, because south Indians (a.k.a. “Madrasis”) and Christians are still considered exotica by many people in the northern part of our country, this silliness too will be filed away in folklore. Though as @jojitjoseph wrote to me on Twitter, tongue firmly planted in cheek: “At least I am glad (that because of Ekk Deewana Tha) Bollywood now knows that there are Christians in Kerala. They believed that Christians are indigenous people only found in Goa.”

On the plus side, in Ekk Deewana Tha, Kerala as seen through cinematographer M.S. Prabhu’s lens is beautiful. And with all its flaws, the film does throw up scenes that tug at the heart strings, and others that are funny. I particularly enjoyed the one in which Sachin, seated in church during a wedding, guesses the bride’s next move based on the church weddings he’s seen in films. Some people may consider Jessie’s garrulous uncle in Alappuzha a stereotype, but I didn’t mind the bald little man’s enthusiasm for Hindi and “lenj” (lunch). Occasional caricatures can be amusing. Let’s focus our energies instead on ignorance, insidious stereotypes and disjointed film making.

Rating (out of five): **

CBFC Rating: U/A

Language: Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ek_Deewana_Tha

A CONTEST FOR MY READERS: I’D LIKE TO QUOTE YOU IN MY BOOK

2012-02-12T21:49:00.027+05:30

Dear Readers of my blog,

First, I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who has read this blog since I started it last year. Thank you for your constructive criticism, your encouragement, your kind words and the time you’ve spent here with me. As many of you are already aware, I’ve taken a break from journalism – in particular the maniacal schedules of television – to write and teach. I’m currently working on a book on Bollywood (details of which I will share with you in the coming weeks and months), and since the idea for it came to me from the blog, I thought it would be wonderful to involve all of you in it.

So here’s what I propose ... I’m announcing a contest on this blog, inviting you to send me reviews of any Bollywood film/s of your choice released in 2011. This is an informal contest, so I’m not throwing any legalese at you. Here are some basic guidelines that I request you to follow:

1. Each of you can send in as many reviews as you wish. Each review will be considered a separate entry.

2. Each review can be 200 words or less, not a word more please

3. The film you choose should have been released in 2011

4. Please pick a film / films from among the 121 releases of 2011 that I have reviewed on this blog

5. It goes without saying that I’m looking for original writing. However, since I am a one-woman operation without a large support staff, I can’t guarantee that I will spot instances of plagiarism. But remember that this blog is an open space and the Internet is filled with vigilant souls who will no doubt inform me if they see a post that appears to be lifted from previously published material. In fact, I request all of you to be watchful on my behalf.

6. If you choose to send in an entry, I will assume that you have the copyright to the material you’ve sent me.

7. Please do not feel any pressure to agree with my review/s of the film/s you choose. All I’m looking for are well-articulated views which show that the writer has a perspective on cinema.

8. Please e-mail your entries to annavetticadbook@gmail.com

9. Please make sure you e-mail me your postal address and contact numbers along with your review

10. The contest is open to anyone who is interested

11. The entries must be in English

12. Caveat: Poor grammar and spelling mistakes are frowned upon on this blog.

13. As I said, this is an informal contest so there is no formal jury. I will pick the three best-written reviews from all the entries. The choice of winners will be solely, completely and entirely at my discretion.

14. If I feel that any additional rules are required, I will add them here as and when the need arises along with the date on which the addition is made

15. The three winning entries will be quoted in my book, either in full or in part

16. The three winners will also receive a signed copy each of the book once it’s published

17. Deadline for sending in your entries: 11.59pm on February 22, 2012 (Modified on February 24, 2012, at the request of several regular readers of this blog: The deadline for the contest has been extended to 11.59pm on Sunday, February 26. Thank you for your enthusiasm! And I really really can’t extend it beyond that because I’ve got my own deadline for the book J )

18. If the deadline is extended (solely at my discretion) I will make an announcement here on the blog and/or on Twitter

19. I will let you know later how and when the winner will be announced

20. “Previously published material” as mentioned in Rule 5 includes material already posted on a blog – yours or someone else’s. Please do not send me a review that you have already uploaded on your own blog or a blog being run by a third party or even a review that you earlier posted in the comments section anywhere on this blog. That won’t be much fun, now will it? (added on February 13, 2012)

Although I said this contest is open to anyone who is interested, I am particularly keen to encourage students and regular bloggers to participate. If you are a teacher please spread the word on my behalf among your students. If you have friends who are committed bloggers, please tell them about this contest too.

As Uriah Heep might have said … This is just my ’umble way of saying thank you to the social media and the blogosphere. J

Warm regards, Anna

REVIEW 124: EK MAIN AUR EKK TU

2012-02-11T03:55:00.000+05:30

Release date:	February 10, 2012
Director:	Shakun Batra
Cast:	Kareena Kapoor, Imran Khan, Ratna Pathak Shah, Boman Irani, Ram Kapoor

From The House Of Johar, abode of the Bollywood deities of Melodrama and Lavish Scale, comes this pleasantly small and sweet romantic comedy about friendship and love. It’s not so much a romance actually as a buddy movie with a boy and girl, and the coming-of-age story of the boy. There’s that eternal question: can two people of the opposite sex ever be friends without falling in love? The answer is not obvious, and you’re unlikely to guess it’s coming up even as Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu’s unusual ending nonchalantly strolls by.

By the time that happens, if your tastes are anything like mine, EMAET will have drawn you in so subtly that you will have forgotten the moment when you began to share Riana’s laughter, when Rahul’s pain became yours. Did I tell you their names are Riana Braganza and Rahul Kapoor? He’s an average guy who has never been good enough for his pushy parents. She’s a ray of sunshine bursting at the seams with talent. He’s a reluctant architect though his passion is photography. She’s a hairstylist and you wouldn’t guess from her cheery personality that she too gave up some dreams. Mr Tight Ass and Ms Free Spirit meet in Vegas and gel unexpectedly. Oh no, yet another film about opposites attracting, did I hear you say? But this one’s different. And for the record, it is not a copy of What Happens In Vegas.

Four years back, when Vidya Balan and Shahid Kapoor starred together in Kismat Konnection, Vidya was subjected to nasty remarks though she’s just four years Shahid’s senior. There were acerbic reactions even when Bipasha Basu, then 30, co-starred with Neil Nitin Mukesh, then 27, in Aa Dekhen Zara, though it was and still is routine for a man to play the lover of an actress 15-20 years his junior. But that gender-specific ageism has been very very very gradually declining from the Bipasha-Ranbir Kapoor pairing of Bachna Ae Haseeno onwards. What’s more, EMAET actually specifies that Imran Khan’s Rahul is 25 and Kareena Kapoor’s Riana is 26-going-on-27 … just in passing, perhaps to make the point that it’s no big deal.

Subtlety is, in fact, EMAET’s strength. That the heroine has had sex before marriage is not tackily trumpeted as a sign of liberalism or liberation, nor is it condemned … it’s just stated as a fact. The film is equally subtle about the lead pair’s religions. In contrast to earlier decades when every young Christian female character in Hindi films was a cabaret dancer or gangster’s moll or at best a secretary in minuscule outfits, in pointed contrast to the sari-wearing demure Hindu heroine, EMAET steers clear of the stereotype. Riana’s family is not caricatured either, unlike the Christian families of an earlier Bollywood when all the men were portrayed as drunkards, gangsters, bootleggers and bartenders, when all Christians wore huge crosses on their chests, made the sign of the cross in slow motion at the drop of a hat and could barely speak Hindi. In that sense, EMAET is a refreshing change from a film as recent as Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani in which the Hindi-speaking Hindu hero visits a church and suddenly switches to English as though a Christian god would not understand Hindi.

A lady in the hall where I watched EMAET did wonder aloud whether the film is playing it safe by making the heroine a Christian, as a way of explaining away an Indian girl being sexually active before marriage. The thought preyed on my mind for a few seconds … but well, if that really was the intent, I’ll let it pass since to my mind the actual stereotyping in this film is of socio-economic differences – Rahul’s mom is a typical rich bitch, dad is a cold and calculating bastard; they seem to be just tolerating each other in contrast to the middle-class warmth of the Braganza home. I’ll let this pass too because it contributed to the film’s fun quotient, especially that lively Auntyji song with Riana’s family and one neatly done climactic scene featuring a fork and chopsticks in the Kapoors’ Mumbai home!

The verdict … EMAET does take a bit too much time to pick up in the first half, but the pacing gets sorted out by the interval. The dialogues feel very real, except in two instances of trying-too-hard-to-be-what-we-think-cool-people-would-be … when Riana’s mom asks her if she’s PMS-ing and her dad asks if she’s had sex with Rahul. That apart, it’s an understatedly funny film completely unlike many recent Bollywood comedies – no hero peeing on a haystack here, no farting ape! The emergency in Riana’s life that brings her to Rahul’s house does seem slightly contrived in retrospect – why is a charming creature like her so friendless in Vegas? But that’s a minor squabble in the overall analysis.

Major grouse: Why doesn’t Kareena get the No. 1 slot in the credits? She’s the bigger star than Imran and lights up the screen every time she appears in EMAET. Imran is well suited to the role and is growing as an actor no doubt, but Ms Kapoor is just luminous! She could easily have played Riana as a city-bred version of Geet from Jab We Met, but she does not. So, like Geet, Riana is vivacious and fearless, but she has far more maturity, refinement and good sense. Imran and Kareena don’t have the searing sexual chemistry that Kareena shared with Hrithik Roshan in so many films, but such sparks would have been out of place here. Quite rightly, instead, they come across as one of those compatible couples who seem to enjoy each other’s company. Amit Trivedi’s music is as nice as Batra and Ayesha Devitre’s writing. EMAET didn’t take my breath away, but it did leave me with a warm, happy feeling.

Rating (out of five): ***

CBFC Rating: U/A

Running time: 110 minutes

Language: Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://ekmainaurekktuthemovie.com/

THE annavetticadgoes2themovies AWARDS - BEST FILMS 2011 :)

2012-02-04T02:09:00.021+05:30

So the awards season is on in full swing. And I’ve given myself a nice long vacation from blogging. Time to lift myself out of my lazy stupor and write a piece on the Best Hindi Films of 2011.

Let me start with a caveat though – chances are that you’ve not seen the No. 1 film on my list. People often blame critics for leading insular lives, liking films that no one else does and hating films that the public loves. It’s just one of those generalisations that some people make unthinkingly … though usually when you scrape the surface you realise that most people regularly follow precisely one critic (or at best two) and attribute all that person’s qualities to all critics.

Anyone who actually reads more than one critic routinely will find that the cliché is so wrong. Each critic is an individual giving you a perspective on a film based on the sum total of her/his life’s experiences, exposure and interests. Critics are not a homogeneous mass of people with identical views. So while there may be films that more critics have liked than disliked, how often have you found a film towards which 100% of all critics had the same feelings?

There’s that other point … if a film has not been previewed for the press, a critic may go to great lengths, travel great distances to watch it even if it’s not been given convenient time slots in good theatres near home. The public is unlikely to do that, especially if the film has been poorly promoted. Sadly, at least 3 films on my list suffered greatly because audiences (and even some critics) were not aware of their existence till reviews were published on Friday or Saturday, by which time it was too late of course! A pity, because I Am, Memories In March and Bubblegum are really worth your time!

On a different note … Because of the New Year resolution I made last year to try my utmost not to miss a single Bollywood film released in my home city, my choice of Best Films of 2011 is based on having actually watched 121 films, not just the more high profile ones! You won’t find an awards jury to match the one you find on annavetticadgoes2themovies this awards season! J

My Best Film #1 of 2011: I Am

Director Onir’s brave film raises uncomfortable social and political questions that Hindi cinema prefers to avoid. I Am is a compilation of four short stories: of a young divorcee in Kolkata (Nandita Das) having a baby through artificial insemination; of a Kashmiri Hindu girl (Juhi Chawla) who returns to Srinagar for the first time since her family was forced to flee; of a film maker in Bengaluru (Sanjay Suri) whose seemingly callous nature camouflages his struggle to cope with memories of child sexual abuse; and a gay man (Rahul Bose) who is afraid to come out to his family. The scene showing a man being raped in that last story chilled me to the bone. But the account that moved me the most in this quartet was the one focusing on the politics of Kashmir, an issue shamelessly ignored by Bollywood. In a scenario where rabble-rousers try to force liberals into taking a stance that’s either entirely pro- or anti- either Hindus or Muslims, here is a film that does neither, and yet steers clear of secular clichés! Beautifully acted, beautifully told!

**** (For the original review of I Am, click here)

My Best Film #2: Shor In The City

When Ektaa Kapoor promised us alternative cinema through Alt Entertainment, she clearly meant it. Bollywood directors have repeatedly examined the underbelly of Mumbai, but no one has done it quite like Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK with Shor In The City, a film that should have been better marketed. Shor… cleverly blends the bleakness of Mumbai with humour to give us the stories of petty criminals Tilak, Ramesh and Mandook; an NRI who returns home to find that running a business without paying hafta is near impossible here; and an aspiring cricketer who learns that selection is done strictly on a merit-cum-means-to-pay-bribes basis. The sound design is particularly laudable, and whaddanensemblecast! Sendhil Ramamurthy (yessss, His Hotness Ramamurthy from the US tele-show Heroes!) made his Hindi film debut with Shor... While he is delicious, the pick of this enchanting cast is arguably Pitobash Tripathi playing a loose cannon whose idea of fun is to peep over a toilet wall and use a newly-acquired gun to threaten a man relieving himself! Shor… is one of the most unpredictable Hindi films I’ve seen, constantly swinging smoothly between laughter, tears and suspense. Lovely!

**** (For the original review of Shor In The City, click here)

My Best Film #3: Delhi Belly

2011 really and truly was The Year of The Ensemble Cast! Every single actor in Delhi Belly was perfect for their parts in this hilarious story of amorality in the Indian Capital. When a cache of diamonds gets mixed up with a stool sample headed for a doctor’s clinic, chaos ensues! The foul language in this film was much talked about, but frankly, it was neither over-the-top nor sensationalist … I’m afraid Dilli-vaasis are like that only, folks! And then there was that famous close-up of diarrhoea pouring out on to a table … Vijay Raaz as the gangster confronted with the flowing faeces must rank as one of the Best Supporting Actors of 2011 for his performance as a villain who manages to keep his emotions in check at most times. The other highlight of this excellent troupe of actors was Poorna Jagannathan, Indian-origin star of US TV making her Bollywood debut. The farting and the grumbling tummy in the film became a trifle excessive beyond a point. But I still got a belly-ache from laughing non-stop through director Abhinay Deo’s wonderfully constructed Delhi Belly!

***1/2 (For the original review of Delhi Belly, click here)

My Best Film #4: Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara

Three friends go on a road trip through stunning Spain to take a break from life, rediscover themselves and each other. When the synopsis of Zoya Akhtar’s Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara was published, some cine buffs feared that it was Dil Chahta Hai revisited! Others made the accusation after seeing the film. Unfair, I say. This Hrithik Roshan-Farhan Akhtar-Abhay Deol-starrer takes us through the internal and inter-personal conflicts of these best buddies who make no apologies for their wealth and lead seemingly trouble-free lives. Shankar Ehsaan Loy’s music blended well with the setting, and the decision to get the three actors to sing their parts in the Senorita number was a masterstroke. Carlos Catalan’s cinematography was absolutely brilliant. The lead stars were impeccable. Akhtar was a revelation! And though some portions of the film felt like Spain Tourism advertisements, there was something irresistible about this mellow male bonding film with a uniquely feminine – and feminist – touch.

***1/2 (For the original review of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, click here)

My Best Film #5: Dhobi Ghat (Mumbai Diaries)

Shai (Monica Dogra) is an NRI who is in Mumbai for work, Munna (Prateik Babbar) is the washerman who falls in love with her, Arun (Aamir Khan) is a reclusive painter she falls for, and Yasmeen (Kriti Malhotra) is a young bride whose life we see in flashback through videos that fall into Arun’s hands. Their separate yet intersecting stories were the fabric of debutante director Kiran Rao’s warm tribute to Mumbai. Except for Khan (also Rao’s husband and the film’s producer), the rest of the cast were all youngsters, mostly first-timers … but you wouldn’t guess that from their relaxed approach to acting. Babbar, who was so delightful in a cameo on debut in Abbas Tyrewala’s Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na in 2008, was loveable in Dhobi Ghat, yet seemed irredeemably bad in Aarakshan and My Friend Pinto later in the year – proof, if any was needed, that no actor is better than his director. Rao’s quiet storytelling style made this a charming ode to a metropolis she clearly loves, and the heartbreaks that accompany its throbbing heartbeat.

***1/2 (For the original review of Dhobi Ghat, click here)

My Best Film #5: Memories In March

If my son used condoms then he couldn’t have been gay, says a mother struggling to come to terms with the discovery of her late child’s homosexuality. Telling moments such as these fill Memories In March, a stirring English-Hindi-Bengali production that must rank as one of the most poorly marketed good films of 2011. Strictly speaking, I’m not sure it could be categorised as “Bollywood” … but it’s on my list anyway because I can’t let a minor quibble stand in the way of an excuse to talk about a heart-warming film. Deepti Naval shines as an emotionally conflicted parent. Rituparno Ghosh as her son Siddharth’s gay boss is spot-on. And Raima Sen delivers a typically under-stated performance as Siddharth’s colleague. Well scripted, well acted, well directed, pathetically promoted – films like this typify the great tragedy of niche cinema in India today … There are some little gems out there that run out of budgets and/or ideas for marketing! Keeping films like Memories In March a secret is an injustice to followers of good cinema!

***1/2 (For the original review of Memories In March, click here)

My Best Film #6: I Am Kalam

This comes straight from the heart of a hardcore film buff – thank you director Nila Madhab Panda for discovering Harsh Mayar! This little ball of dynamite has already won a National Award for his performance as Chhotu the dhaba boy in Rajasthan who is inspired by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s rise from poverty to the Presidentship of India. The nice thing about him is that there’s much more to him than his cuteness. Within just one film, Mayar displays more versatility than many adult actors do through an entire filmography! Matching his exuberance with reticence is the gifted Husaan Saad playing the neighbourhood Thakur’s lonely son with whom Chhotu strikes up an unlikely friendship. The film is clearly a call against child labour and in favour of education-for-all, but there’s nothing preachy about it. In an utterly guileless fashion, Panda captures the colour, sounds and feel of this remote dhaba, the foreigners who fill its charpoys, and the chirpy, hard-working child who serves them with a smile while dreaming of bigger things. Forget the slightly unconvincing end, and what you get is a sweet, funny, realistic, entertaining, well-intentioned film.

***1/2 (For the original review of I Am Kalam, click here)

My Best Film #7: Singham

1970s-style Bollywood melodrama + fantastical dishum-dishum + dialoguebaazi + an invincible hero = Singham. Oh how I loved watching Ajay Devgn beating up all the baddies single-handedly in those delightfully choreographed, over-the-top fight scenes! This story of an honest policeman who crosses swords with an evil politician was the official Hindi remake of the Tamil film of the same name starring Surya. Director Rohit Shetty cast Prakash Raj from the original film as the villain here too. Wise move! The background score and title song raised the film’s energy levels by many notches. But what I found most attractive about Singham were its dialogues infused with a drama that once filled the films starring The Big Bachchan. Of course it’s all improbable. But who cares when the bad guy’s constant refrain is, “Sab kuchh karne ka, lekin Jaykanth Shikre ka ego hurt nahin karne ka.” And there’s the hero’s one-liner, so apt for an India reeling under the impact of 60-plus years of corruption: “Meri zaroorte kam hai, isliye mere zameer mein dum hai.” Seetiyaaaaan!

***1/2 (For the original review of Singham, click here)

My Best Film #8: Don 2

Action with a sense of humour … that’s what worked for me in Don 2. Like the 2008 Don – a remake of the 1978 film of the same name starring Amitabh Bachchan – in this one too Shah Rukh Khan gave us a re-interpretation (not a copy) of that iconic character. Three years back, SRK transformed Amitabh Bachchan’s original Don into a physically less intimidating fellow, both impudent and arrogant, yet willing to laugh at himself. In 2011, he continued the self-mocking tone. It formed a lethal blend with Farhan Akhtar’s confident direction, some world-class action scenes, the effective use of Shankar Ehsaan Loy’s evocative music, slick dialogues plus that rare Bollywood heroine (Priyanka Chopra) who was as comfortable as her hero with car chases and kicking butt. True, some of Don’s schemes were not convincing enough, and there were other flaws in the script that should have been corrected. But by the time the closing song rolled on to the screen, with flames of near-tangible chemistry flashing between SRK and PC, all was forgiven!

***1/2 (For the original review of Don 2, click here)

My Best Film #8: Force

Force, starring John Abraham and Genelia D’souza, was a remake of Gautham Menon’s Tamil film Khaaka Khaaka starring Surya and Jyothika. The action in director Nishikant Kamat’s Hindi version was h-h-h-hot, as was John Abraham playing a cop who shuns personal attachments for fear that they could turn into Achilles heels in his professional life. Abraham – much maligned by critics on the acting front – turned in his career best performance in this film as a no-nonsense cop who falls reluctantly in love. Matching up to him very effectively was an interesting newcomer called Vidyut Jamwal playing the drug baron whose wrath he earns. Force was not as emotionally appealing as the very poignant Tamil original. Better chemistry between the lead pair would have made this a different film. Ah well … what we got instead was an intense thriller with the deadly combination of Action Abraham, sharp editing, Harris Jeyaraj’s music and some of the most unforgettable fights and chases I’ve seen in a Hindi film!

***1/2 (For the original review of Force, click here)

My Best Film #9: Bubblegum

Brilliant ensemble casts and the emergence of some superb child actors … those were the high points of 2011. Director Sanjivan Lal’s Bubblegum had both. This loveable film set in 1980s Jamshedpur is about teenaged romance and sibling rivalry in an era before cellphones and the Internet. It’s also about the inevitable tensions in a household where well-meaning parents end up unintentionally showering more attention on a child with special needs. Vedant (Delzad Sanjay Hiwale) is struggling with his first crush when his brother Vidur (Sohail Lakhani) comes home from boarding school for the holidays. Vidur’s speech and hearing impairment tends to make him the centre of attention at home, causing Vedant to resent him. This is not a film with snazzy plot twists but a simple narration of life as it is and was. The immensely talented Hiwale and Lakhani were backed by a team of young and old co-stars so good that at times while watching Bubblegum it was hard to believe they were performing before a camera; it felt like they were just being … and just being themselves. Such nostalgia, such charm!

*** (For the original review of Bubblegum, click here)

My Best Film #10: Stanley ka Dabba

As much as I’m in love with the children in this film, it was director Amole Gupte’s approach to making Stanley ka Dabba that I found most fascinating. It was shot through a year-and-a-half-long workshop with the students of a Mumbai school, during which Gupte kept an unimposing little camera running and told the kids to improvise dialogues and just be themselves. The fruits of this amazing and time-consuming experiment are the incredibly natural performances that you see in the film. The story is of a poor boy called Stanley who is victimised by a bullying teacher in his school. The leading little man is played by a bright young actor called Partho who happens to be Gupte’s son. Hopefully we will get to see a lot more of him and the rest of the child brigade that make Stanley ka Dabba what it is. On the downside, I’m troubled by the film’s completely uncritical view of children as flawless creatures. But that does not take away from the fact that this is a pathbreaking film with completely, utterly, unarguably memorable performances

*** (For the original review of Stanley ka Dabba, click here)

My Best Film #10: Sahib Biwi aur Gangster

Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Sahib Biwi aur Gangster is an uncommon story of politics and crime in a small northern Indian town. The story is about the son of an erstwhile royal family (the sahib), the criminal activities he indulges in to supplement his dwindling wealth, his love-starved and mentally unhinged wife (the biwi) and the mole planted in his household by a rival (the gangster). The tightly written script combined with equally tight editing made this a highly entertaining drama. The locations looked authentic, the art design gave the film an atmospheric feel. And the lead trio –Mahie Gill, Jimmy Shergill and Randeep Hooda – were just right. The sex too was served more tastefully than we’re used to seeing in Bollywood films that have so much of it! Not in the same league as the Hindi film classic to which the title bears a resemblance, but a fitting and unusual modern-day tribute all the same!

*** (For the original review of Sahib Biwi aur Gangster, click here)

(Photograph credits are listed with the reviews of individual films to which links have been provided above)

FOOTNOTE: My list of Best Films of 2011 is based entirely on my personal assessment of the films, and completely unrelated to their ultimate box-office performance. However, a few weeks back I had conducted a poll on this blog asking you to vote for your choice of Best Film from among Bollywood’s top 10 box-office earners of 2011 as per the trade website boxofficeindia.com. The list (in order of box-office ranking) was as follows:

1. Bodyguard
2. Ra.One
3. Don 2
4. Ready
5. Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara
6. Singham
7. The Dirty Picture
8. Rockstar
9. Mere Brother ki Dulhan
10. Delhi Belly

Your choice of Best Film from the above list based on your votes is as follows: 1. Don 2 – 32% 2. Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara - 26% 3. Bodyguard – 11% 4. Rockstar – 7% 5. Delhi Belly – 6% 6. The Dirty Picture – 5% 6. Singham - 5% 7. Ra.One – 2% 7. Mere Brother ki Dulhan – 2% 8. Ready – 1%

REVIEW 123: AGNEEPATH

2012-01-27T00:45:00.000+05:30

Release date:	January 26, 2012
Director:	Karan Malhotra
Cast:	Hrithik Roshan, Sanjay Dutt, Rishi Kapoor, Zarina Wahab, Chetan Pandit, Arish Bhiwandiwala, Priyanka Chopra

Let me be honest and tell you right at the start that I’m not in love with the earlier Agneepath directed by Mukul S. Anand, produced by Yash Johar and starring Amitabh Bachchan. I realise that Bachchan won a National Award for it, but this is part of my least favourite phase in his career when he seemed not to have come to terms with his advancing years and had become a victim of his own image and stardom.

2012’s Agneepath produced by Johar’s son Karan is melodramatic no doubt. But the melodrama works in large parts because it’s got something the old Agneepath did not have. Someone, actually. Well, make that several someones … it’s got Hrithik Roshan who, unlike some of his senior male colleagues, seems refreshingly confident of his gracefully ageing face; it’s got debutant director Karan Malhotra who joins the ranks of the very few directors who know how to handle present-day Bollywood’s most beautiful man; it’s got Ajay-Atul’s rousing background score. Add to that veteran Rishi Kapoor effortlessly shedding his nice-guy image to deliver a typically under-stated performance as a cruel gangster, and Arish Bhiwandiwala playing the little Hrithik with natural ease, and you will know why I say that though I have many objections to Agneepath, I was still greatly affected by it.

Objection #1: the length. It’s not that entire scenes should have been removed from this film, but that at too many places especially in the second half, once a point has been made, the director still stretches the scene beyond requirement … by seconds and even minutes.

This applies most to scenes involving Sanjay Dutt playing the bad guy Kancha. Dutt relies less on acting skills and more on his physicality, make-up and camera angles to create a menacing persona ... and menacing it is, no doubt! But the script which so effectively develops Hrithik’s Vijay Dinanath Chauhan for us, fails with Kancha. Don’t give a back story if you don’t want to, but don’t give us a half-baked one in passing! Every time Kancha appears on screen, the film loses energy with its studied effort to build him up as a towering personification of evil ... with some slow motion thrown in, a long shot here, an extreme close-up there.

Objection #2: Priyanka Chopra’s role. If you need any evidence of how male dominated this industry is, watch one of India’s top female stars reduced to a minor player in this film. You may argue that a small role could be significant, but let’s face it, Hrithik is unlikely to play such a tiny part in a film that’s primarily a vehicle for its female star! Besides, it’s not the length of Priyanka’s role that’s disturbing, but its insignificance. Sure, she’s good while she’s there, but she’s hardly there! Why oh why did an actress of her stature and talent accept this film?!

Objection #3: the songs. Deva Shree Ganesha is nice and picturised on a lavish scale. Amitabh Bhattacharya’s mischievous lyrics in Chikni chameli are fun ... “Chikni chameli, chupke akeli, pauwwa chadha ke ayee.” But the rest of the songs are unmemorable and unnecessary.

The story remains faithful to the original: a boy witnesses his honest father – a village teacher and reformer – being framed and then killed by the drug lord Kancha in Mandwa, not far from Mumbai. The child grows up to be Vijay Dinanath Chauhan, right hand man of Mumbai don Rauf Lala (Rishi Kapoor). Kancha wants to rule Mumbai, Vijay wants to return to Mandwa to avenge his father’s humiliation and death. He is a victim of circumstances, moved by his parents’ ideals yet convinced that they are not for this world; an essentially good man whose bitterness is destroying him. Two important changes in this remake: Rauf Lala is a new addition and thankfully, the south-Indian-stereotype-ridden character of Krishnan Iyer MA (played by Mithun Chakraborty) has been done away with.

Agneepath 2012 is stylish, well acted, moving in many places, with engrossingly old-fashioned, well executed, chilling action scenes and a hero who makes you weep with him. Some people may find the violence too gruesome, I did not. The writers and director also show rare courage in making Hrithik and Priyanka appear for the first time about 40 minutes into the film, and yet it is arresting until then.

My problem with Agneepath is that in spite of its many powerful scenes, it didn’t form a cohesive whole for me. On the plus side, Karan Malhotra is clearly good with actors. For a while now, even as recently as Don2, the incredibly talented Om Puri has appeared disinterested in his films. Here though, as the upright policeman who reminds Vijay of his dad, he’s far more involved than usual. There’s a tenderness to Vijay’s relationship with the ACP and also with his father played by the ever reliable and likeable Chetan Pandit. In fact, the lengthy opening scene with young Vijay and schoolmaster Dinanath Chauhan is lovely, a confluence of good acting, a breathtakingly atmospheric location, excellent camera work and Piyush Mishra’s clever dialogue writing. When the boy is told that Mahatma Gandhi said an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind, he shoots back, “Mahatma Gandhi Mandwa mein paida nahin hue thhe.”

Hrithik, for his part, is wise not to imitate AB senior. He is nearly a decade younger than Bachchan was in the original, and he makes Vijay Dinanath Chauhan his very own. Yes, we do get to see his fabulous body, but there’s nothing self-conscious about those scenes. And in Karan Malhotra’s able hands, he delivers a finely controlled performance which is enough to make you forgive Agneepath for the tedium intermittently caused by its length.

Rating (out of five): ***

CBFC Rating: U/A

Language: Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agneepath_(2012_film)

REVIEW 122: PLAYERS

2012-01-08T00:54:00.000+05:30

Release date:	January 6, 2012
Director:	Abbas Mustan
Cast:	Abhishek Bachchan, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Bipasha Basu, Sonam Kapoor, Vinod Khanna, Omi Vaidya, Sikandar Kher, Bobby Deol

So as it turns out I had fun watching Players. Yeah, I wish it hadn’t lazily glossed over the intricacies of the plots hatched by Charlie Mascarenhas (Abhishek Bachchan) and his troopers. I wish the directors had dumped Pritam’s tuneless songs. I wish some of the acting and dialogues had been better. But the truth is that despite all this, the pace of Players is such that I enjoyed it.

The film, as you know, is the official Hindi remake of the 2003 Mark Wahlberg-starrer The Italian Job which was inspired by the 1969 British classic of the same name starring Michael Caine. It’s the sort of clever heist flick that would appeal to the team who identify themselves rather quaintly as “director duo Abbas Mustan” in their credits. Having entertained us over the years with films such as Baazigar and Race, the “director duo” have begun our New Year with a film that is riddled with loopholes but I still say is basic paisa vasool.

Story: Charlie wants to rob a heavily guarded train carrying gold bars from Russia to Romania. To gather a team of the world’s best crooks for the job, he needs the help of his mentor Victor-dada (Vinod Khanna). The old man has promised his daughter (Sonam Kapoor) that he will not steal again, but the gold could fund an orphanage he dreams of opening, so he agrees. Enter: con artist Riya (Bipasha Basu), illusionist Ronny (Bobby Deol), explosives expert Bilal (Sikandar Kher), wannabe actor Sunny (Omi Vaidya) and computer wiz Spider (Neil Nitin Mukesh). Not a word will I say beyond this about the story, because any word would be a spoiler.

Though the basic storyline of Players comes from the Hollywood film, Abbas Mustan add enough desi ingredients (lowwe, emoshan etc) to make it their own. This is not the sort of film that particularly challenges any actor’s skills, but within the constraints of the genre and the not-so-sparkling screenplay, I enjoyed watching Bipasha the most, followed by Neil who swings from boyish innocence to villainy to eccentricity in an amusing fashion. Abhishek is best suited to films where he is a suave city boy, but no other director handling him in such a role has got him to ease up in the way KJo did in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. Having said that, the scenes in Players in which Charlie does voice impressions and wears Sunny’s lovingly fashioned mask are handled well both by the actor and directors – far better, in fact, than one such scene in Don 2!

Messrs Deol & Kher stare intensely at us throughout. I expected better of Kher considering the spark he showed even in that lost cause of a film with which he made his debut, Woodstock Villa. And while it’s appalling to see a young actor becoming a cliché with just a handful of films post-debut, in Players Omi Vaidya gets the best lines which he delivers with timing that actually overshadows the otherwise grating repetitiveness of his performance. “Sona kaha hai?” asks a villain desperate to retrieve his gold. “Yahaan bahut jagah hai, jaha bhi sona hai so jaao (or words to that effect),” replies Sunny, in the middle of one of the film’s most intense scenes.

The locations in Players are lovely, and the overall look of the film is slick. But finesse comes from bothering with details … such as the actors playing tiny roles. Vyacheslav Razbegaev makes a thoroughly enjoyable brief appearance as a Russian general with a fondness for sex and Raj Kapoor! But those Indian policemen guarding Victor-dada were a bad joke!

With all these reservations, I still won’t write off Players. Because Abbas Mustan and their screenplay writers Rohit Jugraj and Sudip Sharma give it so many unexpected twists and turns at such an unrelenting speed, that you don’t get much time to think about the gaping holes while the film is on. Q: How did Victordada manipulate matters while in jail to get to a fake hospital with fake staff? Q: Where did the Russians think their general was during the train robbery? Only those of you who have watched the film will understand my questions … my apologies to those who have not. Aur jaise haar kar jeetne waale ko baazigar kehte hai, usi tarah film enjoy karke phir bhi sochne waale ko critic kehte hai! So don’t think too much and you’ll probably enjoy Players in all its loophole-filled glory!

Rating (out of five): **3/4

PS: (1) Love the cars! Dear God, I don’t want gold, I just want enough cash to buy a Morris Cooper. (2) Why does Sonam get higher billing in the credits than Bipasha, though Bips is senior and has a more substantial role? (3) Yes boys, Bipasha does have a standard bikini scene in the film. Yes girls, the scene will make you insecure about your body! (4) For a change I was not put off by Johnny Lever. The episodes involving his firangi wife and servant are borderline racist, but also – I confess – hilarious.

CBFC Rating: U/A

Running time: 160 minutes

Language: Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Players_(film)

REVIEW 121: CHARGESHEET

2012-01-07T10:52:00.006+05:30

Release date:	September 30, 2011
Director:	Dev Anand
Cast:	Dev Anand, Naseeruddin Shah, Milind Gunaji, Divya Dutta, Jackie Shroff, Aryan Vaid

Either I’m an emotional coward or I’m a softie. There can be no other explanation for why I postponed for so long this write-up on Dev Anand’s last film Chargesheet. I think my sentimentality and apprehensions both emerged from the second the Navketan logo came up on screen accompanied by the tune of Main zindagi ka saath nibhaata chala gaya which, as you know, comes from one of the legendary actor’s most memorable films, Hum Dono.

For a logo to conjure up such happy memories, to be followed by a desperately bad film like Chargesheet genuinely hurt. The film is of such dismal quality that I don’t know where to begin. Whatever be the reason, it’s a good thing that people of my mother’s generation had stopped venturing into theatres to watch Devsaab’s films in the past decade since it would have pained them to see this one.

Chargesheet begins in Dubai where a gangster called Sultanbhai (Naseeruddin Shah) is romancing a wannabe actress called Maria. No scene could be a more telling harbinger of things to come than the one in which the don is shown looking down from his window at his moll sunbathing in a swimsuit, while through the sheer fabric of her minuscule outfit we are given a glimpse of one nipple. In that single scene the audience gets evidence of the tragically pathetic quality and the ickiness to follow, since Maria is played by the worst actress possibly in the history of cinema, even the often impeccable Naseer hams to embarrassing effect and there’s more where that transparent swimsuit came from.

The gist of the story is that Sultanbhai finances a Hindi film with the condition that his Maria should be its heroine. The lady travels to India for the shoot where a murder takes place at the hotel the cast is staying in. The needle of suspicion points towards several people since more than one of them had a motive to kill the victim. As it happens, retired Inspector General Gambhir Singh (Dev Anand) is at the same hotel, and he of course will not rest until he solves the case since he is himself implicated in it. Thrown into the mix is an innocent local girl called Chhamchham who earns money as a street entertainer but longs to be an actress, and a waiter at the hotel who loves her but can’t afford to buy her that one expensive lehnga that she covets.

This is an unintentionally funny film for many reasons but most of all because it felt like it was stuck in a time warp. I mean, when was the last time you saw a Hindi film character slap a woman and scream the words “besharam, behaya!”? Well, it happens here. One particular scene is so reminiscent of the old days that it’s stuck in my head forever – Gambhir Singh is close to solving the murder … he is ascending a hill in pursuit of the villain … the background score is gradually rising to a crescendo … the camera takes us to Singh taking a few steps up the slope … then returns to show us precisely that same shot of Singh taking a few steps up that slope … then returns again to that same shot of Singh … and it happens again and again … and again.

The makeup in Chargesheet is so bad that Chhamchham – played by a really bad actress called Devshi Khanduri – has got her face plastered with pancake except for the lower rims of her eyelids which seem to suggest that this is a dark-skinned woman with gorapan slathered on! Politician Amar Singh makes a guest appearance in a role that should forever be a reminder that he did well not to opt for a career in films! The music is so bad that it’s hilarious – if you ever meet me, do ask me to sing for you the title track Chaaaaargesheeet chaaaaargesheet chaaaaargesheet chaaaaargesheet! The policemen don’t lift fingerprints off the murder scene – instead they are instructed to take photographs of every spot on which they suspect there might be fingerprints! But the biggest joke of all is that this film comes to us under the banner of Warner Bros in association with Navketan. Why Warner, why?!!!!!

All this would have been highly amusing and nothing more, if the film had not been produced and directed by Devsaab. And so I felt a touch of sadness even as I laughed during the scene in which actress Maria is seated on the floor of a police station, wearing a tiny top with teeny shorts, the camera staying firmly focused on her as she sits there with her bosom barely covered and her legs spread out wide … and then when she leaves the room she does not walk out of the frame but runs right into that dogged, unmoving camera so that her bouncing breasts get larger and larger on screen until all we see is her skin before the next scene comes on.

If you think being a critic is easy, then try being me writing this review! To be honest, I might have skipped it completely if I had not promised the readers of my blog (and myself) that I’d review every single Hindi film possible that’s released in Delhi in 2011. And now that I’ve kept my vow, I’ll lay Chargesheet to rest, try to forget I ever saw it and dwell instead on the immense joy I got from watching Devsaab’s Hum Dono with Sadhana and Nanda when it was colourised and re-released as Hum Dono Rangeen in 2011. I wish I could transport you to Delite cinema in Delhi where I watched it, smiling, suppressing that silly lump in my throat that surfaced at the memory of seeing Hum Dono as a little girl with my family on Doordarshan in the days when DD was our primary source of entertainment, and I sang along with Main zindagi ka saath nibhaata chala gaya and Abhi na jaao chhod kar, and cried a little, and then a little more …

Rating (out of five): You know what, let’s just avoid this

CBFC Rating: U/A

Language: Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://www.navketanfilms.com/home.htm

REVIEW 120: KYA YAHI SACH HAI

2012-01-04T11:59:00.000+05:30

Release date:	December 30, 2011
Director:	Y.P. Singh
Cast:	Rajiv Roda, Bobby Vats

However courageous you may be as a director, you have to make a feature film to be acknowledged as a feature film maker. Kya Yahi Sach Hai is about the corruption in the Indian Police Service, the unholy nexus between police, politicians, power brokers and bureaucrats, and the games they play involving sex, lies and money. Now this is nothing new to consumers of Bollywood – after all, Hindi cinema has explored this theme in numerous films for decades now. What gives this film the potential to be special is that it’s directed by former IPS officer Y.P. Singh and based on his book Carnage by Angels.

So yes, Kya Yahi Sach Hai is much richer in its detailing than many we’ve seen on the subject, with touches that could have only come from either in-depth research or an insider’s eye ... a minister’s sidekick bluntly tells a policeman the going rate for a coveted posting, “sponsorships” are sought from industrialists whose bidding these policemen will do once they get the seat they seek, someone refers to the IAS as the I Am Slave service, a top cop touches the feet of a state home minister pleading to be kept on in Mumbai, and that same minister brings an honest officer to Mumbai to clean up the streets but then finds the fellow’s straightforwardness too hard to handle. Unfortunately, none of this is enough to redeem Kya Yahi Sach Hai. The film can hardly be counted as either a feature or a documentary or a documentary feature. Because it is too weighed down by its poor production quality and amateurish script to count at all.

The film begins with a waiter at a party attacking a senior policeman’s wife and wrenching her gold necklace off her. Later, we discover that this man was filled with rage because that piece of jewellery had belonged to his late wife who had committed suicide when he snatched it from her to pay off a debt to a local gambling den which in turn had offered it as hafta to a junior police official who passed it on to the town top cop’s wife. When the waiter’s back story is narrated to him, a young IPS Officer called Raghu Kumar resolves never to take bribes. Little does he realise that his honesty could end up as the biggest roadblock in his career. As a parallel thread in the story, we are also shown the life of a fellow IPS officer who accepts money and sexual favours, and is willing to prostate himself before the Home Minister of Maharashtra if that will get him a posting or award he wants. Meanwhile, Raghu Kumar is humiliated with an inquiry, suspension and the public stripping of his badges and other IPS accoutrements by a junior.

Director Y.P. Singh had narrated his own personal battles against corruption in his book, so it’s clear that he’s telling his story here. In that sense, there’s no doubt it took courage to make this film. But I found it worrisome that while attempting to paint Raghu Kumar as a faultless officer, Kya Yahi Sach Hai seems to be justifying police torture – Raghu tends to thrash the shady characters he rounds up, giving just the right amount of ammunition to his enemies looking for an excuse to get rid of him. Is it this film’s position that such atrocities are acceptable because they are committed by an officer who does not take bribes?

Also, honesty is all very well, but this policeman seems naïve. While conducting raids on people who are obviously paying hefty protection money to his seniors, he has no strategy to counter the bosses’ inevitable rage when they find out. There’s a difference between honesty and foolishness, and deifying foolishness is hardly a good way to convince young people to hold on to their integrity!

These, of course, are debatable matters. What’s not debatable is that Singh’s message would have reached the masses if a more efficient film maker had directed this film. Most of the ‘actors’ in Kya Yahi Sach Hai ham with all their might, others are so bad that you can’t even call what they’re doing hamming. And the list of technical flaws is too long to post here. In the first chapter of his book, which is available on this film’s website, Singh quotes a fictional Head Constable Bhushan Sankhe recalling his past to Raghu Kumar: “All officers used to place their trust in me. My acumen for collection was over-powering. This, coupled with my honesty in money matters made me the most fitting entity for the prime charge of collecting bribes. My conduct was sincere and impeccable.” The matter-of-factness in that statement is delightful. I wish with all my heart that Kya Yahi Sach Hai had been a film I could recommend to you.

Rating (out of five): 1/4 (a quarter star for courage)

CBFC Rating: U/A without cuts

Running Time: 146 minutes

Language: Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kya_Yahi_Sach_Hai

REVIEW 119: SAHI DHANDHE GALAT BANDE

2012-01-03T18:55:00.006+05:30

Release date:	August 19, 2011
Director:	Parvin Dabas
Cast:	Parvin Dabas, Kuldip Ruhil, Vansh Bhardwaj, Ashish Nayyar, Sharat Saxena, Neena Kulkarni, Anupam Kher, Kiron Juneja Sippy, Yashpal Sharma, Tena Desae, Udit Khurana, Preeti Jhangiani

Opening scene ... A voiceover tells us that when gangsters want to finish off a member of a rival gang, there’s no better time to choose than the day of his incarceration or release from jail. You can’t be sure of the person’s location at any other time. The camera takes us to Rajbir (Parvin Dabas) who is leaving jail. While Narendra Pehelwan’s people wait for him at the front gate, he exits from the back where his friends are waiting for him. “Rajbirbhai, pichhwaade ke raaste se nikalne ke liye kitna diya?” one of them asks. “Bas, pichhwaada hi nahin diya,” he replies.

The tone is set. Actor Parvin Dabas makes a remarkably assured debut as the writer-director of Sahi Dhandhe Galat Bande produced by Preeti Jhangiani. This is the story of four small-time gangsters operating in the village of Kanjhawla on the outskirts of Delhi – Rajbir and his friends who are nicknamed Doctor (Kuldip Ruhil), Ambani (Ashish Nayyar) and Sexy (Vansh Bhardwaj). Rajbir’s release from jail coincides with an agitation taking place in Kanjhawla in protest against the acquisition of farmers’ land by the Delhi government under Chief Minister Jaya Gulati (Kiron Juneja Sippy) for a factory being built by industrialist Aggarwal (Anupam Kher).

I’d recommend that you pick up a DVD of Sahi Dhandhe to find out how the bad guys try to do the right thing for their people. What’s most appealing about this film is its simplicity and Dabas’ no-frills approach to his story that lends it a quality of realism despite being entertaining. Every episode in this film had the potential to go over-the-top, but at no point does Dabas cross that invisible line. And though the issue at hand is grave, Sahi Dhandhe has an understated and appropriate sense of humour, clever dialogues that don’t sound like dialoguebaazi or the kind of clichéd crudity that we’ve come to expect in all gangster flicks, and just enough elements to keep it both enjoyable and meaningful, emotional yet light.

My favourite scene involves Rajbir trying to make a speech to the farmers, which had me chuckling at the start but left me with a lump in my throat. Later, in one of the film’s most telling moments, a TV journalist from the city sticks her mike into a villager’s face and asks, “Aapke hisaab se Land Acquisition Act mein kya tabdeeli honi chahiye?” to which she gets silence and a blank stare in response. And one night during a boisterous drinking session, when the gang is trying to figure out ways of helping the villagers who don’t want their help, Ambani laments farmer leader Malik’s insistence that he will keep the movement non-violent and apolitical. “Na politics na thod-phod. Yeh toh saale sharaafat mein hi mar jayenge,” he says. Nice.

The unusually long actors’ list (above) that I’ve given in this review is my way of saluting casting director Honey Trehan. The gang of four are remarkable though I’m torn between Ashish Nayyar and Kuldip Ruhil as my pick of the quartet. Among the talented supporting cast, a special word needs to be said for Neena Kulkarni who looks, talks and feels the part of Rajbir’s foster mother who does not want him anywhere near her agitation; Kher who metamorphoses from the faintly oily fellow chatting with the CM on the phone to the dignified businessman imperceptibly making a pass at a troublesome female journalist; Sippy as the politician whose son is her weakness; Sharat Saxena as Rajbir’s boss Fauji in a role that is a departure from the slimy villain he’s played a zillion times; and Yashpal Sharma (Malik) thankfully playing something other than a bad cop or goon here.

Cinematographer Anshul Choubey matches the tone of subtlety that Dabas evidently wanted to achieve with this film. His camera moves from a suburban village to the CM’s upmarket residence to Delhi University and back without giving us any grand sweeping shots of the city, yet managing to capture its feel. I wish the lyrics of the film’s songs were a little clearer, but I enjoyed the unobtrusive use of the background score by Siddhartth-Suhas. And the sound design by Subash Sahoo is so clean that we actually hear Malik’s nails scratching his stubble in one scene.

Sahi Dhandhe is not without its flaws. The end struck me as too simplistic and not entirely credible considering what we’ve witnessed in Singur, Bhatta Parsaul and other long-drawn-out farmers’ struggles. And once the lead four had arrived at a decision about their exact strategy, I felt the film should have approached its climax more rapidly, for a greater impact. Also, while most of the primary characters have shades of gray, the farmers are all painted as uniformly good folk which to me was a jarring reminder of the regular Hindi film stereotype about big bad city folk and bechare kisaan. Still, Sahi Dhandhe Galat Bande is a gently engaging film, and I hope Parvin Dabas gets to write and direct many more films in the future.

Rating (out of five): ***

CBFC Rating: U/A with three audio cuts (The Censor Board really needs to stop reading casteism into the inoffensive use of words describing professions. They actually got the film maker to remove the word “dhobi” from a song!)

Running time: 120 Minutes

Language: Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://www.facebook.com/galatbande

REVIEW 118: WHO’S THERE? KAUN HAI WAHAN?

2012-01-03T10:13:00.006+05:30

Release date:	November 18, 2011
Director:	Ejaz Ahmed
Cast:	Rajbir, Kalpana Mathur, Gagan Kang

The nicest thing I can say about this film is that I’ve seen worse! Who’s There? Kaun Hai Wahan? is the story of a young man who is haunted by his bride’s dead ex-boyfriend. It all begins when they’re on their honeymoon and Sunny Malhotra (Rajbir) sees Jay (Gagan Kang) as the watchman of the resort where they’re staying, and then again, and again. Since Muskan (Kalpana Mathur) apparently doesn’t see what her husband is seeing, she can’t know that it’s Jay who appears before Sunny. After several traumatic experiences, the couple returns to their home city Mumbai where Sunny sees photographs of Jay with Muskan and identifies him as the ghost who is driving him up the wall. Muskan reveals her past to him at this point: that Jay had been heart-broken at the prospect of her marriage and had committed suicide, preferring death to seeing her as another man’s wife.

What follows may not constitute the most original story in the world, but the concept is sufficient for reasonably worthwhile spook fare. Unfortunately, the production values of Who’s There? are below par which of course spells doom for any effort to scare us. Besides, the film does not come up with a single stunt that we’ve not seen before in a ghost story ... there’s smoke, a spirit with inflamed eyes, a camera descending a staircase, bloody water (or was that meant to be blood?) flowing from a tap, a priest who can sense an evil presence, the usual stuff. And it’s really weird that they thought up an excuse to get the heroine doing a dance number in the middle of all her trials and tribulations … one night Sunny sees her cavorting around to a song with Jay, but as he approaches them Jay disappears, and Muskan seems not to have any memory of the episode.

Actor-turned-model Rajbir is the most interesting of the lead trio. Regular TV viewers might remember him from that convoluted television swayamvar called Lux Perfect Bride which ran on Star Plus. The guy has a decent screen presence and looks like he could be moulded into an actor worthy of our time by a superior director with a superior script. Gagan Kang plays the spectre in Who’s There? in the menacing way numerous actors before him have done, but perhaps it’s not fair to judge him by this since it would have been tough to come up with any unique moves when the script just didn’t demand it. I think I’ll wait to see him in another film to figure out his acting skills. Kalpana Mathur does not have an impactful screen presence, but I suspect her acting may be okay in a better film. That apart, I must say I find it commendable that in a white-skin-obsessed film industry, neither she nor her makeup artist or director have tried to camouflage her deliciously dark skin with glaring lighting or pancake.

But the inadequacies of the lead cast pale into insignificance when you consider some of the amusingly bad supporting actors, the sub-standard production and lazy screenplay they are up against. The secret of a good thriller is that when the truth is revealed in the end, every piece of the jigsaw must fit somewhere. But it appears here that in thinking up ways to mislead and frighten the audience, Ejaz Ahmed (who also wrote the screenplay) forgot to tie up some loose ends. For instance, anyone who sees this film will know why I ask: why did blood/bloody water flow from that tap in that kitchen that night?

In the midst of all this mediocrity, it boggles the mind that the producers took the trouble to hire the services of singers Sunidhi Chauhan, Shaan, Udit Narayan and Kumar Sanu for Who’s There? While Narayan and Sanu are going through a low phase in their careers, Chauhan and Shaan are certainly not, which means getting them would have cost some money. Considering that the songs are not particularly memorable despite the presence of these heavyweights, perhaps it would have been a better idea to spend that money on a more talented music director. Or here’s an even better idea folks! How about going songless and using the money thus saved to up your production quality?!

Rating (out of five): -5 stars

CBFC Rating: A

Running time: 115 Minutes

Language: Hindi

Rajbir’s photo courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rajbeer-Singh/148453213183

Film still courtesy: http://whostheremovie.com/

REVIEW 117: YE STUPID PYAR

2012-01-02T11:19:00.000+05:30

Release date:	December 9, 2011
Director:	Rakesh Jain
Cast:	Jatin Khurana, Noopur, Akansha Shivhare

If I were a Hindi film heroine, I’d be yelling: Kya ghor anyaay hai yeh?! But since I’m me, I’ll tone it down, though the sentiments are the same when I say: O cruel world! A world that leaves undeniably talented actors Arjan Bajwa, Arjun Mathur and so many others like them struggling to earn a place in Bollywood while … hmmm, how do I put this kindly? … while talentless, personality-less people such as Jatin Khurana get to be the lead in a full-fledged production that can actually afford to travel to Bangkok to shoot! It makes me furious!

In Ye Stupid Pyar, Khurana is Abhishek, a US-based professional visiting his parents in India. While on vacation, he falls in love with a dance instructor at his gym. Neha – played by an actress called Noopur – agrees to marry him after he pursues her for a while. On their wedding night she persuades him to get his company to transfer him to Bangkok, and on the very first day there, she disappears from their home. It turns out that Neha has a past hitherto unrevealed to Abhishek and the audience!

Ye Stupid Pyar is a romantic thriller, though if there was such a genre as cheap I’d be slotting it there. I should have known nothing good could come of this film from the moment I saw the first scene in which Abhishek enters his parents’ house, walks towards his father and you hear his voice saying “Oh papa,” but you can see his lips on screen move to the words “Oh dad”. If the production team of a film takes its audience so lightly that they don’t think we would notice such glaring errors, then why should we take it seriously?

But that’s not the worst of it – it actually goes further downhill from there! The hero, it turns out, is considered handsome by not one but two attractive girls. What else would you expect from ye stupid film in which an employee phones up his boss just a day before he is supposed to return from leave to his office in the US and casually asks to be posted elsewhere … and the boss equally casually stops to think for but a moment before he agrees? If this weren’t a fictional company, I’d be applying for a job there!

The film’s far-fetched story and screenplay are matched in quality by the hero’s acting which would not find him a place in the kindergarten play of a school worth its salt. Noopur and Akansha Shivhare look like they deserve better than those tacky sets, poor songs, pathetic makeup and lighting. But perhaps that’s their punishment for agreeing to do this film in the first place. In a world where top-notch young directors struggle to get decent budgets, it’s infuriating to see good money wasted on a film that seems to have been made as an indulgence!

Rating (out of five): -50 stars

Language: Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://yestupidpyar.com/

REVIEW 116: NA JAANE KABSE

2012-01-02T00:10:00.000+05:30

Release date:

November 18, 2011

Director:

Pammi Somal

Cast:

Garry Gill, Amrita Prakash, Sharat Saxena, Lillette Dubey, Ayub Khan, Gurpreet Ghuggi, Himani Shivpuri, Anju Mahendroo

In her second film Na Jaane Kabse, producer-director-writer Pammi Somal carries forward the style she established in her debut release Mummy Punjabi this year. So yes, the film has a certain polish that comes from lovely outdoor locations well shot. But the production issues on other fronts, the poorly developed script, the abundance of cliches about plain Janes and Punjabis, the leading man, the sub-standard dialogues and the veterans in the supporting cast who unabashedly over-act all add up to a film that is really tough to endure.

The story is of Karan whose bride leaves him on his wedding day. He runs off to escape her furious family who are under the impression that he is the one who ditched her, and not vice versa. On the road, he takes a lift from Anjali In Thick Glasses And An Unstylish Outfit. Since the hero repeatedly taunts her for her oily hair, I have to believe him though I couldn’t see any grease. Anyway, it turns out that Karan’s business partner is expecting him to return with a bride since the plan is to promote their new holiday resort as a place so romantic that the owner himself decided to spend his honeymoon there. The international press is waiting! Now what is a man to do?! Well of course he asks Anjali to play his pretend wife. And that’s how their relationship begins.

There’s so much about Na Jaane Kabse that made me cringe, I don’t know where to start. Okay, let’s begin at the very beginning:

Pammi Somal really needs to rid herself of this penchant to use cue cards to introduce her characters while flashing text and thought bubbles on screen that are meant to be cute. They are decidedly not. Karan’s introductory shot is accompanied by the words “bechara complexed (sic) Karan”. For Anjali the words are, “confused but confident Anjali”. And the interval is announced with the words “Hai Rabba, problem shuru.”
Lillette Dubey (who plays Karan’s professional associate in this film) is superbly fit and trim for her age, but I wish she would stop accepting roles where she’s projected as this older hottie. It’s become trite and it’s beginning to feel rather ageist now. Likewise, why oh why did Himani Shivpuri debase herself by playing a cheesy middle-aged seductress?
Since a large number of Hindi film makers are Punjabis, we’ve been well acquainted with Punjabi culture over the years via Bollywood. But that doesn’t mean the stereotype of the loud, brash, crude Punjabi can’t be grating when over-done and over-used. A boisterous character introducing himself to strangers as “Balwant Singh from Punjab” made me squirm in my seat.
Seriously, there’s nothing more uncool than a person trying to be cool. At one point a character uses the acronym BKBBG to signify “bartender ki biwi bhaag gayee”. Uff!
And could we please rise above schoolboy humour and toilet jokes? I mean, there’s nothing funny about Anjali’s dad getting loosies!!! Grow up!

I could go on and on. Characters randomly walk in and out of this film. I think I even detected a guest appearance by Ayesha Jhulka, though I don’t know if it can be called that since the actress suddenly appears, vigorously dances to a song, and then just as suddenly disappears from the scene. Most of all I’m keen to share with you a very serious worry. When Na Jaane Kabse ends, the screen screams these words at us: This is just the beginning. Does this mean there will be a Na Jaane Kabse 2? Hai Rabba, problem shuru!

Rating (out of five): 1/4 (a quarter star for the camerawork at beautiful locations in Ladakh & Punjab)

CBFC Rating: U

Language: Hindi

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/NaJaaneKabse

REVIEW 115: BAS EK TAMANNA

2012-01-01T23:43:00.000+05:30

Release date:	September 2, 2011
Director:	Rahul B. Kapoor
Cast:	Reema Lagoo, Samir Aftab, Rituparna Sengupta, Gauri Karnik, S.M. Zaheer, Anjana Mumtaz, Vrijesh Hirjee, Master Laeeque

This is one of the tackiest celluloid takes on the Muslim community that I’ve seen in a while. And the fault does not lie with the film’s questionable production values alone. The basic issue is in the senseless storyline with its confused characterisation that makes Bas Ek Tamanna both silly and boring.

Since the entire story is detailed on the website (and by that I do mean the ENTIRE story apart from the final scene), I can tell you a lot without worrying about spoilers. Faraaz (Samir Aftab) earns a meager income as a tourist guide in Lucknow. His mother Najma (Reema Lagoo) uses her traditional embroidery skills to support the family while her wheelchair-bound husband worries about the boy’s future. Faraaz is in love with local girl Sanah (Gauri Karnik) who is a teacher. One day, a rich NRI called Sameera (Rituparna Sengupta) spots Faraaz and asks him to show her around his city. Something about this conscientious boy appeals to her and she offers him a job with her in Dubai. Faraaz gets engaged to Sanah before leaving town. His assignment is revealed to the audience when Sameera takes him to a Dubai hospital to meet a child who is shown strangling dolls as a pastime. We discover that this is her son Ahmed (Master Laeeque) who is suffering from bipolar disorder which, the doctor explains, has been brought on by the trauma of losing a parent. Sameera is a successful businesswoman, but money can’t buy her only child’s health. Or can it? She offers Faraaz a lucrative contract to stay in her house posing as Ahmed’s father to bring the child back to normal.

And so the story goes on. This film could have been something special but it’s hard to take it seriously when it’s so burdened with glaring loopholes, ham-handed dialogue writing, jerky editing in places, an uninspiring hero and pathetic acting by some of the supporting cast. We’ve all seen bad actors in our time but the man who plays the principal of Sanah’s school takes the cake, the bakery and the entire wheat field with it! Besides, there’s the completely inexplicable characterisation of the leading man. Faraaz is portrayed as a sensible, responsible boy, and yet once he gets to Dubai he simply cuts himself off from his family and fiancée. No reason whatsoever is given for his behaviour. If he didn’t want to reveal to his family the nature of the job he’d taken up with Sameera, he needn’t have told them, but why did he stop phoning them or taking their calls? The fuzziness of Faraaz’s character can be attributed to both bad writing and Samir Aftab’s average acting.

Reema Lagoo lends earnestness to the character of Najma Aapa, but what is an actress to do in such a mediocre film? As if there are not enough irritants in Bas Ek Tamanna, Vrijesh Hirjee as a fellow called Chulbul is thrown into the mix to provide that element that was as much of a staple in the old days as item numbers have become today: he is meant to provide ‘comic relief’ I guess, but the interludes involving him are irritating to say the least.

So where is all this headed? Well, it all comes down to a clumsy conversation towards the end about how the world has misunderstood the practice of multiple marriages among Muslim men. Oh how the awkwardness of the writing at this point made me cringe! No doubt director Rahul Kapoor and writer Ali Hashmat Siddique meant well. But subtlety in such matters can be achieved only when you get past the feeling of a “them” and “us”.

Let me clarify that Bas Ek Tamanna is too ineptly handled to be offensive. It’s no wonder that my only takeaway from this disappointing film is that Reema Lagoo has very pretty hands!

Rating (out of five): *

CBFC Rating: U

Language: Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://www.basektamanna.com/

REVIEW 114: RIVAAZ

2012-01-01T10:25:00.000+05:30

Release date:	September 16, 2011
Director:	Ashok Kumar Nanda
Cast:	Ritisha Vijayvargiya, Manoj Biddvai, Deepti Naval, Vijay Raaz, Meghna Naidu, Shadika Randhawa, Alok Nath, Rajendra Gupta, Sayajee Shinde

Do you think makeup and costumes are “merely” glamorous departments that contribute the least to a film’s depth and impact? Watch Rivaaz to know how wrong you are. This film about a village in North India that sells its daughters for a living makes a strange first impression with the styling of its female cast: at all times of day and night, all the young girls sport lehnga cholis that seem like they’ve been purchased from an upmarket boutique, impeccably done makeup, perfectly plucked eyebrows and hairstyles that seem like they’ve sprung from the scissors of Ambika Pillai or Jawed Habib. All except one girl who is known throughout the village for being bereft of beauty. And how does lack of looks in a woman get portrayed in a Hindi film? Arrey, you don’t know?! Simple! All you do is pick a dark-skinned actress, baba!!!

So right at the start, minus points to the film’s costumes-in-charge Sangeet Gaikar and to Sachin Bhonsle who is credited for the makeup. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that girls in Indian villages don’t ever dress to the nines – after all, I’ve got cousins in the Kerala countryside who could teach Dilliwaali me a thing or two about fashion! All I’m saying is that no woman can be so perfectly done up 24x7, that some work can only come from high-priced urban salons, and if you position yourself as a realistic film then you’d damned well get it right in every department.

You may assume then that this is one of those films illustrating the point that good intentions don’t necessarily translate into good films. In the case of Rivaaz though, I’m slightly confused about the film maker’s intentions in the first place. The film’s hero Rahul (Manoj Biddvai) sees Bela (Ritisha Vijayvargiya) in the very first scene and is in love. Not attracted, not smitten, not infatuated, people! He’s in lowwe! I can swallow love at first sight in a romantic comedy but somehow his puppy dog willingness to risk life and limb for this girl who means nothing more than a pretty face to him is irritating, their romance is downright silly and this is one of the many ways the film seems to trivialize the issue at hand.

That issue being the practice of living off the bodies of their daughters that is the custom in this unnamed village in north India. I’m told this village is a reality, not a figment of director and co-writer Ashok Kumar Nanda’s imagination. This film then should have shocked me out of my wits, but it made me laugh in places instead. The lack of sincerity shines through from start to finish but is never more evident than during the mandatory item number. Yes, Sambhavna Seth makes an appearance surrounded by salivating men, jiggling her booty to a song that goes: “Agre ka ghagra, Dilli ki chunari / Jaipur ki choli pehenke jo nikli / Saara hiley hai / Saara hiley hai UP-Bihar / Laalu maange hai chumma udhaar.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTewSg2I-H0&feature=related

Pulling Rivaaz down further is the inconsistent acting. Veteran Deepti Naval as Bela’s mother and Reema Lagoo as the virgin-hungry Thakur’s wife do their best to lend some credibility to the proceedings as does Meghna Naidu who plays the most ordinary looking girl in the village. But the lead pair don’t have the depth to extract any sympathy from the audience. And Shadika Randhawa who plays the lowwe interest of the village pimp has more makeup on her face than expressions! The dialogue writing is amateurish and the speechifying at the end is beyond endurance.

This is a story that needed to be told. But telling it this way is worse than not telling it at all.

Rating (out of five): 0 stars

Language: Hindi

Photograph taken from the cover of the film’s brochure

Laalu maange hai chumma udhaar video courtesy: Youtube

REVIEW 113: YEH DOORIYAN

2012-01-01T01:38:00.001+05:30

Release date:	August 26, 2011
Director:	Deepshikha Nagpal
Cast:	Deepshikha Nagpal, Kaishav Arora, Kunika, Ayub Khan

“Love after divorce … Is it a crime?” I can’t remember the last Hindi film that asked such a question. Yeh Dooriyan has another query up its sleeve: Is it a crime for a woman to fall in love with a younger man? The film is about 35-year-old Simmi, a successful choreographer and dance academy owner who is a divorced mother of two children. Her parents and friends encourage her to find a man in her life. Then one day she meets a young model called Raj who pursues her relentlessly. He comes across as a clean-hearted guy and (perhaps the greatest qualification in Simmi’s eyes) appears to like children. The couple fall in love. But will a society that is open to older-man-younger-woman romances accept this relationship … considering that Simmi is not just older than Raj, she’s also a divorcee? More to the point: how will his family react?

The basic storyline is not just believable, it’s also interesting. If you look around you, despite the seeming liberalism that pretends to pervade our world, we are still by and large an extremely conservative society with shockingly regressive views towards single women of every variety – unmarried, widowed or divorced. The questions thrown at Raj, his reaction to societal compulsions, the way the men in Simmi’s life respond to her … these are all credible and real. The problem with Yeh Dooriyan does not lie with its storyline, but elsewhere. The indifferent acting by key cast members robs the film of finesse. Kaishav Arora needs to be singled out here for lessons in an acting school with a particular focus on dialogue delivery. But the death knell for the film is rung by the poor language used by the dialogue writer, sometimes to laughable effect. There are also several songs with unmemorable tunes, unoriginal choreography and at least in one case, unintentionally amusing lyrics. And by that I mean the one that goes, “I wanna be your lover, zindagi bhar.”

Unfortunately all these factors add up to make this film a rather downmarket product. And I say “unfortunately” because Yeh Dooriyan does pose some important questions and takes a position on single women that’s uncommon in Hindi filmdom. Back in the year 2001, in Haan Maine Bhi Pyaar Kiya, the manner in which Karisma Kapoor’s character shame-facedly confesses (there’s no other word for it) her status as a divorcee in whispers to the new man in her life was a strange exaggeration of the reality. A woman in her social circle might face social opprobrium, but it would be couched in sophisticated terms and she’s unlikely to be so melodramatic while revealing the truth to friends and acquaintances. In Yeh Dooriyan a decade later, Simmi is unapologetic about her life and takes on the world with her head held high. The decision she ultimately arrives at for herself is also rather brave considering that Hindi film audiences don’t seem to be very fond of highly independent female leads. Wish the quality of writing had been more consistent.

At the press preview for this film, Deepshika was present to receive a certificate from a representative of the Limca Book of Records for having handled the maximum number of jobs for a single film: apart from starring in Yeh Dooriyan, producing and directing it, she’s also credited for the story, screenplay, dialogues and choreography. You know something, hon … you’ve got your heart and head in the right place, but next time please delegate the screenplay, dialogues and choreography to someone else.

Rating (out of five): *1/2

CBFC Rating: U without cuts

Running time: 115 Minutes

Language: Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeh_Dooriyan

REVIEW 112: CHITKABREY – SHADES OF GREY

2012-01-01T00:30:00.000+05:30

Release date:	August 26, 2011
Director:	Suneet Arora
Cast:	Ravi Kissen, Rahul Singh, Bobby Vats, Akshay Singh, Puja Gupta

Sex, lies and Ravi Kissen …. that, in short, is Chitkabrey – Shades of Grey. I watched this film with my eyes popping out, wondering how it got past our over-sensitive Censor Board. Perhaps the screening committee found the film so bad that they slept through most of it. There’s no other explanation for a film coming to our theatres giving us flashes of human body parts during sex scenes I never thought to see in a Hindi film!!! It’s soft porn, I tell ya!

But if you are a kinky sort who’s about to rush off to a DVD store or to some questionable website to find Chitkabrey, let me warn you: you’ve got to be pretty desperate to sit through this F-grade film with its bizarre storyline, worse acting, unprofessional lighting, poor quality camera work, cheap costumes, crude makeup and pathetic sets. How desperate could Bhojpuri star Ravi Kissen be to make it in Bollywood, that he actually signed up for this one?!

The story, if you can call it that, is about a man who hatches a far-fetched plot to get together a whole bunch of his college mates from across the world to an isolated house under a false pretext. Once they’ve gathered, some with their spouses, thinking it’s a college reunion of some sort, a faceless voice booms out at them that they’re captive in that building. Dan te nan! After much fuss and suspense, Ravi Kissen – with heavily kohl-lined eyes – appears before them to explain that this is an act of revenge for a humiliation they had all meted out to him back in college. Dan te nan! He then splits the couples and sends one of each off to collect some money (that I suppose is compensation for emotional trauma) while keeping the other as collateral in his eerie house. Dan te nan! Te na na na!

While all this is going on, excuses are found to play us some bad songs. Apparently Chitkabrey is meant to be an anti-ragging film, but the serious theme is buried under horrendously bad writing and execution. Among the film’s endless de-merits are the couple of white people it serves us in smaller roles whose acting skills make the rest of the actors seem like super performers. The worst of the main cast has to be Bollywood’s latest foreign import Sweetlana Manolyo whose screen presence by itself adds several points to the film’s sleaze-o-meter. But there are some familiar faces in this film who surely couldn’t be thinking that this is all they deserve?! On a good day, both Ravi Kissen and Rahul Singh for instance, are capable of turning out decent performances. Just this year, Singh featured as a rowdy villager in that sweet little road movie Chalo Dilli starring Vinay Pathak and Lara Dutta. He also played Poorna Jagannathan’s angry ex in Delhi Belly. Chitkabrey gives him a much larger role of course, but it’s also a blot on his CV! Was it worth it?

Come to think of it, this is actually an educational film that should be compulsory viewing for all students of cinema. Few films can teach you better about the worst that Bollywood can be!

Did I utter the word “educational” with reference to Chitkabrey?! Yeah okay, I was just kidding! Gotcha!

Rating (out of five): -60 stars

Language: Hindi

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/Chitkabrey

REVIEW 111: HAWAI DADA

2011-12-31T20:20:00.004+05:30

Release date:	September 9, 2011
Director:	Ajay Kartik
Cast:	Anupam Kher, Gargi Datar, Tanuja, Tinnu Anand

Knowing when to stop … that’s an art not enough Hindi film makers have mastered. And that’s my problem with this otherwise sweet little film about an old man in a village whose granddaughter tries to help him realise his unfulfilled dream of sitting in an aeroplane one day. Hawai Dada is what the village folk call Anupam Kher’s character whose story about how he once sat in a plane is now part of local lore as is his habit of constantly gazing up at the sky to watch planes flying past. When a new airline company advertises low promotional launch fares, Hawai Dada and the little girl make it their mission to get the old man a ticket.

Kher – who has produced this film with Satish Kaushik – is joined by veteran Tanuja doing a charming job of playing his sometimes abrasive, sometimes gentle wife. In the role of their spirited granddaughter is the talented child actor Gargi Datar who I hope you will all get to see in bigger and better marketed films in the future since this one was so poorly promoted that I watched it all alone in a hall in Delhi just the day after its release, having caused much amusement at the ticket counter since no one else had bothered with the film till I walked in.

The other pluses of Hawai Dada: the relationship between the little girl and the old man is touching. And it’s easy to get drawn into a poor man’s dream of sitting in a hawai jahaaz in this world far removed from the crowded airports and frequent flyers of big cities and towns in post-liberalisation and post-Air-Deccan India. Gargi Datar – who earlier this year had a small role in Disney’s Zokkomon with Darsheel Safary – is an absolute natural before the camera. It’s always a challenge to extract a good performance from an actor so young, allowing him/her to retain a child-like loveability without crossing the line into irritating cutesiness, and while Datar’s intrinsic talent is undeniable, director Ajay Kartik too needs to be commended for his work with her. In a year that brought us some lovely child stars, here’s another name that goes on my list that’s topped by Chinmay Kambli and Taher Sutterwala from Bheja Fry helmsman Sagar Ballary’s Kachha Limboo, Delzad Sanjay Hiwale and Sohail Lakhani from that that completely unheralded film Bubble Gum, Harsh Mayar and Husaan Saad from the film I Am Kalam, Partho and all his co-stars from Stanley ka Dabba, and the wonderful ensemble cast of Salman Khan’s production Chillar Party.

The entire supporting cast of Hawai Dada does a commendable job, but it’s particularly heart-rending to see the pain on the face of the protagonist’s postman son who can’t afford to pay for his father’s ultimate dream. There’s also something very refreshing about the way the cinematographer has captured the countryside with its raging river and numerous trees, the maidan where children play and the chai ka dukaan where old men gather for a chat. I read a report where Kher mentioned that this film was shot in a place called Tachmarhi in rural Madhya Pradesh. There you go, I just made an addition to my must-visit list!

The minuses: Some of what looked like CG used to show us planes was below par, and the scene in the end is downright tacky. I’m willing to forgive that in a film that must have been made on a low budget. But it’s harder to absolve Kartik (also Hawai Dada’s screenplay writer) for not knowing when to stop. I could understand the struggle to gather cash to pay for the ticket, I could understand the new airline’s advertisement getting lost, I could understand the difficulties these simple folk had in handling the Internet … but some of the more dramatic hurdles they faced felt contrived … and after a point it seemed like ploy after ploy after was being thought up to keep Hawai Dada away from his beloved plane, to stretch a short story to feature film length and to manipulate the audience to tears. The climax was especially forced and bothered me more than I can explain.

Despite this, the look of the film, the relationship between Hawai Dada and all his family members especially his granddaughter, and Gargi’s natural performance are worth your time.

Rating (out of five): **1/4

CBFC Rating: U without cuts

Running time: 99 Minutes

Language: Hindi

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hawai-DADA/267859856568525

REVIEW 110: NOT A LOVE STORY

2011-12-31T15:53:00.011+05:30

Release date:	August 19, 2011
Director:	Ram Gopal Varma
Cast:	Mahie Gill, Deepak Dobriyal, Ajay Gehi, Zakir Hussain

All’s not lost. Ram Gopal Varma may yet be found. Not RGV of the Sholay remake infamy, nor he who has churned out more mediocrity in the past decade than we ever dreamt he was capable of, nor he who posts offensive comments on Twitter in what seems like a desperate bid for attention. No, the Varma that peeped through Not A Love Story is the one who gave us Shiva, Rangeela, Satya and Company. With all its flaws, Not A Love Story still had touches of that man.

The film, as you know, is “inspired” by the Neeraj Grover murder case. A quick recap of the facts. Maria Susairaj, an aspiring actress in Mumbai, gets involved with television executive Neeraj Grover who agrees to help her with her career. One morning, her boyfriend Emile Jerome Matthew arrives at her Mumbai flat and finds her with Grover. The two men get into a fight in which Matthew stabs and kills Grover. Then with the help of Susairaj, he cuts the body into several pieces and disposes of it.

Never mind Ramu’s sudden pre-release panic that led him to claim that Not A Love Story is only “inspired” by this real-life killing. The truth is that the facts of the case I’ve outlined above are the same as the basic storyline of this film. Mahie Gill plays actress Anusha Chawla who is desperate to make it in Bollywood. Her obsessive boyfriend back home, Robin Fernandes (Deepak Dobriyal) can’t understand why she won’t just give up after so many disappointments, and return to him. Anusha meets Ashish Bhatnagar (Ajay Gehi) through whom she is on the verge of getting her first break. Though there is no direct demand for sexual favours, Bhatnagar ends up in bed with her. When Robin unexpectedly lands up in the flat one morning and sees red at the sight of a naked Ashish, Anusha panics and lies that she’s been raped. What follows is mayhem, murder and a sensational cover-up.

Since the Neeraj Grover case has been widely reported in the press, I could tell you the rest of the story of this film and it would still not spoil the experience for you. Because it’s not the actual story but the way Ramu tells it that makes Not A Love Story an unexpectedly interesting film.

What I really really like about this film is its completely non-judgmental tone towards the two main players in the case, Anusha and Robin, although their prototypes Susairaj and Matthew have been crucified by sections of the Indian media and public who played judge, jury and executioner even before a judicial verdict was pronounced. Was Anusha an evil woman who deliberately framed Ashish to redeem herself in her boyfriend’s eyes? Or did she just lie without thinking in a moment of panic, the way many human beings do, causing circumstances to spiral out of control in a way she couldn’t possibly have predicted? Did Anusha sleep with Ashish because she felt sorry for him, or because she felt the pressure to please him to save her career, or out of sheer gratitude? At no point is Anusha painted as an evil scheming witch who would do anything and everything to fulfill her ambitions … though blaming a career-minded woman might have been the populist thing to do.

Equally interesting and courageous is the way Ramu has, in a sense, belled the cat without being harsh on Neeraj Grover who has been painted in popular opinion as a hapless victim of Susairaj and Matthew’s machinations, while the whiff of the casting couch in this case has been largely glossed over. Ashish from the film could not possibly have been so naïve as to not detect Anusha’s desperation for a break. But Ramu leaves it to us, the audience, to decide whether he was callously tapping into that desperation or he was also genuinely attracted to her?

The matter of factness of the narrative is the USP of Not A Love Story. It’s worthy of a special mention because Indian film makers tend to avoid making films on recent history and current events, and audiences seem averse to such efforts too. Well, if a real-life crime fresh in public memory is to be transferred to celluloid, then I guess this is the best tone to adopt.

The lead trio of Not A Love Story acquit themselves very well though Dobriyal deserves to be singled out for a nuanced performance. What does this film in though is the eccentricity that leads the director to use highly distracting and hard-to-watch camera angles and movements. At first, when his lens kept focusing on Anusha’s various body parts, I thought perhaps this was meant as a comment on the exploitative nature of the glamour industry that would be gradually revealed to us through the film. But when the focus then shifted – quite untitillatingly – sometimes to her knee, sometimes to another character’s shoulder, then it came across as mere idiosyncracy. It was not offensive or pretentious as much as ridiculously unnecessary, because elsewhere in the film Ramu actually managed to convey a sense of gloom, doom and foreboding in Anusha’s life through the same camera. The mood is further built up with the repeated playing of the title song from Rangeela, Ramu’s far more positive earlier take on the struggle to enter Bollywood.

Not A Love Story is not as graphically violent as you might expect – in fact, it’s far from being sensationalist in that respect. It was, however, hard to hold on to my concentration when I could feel a migraine coming on because of the pointlessly jerky camera. If, unlike me, you are not prone to headaches, do try to catch this unusual, experimental Hindi film that will remind you in part of the Ramu we all once loved.

Rating (out of five): **1/2

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_A_Love_Story

REVIEW 109: CHATUR SINGH TWO STAR

2011-12-31T12:11:00.000+05:30

Release date:	August 19, 2011
Director:	Ajay Chandok
Cast:	Sanjay Dutt, Ameesha Patel, Suresh Menon, Anupam Kher, Gulshan Grover, Satish Kaushik

We all know that Bollywood makes a zillion films each year! Nothing drove home the point to me better in 2011 than a brief, less-than-fortnight-long vacation I took that resulted in me missing almost a dozen new releases!!!

If it weren’t for my resolve not to skip a single film this year, I might have gone by the reviews for Chatur Singh Two Star and wisely stayed away from it. Par yeh kambakkht resolution ne peechha chhodne ka naam hi nahin liya! And so I watched this desperate Bollywood version of the Pink Panther series and sighed a little as I experienced the final nail in the coffin of my childhood memories of Sanjay Dutt.

Chatur Singh Two Star is the story of a bumbling idiot of a Mumbai policeman who does everything wrong and yet ends up getting it right in the end. Like Jacques Clouseau, he unwittingly solves cases and is credited for deductions he really did not make. And like Jacques Clouseau, he’s an ass but not quite as much as you would think. Rumi Jaffrey’s script sends Chatur Singh off to South Africa on a secret mission that involves a murdered politician, his pretty secretary who is accused of the murder and a missing cache of diamonds. The juvenility of the script would have been tolerable if it had led to some laughs, but Chatur Singh fails even on that front.

Over the years Sanjay Dutt has been looking increasingly disinterested in the films he does. Watching him here, failing to extract a single laugh in a ‘comedy’, almost breaks the heart. Is this really the man who played that memorable fellow Munna? And is this overweight actor really the same guy who many people consider the original body builder of modern Bollywood, preceding even Salman Khan? Watching a song in which the cameraperson was clearly trying hard and failing to camouflage Chatur Singh / Dutt’s paunch, and in which the actor seemed barely able to move a leg, would count as one of the saddest film-viewing experiences of my year.

Also sad is the sight of a usually dependable actor like Suresh Menon over-acting his way through the role of Chatur’s sidekick in this embarrassingly bad film. Getting Dutt to sing the number I sing you sing we all sing for Chatur Singh does nothing to redeem this no-hoper. You can imagine how bad the situation is if I tell you that Ameesha Patel’s acting is the high point of the film (to be fair to her, she really does look good in a red sari).

So I’m not kidding you when I say I needed coffee to keep me awake during this film. Giving your hero a thin moustache will not lend him the endearing qualities of Clouseau! Slapstick stupidity can be fun in the hands of an efficient director. But the mind-numbing idiocy of Chatur Singh Two Star does not merit even a single star!

Rating (out of five): 0 stars

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatur_Singh_Two_Star

REVIEW 108: STAND BY

2011-12-31T09:21:00.000+05:30

Release date:	August 26, 2011
Director:	Sanjay Surkar
Cast:	Siddharth Kher, Adinath Kothare, Sachin Khedekar, Dalip Tahil

I wish Bollywood would make more sports films. Actor-producer Aamir Khan’s Lagaan and Chak De with Shah Rukh Khan were superhits, so too (in the low-budget arena) was Nagesh Kukunoor’s small wonder Iqbal. So clearly there’s an audience out there interested in the blood-sweat-tears-toil-and-politics-ridden lives of Indian sportspersons.

Stand By is not a slick and glossy production like these iconic works, but it’s still a captivating, moving film about the games people play in Indian sport. Rahul and Shekhar are good friends who play football for Maharashtra. Rahul is the son of a middle class bank employee (Sachin Khedekar) while Shekhar is the thoroughly spoilt kid of millionaire businessman J.P. Verma (Dalip Tahil). When Rahul is selected for the main squad at the national level and Shekhar is picked as a stand by, Big Daddy steps in to get his boy the slot he covets so much. After all, Shekhar has been brought up on the dictum that there’s nothing money can’t buy, and if he’s sulking then dad has to act.

Multiple National-Award-winning Marathi director Sanjay Surkar has a natural storytelling style. He handles his main cast well, and the casting director has picked actors who are well suited to the roles of Rahul and Shekhar. Siddharth Kher who plays Shekhar was earlier seen in the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Teen Patti. Here in a better film, he gets more scope to display his talent and comes off well as the brattish, selfish footballer. But the highlight of this film is Adinath Kothare who plays Rahul. Kothare has both acting talent and boy-next-door good looks, and will hopefully be cast in bigger films too in future. Tahil is just right as the arrogant rich man who would demand compliance from national selectors and others in power, in return for his munificence. And Sachin Khedekar is appropriately diffident and dogged by turns in the fight for his son’s future.

Surkar tells this interesting story with an insider’s eye for detail. At some level, all of us are aware of the lobbying, big money and intrigue that mars the work of sports bodies in India. But it’s still chilling to see a plan as Machiavellian as the one in which J.P. Verma threatens to take his company’s account away from the bank that Rahul’s father works for if they don’t offer their hapless employee a posting in another location, a move that would jeopardise Rahul’s footballing prospects.

In the midst of all this realism though, the director repeatedly inserts a very theatrical song-and-dance sequence that serves as an unnecessary disruption, as does an item number that should not have been there. Even the song Lad Bapu feels like it’s trying too hard to be that one hard-hitting number that could be the sports anthem emerging from the film. Stand By also seems to suffer from a limited budget that has led to a lack of finesse in the production, including in the casting of some of the satellite characters. Most of all, I’m confused by the message the film is trying to send out in the end. Sports films tend to be uplifting works filled with positivity, about men and women who dreamt the impossible dream and conquered mountains to achieve their goals. If Stand By wanted to go in the opposite direction, be more realistic and acquaint us with the hopelessness of the situation in India’s sporting structure, then it should have gone all the way. But on the one hand we have a situation where player after player rejects J.P. Verma’s offer of a bribe to play dirty games on the team, and on the other hand, Rahul’s own actions in the end (I won’t reveal exactly what) seem to suggest that the only way to survive is to match filth with filth, muck with muck. Was this what the director intended? I’m not sure.

But in spite of these reservations, I’d say Stand By exhudes a certain sincerity that I found utterly charming. It’s not a polished production but it’s got its heart in the right place. And it’s got Adinath Kothare. The film was poorly promoted and disappeared from theatres even before it was released – if you chance upon it on DVD, I’d recommend it to you.

Rating (out of five): **3/4

CBFC Rating: U without cuts

Running time: 124 Minutes

Language: Hindi

Video courtesy: Youtube

REVIEW 107: PHHIR

2011-12-30T19:58:00.027+05:30

Release date:	August 12, 2011
Director:	Girish Dhamija
Cast:	Rajniesh Duggal, Adah Sharma, Roshni Chopra, Mohan Agashe

“The future is nothing but the past … again.” With an eerie tagline such as this, Girish Dhamija as director and Vikram Bhatt as producer, you’re right in assuming that Phhir is a supernatural thriller. Bhatt, of course, peaked in this genre with his directorial venture Raaz starring Bipasha Basu and Dino Morea. Dhamija is the man who helmed the whodunit Yakeen starring Priyanka Chopra and Arjun Rampal.

Phhir is the story of a married couple based in Newcastle, England. Kabir Malhotra (Rajniesh Duggal) is a doctor, Sia Malhotra (Roshni Chopra) is a professor of law. Their happiness comes to a screeching halt when one day Sia vanishes into thin air. As the police and Kabir try to grapple with her disappearance, clairvoyant Disha (Adah Sharma) enters the picture. Has Sia been kidnapped for ransom? Is she alive or dead? Was there more to her life than Kabir was aware of? Did her past – or his – have anything to do with their trials in the present day?

Dhamija manages to draw us very effectively into the story in the first half, building up suspense with every passing scene. He cashes in on the grays, whites and blacks of wintry Newcastle to create a sense of fear and despair. Pravin Bhatt’s camera takes full advantage of the lovely locations to give us a beautifully laid out film. Adding to the visual appeal of Phhir are the good-looking lead couple and pretty Adah Sharma. The women in particular wear fabulous clothes in every single scene. All three actors are effective in their roles. Adah especially has an interesting screen presence that she uses well to convey the frustrations of a woman who sees fractured images of the past with her mind’s eye, but is desperate to help those depending on her to see the complete picture. Rajniesh and Adah were the leads in the spook film 1920 that was directed by Vikram Bhatt. In Phhir though they are not romantically paired opposite each other, they share a nice on-screen chemistry.

But no film can be better than its writers, no thriller can be better than its finale. Vikram Bhatt and Dheeraj Rattan’s screenplay gives us a strong first half, but loses steam in the second half especially as Phhir heads towards its climax. The unsatisfactory, tepid denouement is enough to leave you as cold as the Newcastle winter. A film with a classy finish that does not finish well – that sums up my Phhir experience!

Rating (out of five): **

PS: If you’ve read my review of Be-Careful also starring Rajniesh Duggall, then I must add that despite its flaws, Phhir serves Rajniesh well. An actor (especially a newcomer) cannot determine the quality of the final product he stars in, but he can gauge from the script whether the maker’s intention is to create a low-brow film! Imperfections in a film may not destroy an actor’s image, crassness certainly can!

CBFC Rating: U/A with one cut

Running time: 105 Minutes

Language: Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phhir

REVIEW 106: BE-CAREFUL

2011-12-30T14:56:00.000+05:30

Release date:	October 21, 2011
Director:	Chandrakant Singh
Cast:	Rajniesh Duggall, Zaid Shaikh, Tanisha Mukherjee, Rajpal Yadav, Johnny Lever, Asrani, Tiku Talsania, Shakti Kapoor

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from years of reporting on cinema, it is this: that getting a foot in the door in a film industry is a tough task. While subjecting myself to some incredibly bad films in 2011, the point was further driven home to me as I watched successful models and beauty pageant winners so desperate for an entry point that they’ve acted in films that must surely be mortifying to them. Former Miss India World Parvathy Omanakuttan made her debut this year in a horrendous film called United Six. Another former Miss India runner-up Sayali Bhagat has popped up repeatedly in some awful films though I must say she plumbed the very depths of poor quality when she starred in that offensively bad film titled Impatient Vivek. And then there’s this film I’m about to review.

Be-Careful stars Grasim Mr India 2003 winner and Mr International 1st runner-up Rajniesh Duggall, one of India’s most prominent models. Having seen him repeatedly on the catwalk, I can vouch for the fact that he’s handsome and has a very attractive personality. Is it really so important to you to be a movie star, Rajniesh, that you have humiliated yourself by acting in this disgusting film?

I’m sorry, dear readers, if that sounds harsh. You see, I can live with the fact that Be-Careful is a shoddy film with shabby sets, bad costumes and make-up, and just about everything going wrong on the production front. I can tolerate the fact that it’s a clichéd story about adulterous husbands. But I can’t forgive a film that expects me to have a sense of humour while it dishes out a rather extended joke about rape, unrelenting double entendre and crassness. And slapstick comedy is all very well, but why do some comedians think being repulsive and being funny are the same thing?

Rajniesh Duggall and Zaid Shaikh star in Be-Careful as philanderers Sameer Malhotra and Anand Kapoor a.k.a. Sam and Andy who take off for Thailand supposedly on a business trip, but in reality to bed the maximum women they can get while away from their wives’ vigilant eyes. Of course they underestimate their spouses who not just have spies keeping a watch on them, but land up themselves to keep their men in check.

AND GUESS WHO PLAYS SAM’S WIFE?! … Hold your breath … I bet you didn’t know she’s still doing films … Guess who? …. Whaddyaknow, it’s Tanisha Mukherjee! Yes, Kajol’s little sister is still around! Is the chance to act in a god-awful film like this one more important than your self-respect, Tanisha?

Which brings us back to the point we were discussing about strugglers in the industry. I can understand a rank outsider hoping that even the worst film could provide them with a platform that might get them noticed and so give them a break in a better film. But is it wise for actors to demean themselves to act in a film that’s not just aesthetically repugnant but morally reprehensible too.

Dear Rajniesh,

Your looks and personality are the only things that kept me from puking while I watched this film. With a better director, we know you are capable of better than Be-Careful! No visibility is worth the embarrassment of playing a perennially horny, completely unfunny creep in a film! Since you’re a top model, I assume money is not what compelled you to accept this role. So what did? Beware of films like Be-Careful! You deserve better!

Warm regards,

Anna

Rating (out of five): -50 stars

Footnote: http://tinyurl.com/cw2u56y - This trailer may help you partly understand my review. The Govinda hari bolo Gopala bolo song gave Be-Careful an interesting start. In between there was what seemed like a fun song that rhymed “biology” with “technology” but the sound quality was so poor that I couldn’t note down the lyrics for your benefit. The potshots at major Bollywood stars like Aamir Khan may have earned admiration in another film. But in this C-grade venture, they came across as a desperate attention-getting measure, nothing more. Incidentally, Chandrakant Singh also directed this year’s Om Puri-Aftab Shivdasani-starrer Bin Bulaye Baraati that I’d reviewed earlier on this blog - http://tinyurl.com/5sbg4rm

CBFC Rating: A

Language: Hindi

Rajniesh’s Photograph courtesy: http://www.rajnieshduggall.com/

Tanisha’s Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanisha