REVIEW 89: RA.ONE

Release date:	October 26, 2011
Director:	Anubhav Sinha
Cast:	Shah Rukh Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Armaan Verma, Arjun Rampal, Shahana Goswami, Tom Wu

Three words – invest in scripts. Okay, make that seven – for heaven’s sake, Bollywood, invest in scripts! It’s amazing how an industry that spends crores on stars and marketing, fails to pour as much time & money into the one thing that forms the cornerstone of every great film: writing! And that, I’m afraid, is the problem with Ra.One.

There’s tremendous potential in the story of a computer game so well-programmed that its characters take on a life of their own in the virtual and real worlds. Shah Rukh Khan in Ra.One plays Shekhar Subramanium, a London-based game developer whose son Prateek thinks he’s a loser. Shekhar follows his advice and creates a game in which the villain – Ra.One – is invincible. When Prateek takes a shot at the game, he reaches a level that none of his dad’s adult colleagues had been able to scale. But he leaves midway, angering Ra.One who is designed to never suffer defeat. The animated creature exits the game and enters our world in search of Prateek. Who he destroys along the way and how he is ultimately vanquished, if at all, form the story of the film.

Ra.One starts out with all the potential that the concept had. We’re in virtual reality. A figure that resembles Shah Rukh is on his way to save a beautiful maiden (Priyanka Chopra in a guest appearance) from a Khalnayak (Sanjay Dutt, another guest appearance) but on the way he must overcome Bruce Lee’s three friends, Iski Lee, Uski Lee and Sabki Lee. Yeah yeah, it’s cheesy but funny all the same, the special effects look world class, their execution is nothing like we’ve seen before in India and I settled into my seat with my popcorn and coffee, reassured that all was well with the world.

The first half of the film is reasonably entertaining. Shah Rukh does a decent impression of a Tamilian scientist, going beyond the Hindi film staple of “Aiaiyyo” and pronouncing his words in a way only a Tamilian who speaks English well can (note how he says “volume”). He quotes “the great Navjot Singh Sidhu” and himself. There’s a genuinely funny moment when Shekhar’s Westernised son eats spaghetti with chopsticks, while dad plunges his bare fingers into a plate full of the dish drowned in curd. But well begun is only half done. And Ra.One suffers from an all-pervading feeling of being just half done.

The best sci-fi fantasies and superhero adventures, if matter-of-factly dissected, have the potential to sound silly. Think about it … Spiderman: A boy bitten by a spider who develops arachnoid qualities! Superman: A caped chappie who wears his undies over a body suit and battles evil! Matrix: A world where machines have enslaved humankind! But these bare-bones concepts have been effective because they’ve been fleshed out by great writers who infused them with a richness of meaning, warmth and emotion.

Ra.One’s concept, however, is infused almost solely with special effects! There was potential crying out to be tapped here. The evil guy’s moniker is a sort of acronym for the technical phrase Random Access Version 1.0 which, when crunched down to its initials resembles the name of Lord Ram’s bête noir. The good guy in the game is G.One (also SRK), a play on jeevan (life). But Ram and Raavan were not uni-dimensional men – Ram is considered God by some and a maryada purushottam by others; Raavan’s effigies are burnt in some parts of the world while elsewhere he is deified. G.One and Ra.One in this film though are one-note characters with no layers! When Ra.One first appears on screen in the body of Arjun Rampal, he tells a group of children: “Tum har saal Raavan ko isliye maarte ho kyunki tum jaante ho ki woh kabhi nahin marta.” But the possibility of the immortality of evil is left to that single sentence! Likewise, the thought of a father desperate to impress his son could have so greatly tugged at the heart, as could a woman’s attraction to a gaming character who looks exactly like the husband she loves, but neither is satisfactorily dealt with. G.One’s characterisation is highly inconsistent, sometimes played robotically by Khan, sometimes seeming too human to be true. And the guest appearance by megastar Rajinikanth as Chitti from Enthiran feels like a lazy gimmick.

I’d have been willing to live with all this if Ra.One had been a super entertainer. But for a film that sets out to be a high-action adventure, it is surprisingly slow. After a thrilling chase when G.One first makes his appearance in the real world, the editor sacrifices pace in a bid to establish grandeur with slow motion and sweeping shots. There’s an extended sequence in which G.One is trying to reach the front of a moving train but the darned fellow seems to take too long to get there. The background score is terribly ineffective. And the gaming mumbo jumbo thrown at us sounds like nothing at all.

Here’s what I did like about Ra.One … Kareena Kapoor as Shekhar’s wife lifts the film whenever she comes on screen. Here’s an actress who’s doing herself a great disservice by focusing all her energies on the Bodyguards and Ra.Ones of the world, hitching her fortunes primarily to the industry’s male superstars though she has the presence and the talent to experiment with more heroine-centric ventures. Besides, she looks like five million bucks here, and thank god she’s turned her back on that skinny, scrawny look she sported for a while. Debutant Armaan Verma who plays her son is a good actor too and shares a warm chemistry with SRK. I enjoyed the build-up of suspense before Shah Rukh is first seen as a living breathing G.One in the film. I love the story woven into the Dildara song and its use of the classic Stand By Me. Chammak Challo is even more fun in the film than in the promos. Arjun Rampal is both menacing and hot in a disappointingly brief appearance as Ra.One. And as I said at the start, the special effects are top notch.

But I like my superhero flicks to be imbued with emotional resonance, I like to love my supermen, I want to feel for them. Rakesh Roshan’s Koi Mil Gaya and Krrish had a fraction of Ra.One’s budget but I cried and laughed for the protagonist in both. With Ra.One however, I smiled occasionally and didn’t shed a single tear. The film is sporadically entertaining, but for the most part it left me cold!

Rating (out of five): **

CBFC Rating:                       U

Running time:                        160 Minutes approximately

Language:                              Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra.One

REVIEW 88: LOVE BREAKUPS ZINDAGI

Release date:	October 7, 2011
Director:	Sahil Sangha
Cast:	Diya Mirza, Zayed Khan, Cyrus Sahukar, Tisca Chopra, Farida Jalal

There are some films that are so good that you are dying to write about them. There are some that are bad to the point of being so hilarious that you are desperate to share your trauma and/or laughter with the world. And then there are those middling films – the ones from which you have no particular expectations so it’s not even that you’re disappointed and upset.  They’re just dull. These are the ones for which you need to really motivate yourself to write a review.

Love Breakups Zindagi (LBZ) is one such film. Between the time I watched it on October 4 and today, I’ve actually reviewed more than half a dozen films. If I hadn’t sworn to myself and my readers that I wouldn’t miss a single Hindi film on this blog this year, I suspect I wouldn’t have bothered to write about it. But I did make that promise and the film happens to have survived a second week, so here goes.

LBZ stars Diya Mirza and Zayed Khan as Naina and Jai, who are in separate long-term relationships at the point that the film starts. Naina’s boyfriend is a career-minded man who doesn’t know how to let his hair down, and has little interest in or consideration for her passions and dreams. Jai’s girlfriend is a control freak. The two meet at a wedding in Chandigarh where the groom is his best friend and the bride is hers. They strike up a rapport and their easy chemistry sets them both thinking about their individual relationships. Also at the wedding is Jai’s much-divorced friend Govind (Cyrus Sahukar) who falls in love with the bride’s aunt Sheila (Tisca Chopra).

So here’s what I liked about LBZ:

1. Diya Mirza is gorgeous (since I’ve met her, I can tell you that the true extent of her beauty does not come across on celluloid.).

2. Diya Mirza has a glowing skin

3. Diya Mirza has been styled beautifully for this film and wears lovely clothes throughout

4. Unlike the other older woman-younger man relationships shown in Hindi films so far, the writer and director of LBZ have taken Govind & Sheila’s romance all the way. They don’t chicken out and, for instance, kill off the older woman like Farhan Akhtar did in Dil Chahta Hai.

5. Farida Jalal as the groom’s grandmother is as irresistibly charming as she always is.

That’s it. Can’t think of anything else. Now for what I didn’t like about LBZ:

1.    There’s nothing about the Naina-Jai romance in this film that’s not predictable. Nothing! Even the flaws in their respective partners are so clichéd!

2.      It’s the sort of literal film where if a character says he’s travelling, he is shown at the airport getting his boarding card, then boarding the flight, then we are shown a shot of a plane in the clouds … Not once, but each and every time.

3.     Since a product placement deal was evidently worked out by the producer, zero imagination is used in the way LBZ hardsells Jet Airways to us – yes, the aforementioned boarding cards and aircraft are all from Jet Airways!

4.      It’s the sort of film where they feel the need to establish their presence in a city by showing characters walk past famous architectural landmarks for no logical reason because of course they couldn’t think of any other way of capturing the mood of a city. So when Jai goes to Mumbai on work, he and Naina pass the Gateway of India. But funnier still, Govind and Sheila on a date in Delhi are shown walking casually by the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Does this director have no knowledge of lovers’ hangouts or security measures in Delhi?!

5.  There’s a terribly tacky D’décor product placement and a guest appearance by the brand’s ambassador Shah Rukh Khan who comes off looking tired beyond recognition.

6.     Perhaps it’s too late for this, but Zayed Khan really needs to take some acting lessons. The youthful charm that was in evidence in Main Hoon Naa may have been sufficient to pull him through a supporting role but is certainly not enough for a film in which he’s the main male lead. Diya Mirza may not have managed to achieve star status in the industry, but she still deserves better.

7.      LBZ is tacky and unprofessional. For instance, there’s a character called Pinkoo who must have been someone in the original script, but whose significance was edited out completely at some point. And so, we see this person in numerous random shots of the wedding, but he doesn’t have a single line to deliver. The editor, however, forgot to snip out a brief scene in the middle of the sangeet when someone says, “Pinkoo kaha hai?” and this non-speaking character is shown dancing vigorously on stage. But Pinkoo kaun hai? The director simply forgot to tell us.

I could go on and on, but I guess I’ll just save myself the time … because it all adds up to just one point: that Love Breakups Zindagi is one hell of a shoddy film!

Rating (out of five): 1/2 (this half star is primarily for Diya Mirza’s complexion & clothes)

CBFC Rating:                       U/A without cuts

Running time:                        152 Minutes

Language:                              Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://www.bornfree.co.in/lbz/   

REVIEW 87: MY FRIEND PINTO

Release date:	October 7, 2011
Director:	Raaghav Dar
Cast:	Prateik Babbar, Arjun Mathur, Shruti Seth, Kalki Koechlin, Makrand Deshpande, Divya Dutta

So were we wrong about Prateik Babbar? And by “we”, I mean myself and the countless others who celebrated the arrival of a talented actor when we witnessed his casual, almost lazy style of dialogue delivery in that cameo in Abbas Tyrewala’s Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. Then we saw him playing Munna in Dhobi Ghat, the washerman who aspires to be a star. He hit the nail on the head with the character’s emotional quotient though he did come across as slightly too sophisticated for a Mumbai dhobi. But his performance as a student in Prakash Jha’s Aarakshan was a slap in the face of good acting – never before has a young actor appeared as spaced out and disinterested in a role as Babbar was in that film. And now comes My Friend Pinto, just his fifth film (don’t forget Dum Maaro Dum earlier this year) and already there is a sameness to the vocal inflexions and mannerisms that is worrisome.

I guess it’s the same old story – even a talented actor is only as good as the chemistry s/he shares with the director; and sometimes we mistake perfect casting for good acting when a role fits an actor’s personality so well that he is actually just being himself on screen.

My Friend Pinto could have been called One Night In The Life of The Small-Town Simpleton In The Big Bad City. Michael Pinto (Babbar) is a clean, straightforward chap who has lived all his life in Goa. When he loses his mother, he goes off in search of Sameer (Arjun Mathur), once his closest friend who left Goa for Mumbai ages back and has not replied to his letters for a long time. When he gets to Mumbai, his penchant for getting into trouble in unlikely situations kicks in. His kindnesses are returned with cruelty. He helps a bunch of urchins to save a puppy, and they return the favour by picking his pocket. Through a series of coincidences one eventful night, he gets involved with an assortment of colourful characters, all of whom end up at the same climactic New Year’s eve party: Sameer and his wife (Shruti Seth) who are constantly squabbling, a gangster (Raj Zutshi) who is trying to bump off his boss, that boss (Makrand Deshpande) who dotes on his suspicious beloved (Divya Dutta), a hoodlum who fails to see the hell his poor taxi-driver father is going through at the hands of a loan shark, and the pretty dancer Maggie (Kalki Koechlin).

The point the film is trying to make is that Pinto’s simplicity and innate goodness touch the lives of all those he meets, and each of these characters is saved by him in some way. But what could save this lacklustre film? The story is defused and uninteresting (frankly it’s not virtue as much as flukes that work in Pinto’s favour), the storytelling style lacks energy, the music is indifferent, and the few scenes that had the potential to be funny end up falling flat instead. Makrand Deshpande as the Malayali don serves us a hilarious accent when he speaks his own unique Malayali-Hindi dialect, but his role does not move much beyond that. Kunal Ganjawala’s beautiful voice suits Babbar perfectly, but the songs are nothing to write home about. There’s one particular number in which Michael and Maggie are seen splashing about in the rain, and the sound of the water is worked into the orchestration (nice!) but the tune itself is just about okay. The only thread that worked for me in a small way in this multi-strand story is the one involving Sameer and his naïve though career-minded spouse. Arjun Mathur (who we’ve seen earlier this year as a gay gigolo in Onir’s I Am and in the Airtel 3G ad playing a young soldier who phones his wife from a remote location) lends a certain sincerity to all his performances, and we’ll hopefully be seeing a lot more of him in the coming years … but in better films than My Friend Pinto.

Incidentally, this film is produced by heavyweights UTV and Sanjay Leela Bhansali. I wonder why they allowed such dull fare to reach our theatres?

Rating (out of five): *

CBFC Rating:                       U/A without cuts

Running time:                        120 Minutes

Language:                              Hindi

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

REVIEW 86: JO DOOBA SO PAAR, IT’S LOVE IN BIHAR

Release date:	October 14, 2011
Director:	Praveen Kumar
Cast:	Anand Tiwari, Sita Ragione Spada, Vinay Pathak, Rajat Kapoor, Pitobash

“There’s nothing more dangerous than a Bihari in love,” says this film’s clever tagline. Well, I can think of a few things far more dangerous: like a film that’s unusually short by Bollywood standards, yet even its 1 hour 40 minutes running time feels tedious; like a good concept that translates into a lifeless, purposeless film marked by ordinary writing, lackadaisical editing and weak direction. 

I can almost imagine the concept that captured the producer’s interest: a laggard in the Bihari hinterland falls in love with a visiting firangi mem student who is there to study Madhubani paintings, and risks his life to save her when she is abducted by a local gang. Unfortunately, the idea and execution are separated by a gap as wide as the Pacific. And so a competent actor like Anand Tiwari, playing the protagonist Keshu, hangs about sporting an appropriate Bihari accent and entertainingly appropriate clothes, while wide spaces yawn between the few funny moments in this film. Tiwari has already made his mark in the Jaago Re ad campaign and playing the geeky, small-town boy in love with Sonam Kapoor’s protégé in Aisha. But even veteran actors need good scripts, directors and editors to carry them through, and sadly for this newcomer, he has none of the three at hand in this film. To make matters worse, the mem he falls for is played by an actress who makes the white policemen in Kurbaan and Kites look good.

Sadly, Jo Dooba So Paar, It’s Love in Bihar seems interesting at the start. There’s an appealing realness to the way it captures a Bihari small-town atmosphere. Keshu’s truck driver father lectures him on his wayward ways, while he himself surreptitiously transports guns and grenades along with legitimate goods. The conflict between father and son had as much potential as the romance but neither is well fleshed out. There are a few brief enjoyable moments in this unusually titled film. They come courtesy Keshu’s amorous mother who is twice shown using sex to divert her angry husband’s attention away from their erring son. There’s a tiny scene in which that delightful young actor Pitobash (who we’ve seen earlier this year as Mandook in Shor In The City and Laptan in I Am Kalam) does a mock sexual dance to tease his friend Keshu.   

Hmm, three scenes in an entire film?! … Jo Dooba So Paar is not even one of those films that’s so bad that it becomes entertaining. It’s just so dull that you wonder why anyone bothered to make it.

Rating (out of five): *

CBFC Rating:                       U without cuts

Running time:                        100 Minutes

Language:                              Hindi

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/#!/loveinbihar       

REVIEW 85: MUJHSE FRAAANDSHIP KAROGE

Release date:	October 14, 2011
Director:	Nupur Asthana
Cast:	Saqib Saleem, Saba Azad, Nishant Dahiya, Tara D’souza, Mita Vashisht

Yaar, “uske naam mein bhi maal hai,” says Vishal while trying to coax Rahul to meet hottie Malvika. Why doesn’t Vishal meet her himself? Ah well, as relationship statuses often are on Facebook, “It’s complicated”.

Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge – the second venture from Yashraj Films’ new banner Y Films – is a love story set against the backdrop of FB. The place: a Mumbai college. The time: here and now. Vishal is the campus wise guy, good-looking, smart talking, sociable and smooth. Preity is the girl he loves to hate because she’s smart, confident, hard-working, aloof, attractive but uncaring about her style. When Vishal is not in class or Facebooking-ing, he hangs out with friends, parties and writes lyrics for the soppy songs that Rahul sings as the lead artiste of a popular local band. Fashion design student Malvika is Preity’s best friend, and happens to catch Vishal’s fancy at a show when Rahul picks her out of the crowd to dance with him on stage. Desperate to get Malvika’s attention, Vishal pretends to be Rahul and sends her a friend request on FB. Without Malvika’s knowledge, Preity – who has a crush on Rahul – accepts the friend request, and the two start chatting regularly online. Get it? Cute guy Vishal pretending to be hot guy Rahul is chatting with smart girl Preity because she is pretending to be hot girl Malvika!

Phew! It truly is complicated! 

Or rather, it’s complicated for them but not confusing for us. Quite to the contrary, director Nupur Asthana – helmswoman of Yashraj’s popular TV series Mahi Way – gives us a breezy 1 hour 44 minute ride through teenland bereft of clichés, aided by Raghu Dixit’s peppy and youthful music, and dialogue writer Anvita Dutt who seems to really understand this milieu. Unlike director Roshan Abbas’ Always Kabhi Kabhi (produced by SRK and released this June), this film is not trying to be cool – it actually is cool. And unlike Y Films’ own Luv ka The End, Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge goes beyond just getting the look and lingo right.

On the face of it, this is a re-telling of Yashraj’s earlier film Mujhse Dosti Karoge (MDK) from which this one derives its slightly misleading title. MDK was a Hrithik Roshan-Rani Mukerji-Kareena Kapoor-starrer about a guy who falls in love with Girl X with whom he’s been exchanging e-mails for years, not knowing that she’s in fact Girl Y pretending to be X. But the protagonists in Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge are younger, the pace here is snappier, and the melodrama that at one time was automatically associated with love triangles and quadrilaterals in Hindi films is missing here – when the corny, cheesy ending comes around, it’s actually believable because the film and each of its characters treats it exactly the way you and I would treat such a corny, cheesy turn of events. Thankfully too, this is not a clichéd modern-day Cinderella story where the non-glamorous nerdy stereotype of a girl transforms overnight into a Princess and is saved by the Prince from her harried existence. This film does not toe the Kuch Kuch Hota Hai line that the guy you love will not realise he feels the same way about you till you exchange your ‘tomboyish’ (oh how I hate that word!) attire for acceptably feminine clothes and lose to him in a game of basketball! Not on your life! Preity in Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge can give as good as she gets, and does so right till the end.

Any weak links? Well yes. The dialogue writing that’s pitch perfect during exchanges between Preity, Vishal and their college mates, turns a tad awkward when the slightly older Rahul and Malvika come around. Also, youngsters Saqib Saleem (Vishal) and Saba Azad (Preity) are live wires; Tara D’souza (Malvika) and Nishant Dahiya (Rahul) are interesting too; but Dahiya – a handsome fellow no doubt – slips up by failing to tailor his English diction to fit the slot that he’s placed in here … I’m not saying he should have sounded British or American, but that he should have sounded more like the English-speaking Indian city dude that he’s supposed to be. Also, the music gets so loud at places that the lyrics become indecipherable.

At a superficial level, Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge may seem like a silly film about squabbling teenagers in love. But look closer and what you see is the director and writers’ keen understanding of a world where rumours and cruel jokes spread like wildfire on SMS and social networking online media; where youngsters often mistake notoriety for popularity; where it’s so easy to be deceived by the person on the other end of the line; and where this apparent constant flow of communication in the virtual world has the potential to kill communication in the real world.

It’s possible that you may not enjoy this film if you aren’t addicted to the online social media or if you aren’t constantly rubbing shoulders with crazy, Facebook-addicted teenagers the way I am. On the other end of the social spectrum, it’s possible that the teenagers in the hall where I watched this film would give it double the number of stars that I’ve given it, judging by their hysterical laughter throughout. As they’d probably say, go figure. For my part, I’ve gotta rush off to write another review! BRB! ;)

Rating (out of five): ***

CBFC Rating:                       U/A without cuts

Running time:                       104 Minutes

Language:                             Hindi

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/YFilms#!/MujhseFraaandshipKaroge

REVIEW 84: MOD

Release date:	October 14, 2011
Director:	Nagesh Kukunoor
Cast:	Ayesha Takia Azmi, Rannvijay Singh Singha, Raghuvir Yadav, Tanve Azmi

Mod is the official Hindi remake of the Taiwanese film Keeping Watch. The rights have been paid for, and if you don’t find any mention of the original in Mod’s credits, it’s because the makers were not contractually obliged to do so – that’s what I was told when I checked with the producer.

Now that we’ve got that information out of the way, here’s the story: Aranya Mathur (Ayesha Takia Azmi) runs a watch repair shop in the sleepy hill town of Ganga. Her father (Raghuvir Yadav) is a Kishore Kumar fan whose band of musicians goes by the name Kishore Bhakts. Aranya’s mother left the family to pursue her dreams in the city many years back. The only mother figure in the young girl’s life is her aunt Gayatri (Tanve Azmi) who owns a small local restaurant. Hanging around in the shadows is Gangaram who is surreptitiously in love with Aranya. The picturesque town is going through a churn because a construction company is trying to buy up a number of private homes to build a large tourist resort. Into this scenario enters a shy young man called Andy Raymond (Rannvijay Singh Singha) who begins visiting Aranya every day with a watch (the same watch each day) that needs repair. He pays her each time with a Rs 100 note that he’s sculpted into a swan. Who is this man? What is his mysterious past? And what is his connection with Aranya’s childhood? I will leave you to discover the answers if you decide to watch this little film.

One of the nicest things about Mod is the choice of location – not a set piece but a genuinely slumberous small town where you can imagine real people going about their business just the way Aranya, Gayatri, Gangaram and their social circle do. Kukunoor hits the nail on the head with the locale and atmosphere. He also gets the casting of his leading lady right. Ayesha Takia Azmi is pretty, has a likeable screen presence and a natural style of acting. Tanve Azmi is perfect as every young girl’s dream aunt – liberal, fun, yet filled with wisdom. Except for Anant Mahadevan as Andy’s doctor, everyone looks believable here, including Rannvijay as the painfully reticent youngster who has harboured a crush on Aranya for a decade.

What does not work though is the chemistry between the lead pair and the progression of their relationship especially once she discovers the truth about Andy. Does Aranya fall for him because she genuinely likes him for who he is, or because of the lack of romantic options in tiny Ganga, or because she feels sorry for him, or merely because he pursues her relentlessly (he made me feel special in a way no one has before, she tells Gayatri)? I guess because I couldn’t feel that palpable pull between the two of them, I wasn’t convinced about the life-changing decision she takes in the end, apparently for his sake? Was that real love or sympathy … I’m not sure. It was also hard to believe that a girl from a small town where everyone knows everyone else would have forgotten her classmate from school so completely in just 10 years – neither Andy’s name nor his face ring a bell with her even for a moment when they first meet as adults. The music too leaves much to be desired.

Despite these reservations, I’d say there’s more I liked about this film than did not. The warmth between the aunt and niece, the kindly fashion in which the daughter tries to wean her father off the bottle, the attention to small characters such as Gangaram (love the shades of gray in this man) and the gentle manner in which Dissociative Identity Disorder is woven into the story without high drama are touches from the Nagesh Kukunoor we know who knows how to tell real stories about real people. It’s been over a decade since this man made Hyderabad Blues and walked his way into our hearts. That film was low on cash and produced with money collected from friends – the bare-bones budget was evident, but even the resultant tackiness was charming because it was clear that this director had a flair and a passion for storytelling. There have been ups and downs since then. Rockford, for instance, was an agreeable coming-of-age film set in a boarding school, Bollywood Calling was fun though flawed, Hyderabad Blues 2 was unimaginably bad, Iqbal was downright brilliant (one of the best Hindi films made about a person with a disability, shorn of melodrama and stereotypes, sensitive yet entertaining), and Aashayein with John Abraham seemed to be going well until it strayed into awkwardly philosophical territory.

And now there’s Mod. What this film needed was an aching chemistry between the hero and heroine, a desperate desire that would convince us that she would give up her life for him. In the absence of that, it still ends up as a small, sweet, simple, slow moving film that has left me with a pleasant feeling of positivity. 

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

CBFC Rating:                       U without cuts

Running time:                        120 Minutes

Language:                              Hindi

Photograph courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/#!/MODthemovie