REVIEW 111: HAWAI DADA

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

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

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

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

Release date:	August 12, 2011
Director:	Girish Dhamija
Cast:	Rajniesh Duggall, 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 Duggall) 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

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

  

REVIEW 105: TENSION DOOOOR

Release date:	November 4, 2011
Director:	Ambrish Singhal
Cast:	Swaraaj Singh, Swati Anand, Raza Murad, Sambhavna Seth

A film that looks 500 years old – that’s what I got to see this year! 

But before we discuss Tension Doooor, a word about the year gone by. At the start of 2011, I made a New Year resolution to review “every single Hindi film that is released that it is possible for me to watch”. Confession: I’ve worked very very hard, but I still have a backlog of over a dozen reviews to file if I am to keep my word. Some of you have advised me to give myself a break, since I’ve managed to review most of the year’s films. But I’m tough on myself. And to quote Salman Khan’s character in Wanted: “Ek baar jo maine commitment ki, toh apne aap ki bhi nahin sunta.” The countdown has begun! Please badger me, prod me, persuade me, shame me into finishing this task that I’ve so thoroughly enjoyed despite the lengths I’ve had to go and the hundreds of kilometers I’ve  had to drive for it. After all, a promise is a promise! So my time starts now!

I didn’t think it would be possible, but Tension Doooor is actually worse than that weirdly, ridiculously horrid film I saw towards the start of the year called Tum Hi To Ho. This one is the about a man who loses his hearing in an accident, and becomes a mind reader on his recovery. When he starts quoting dishonest people’s thoughts, the village mukhiya, pandit, ojha and vaid conspire to turn him out of his home. Our hero Gopal goes to the city and starts a business called tensiondoor.com where he uses his skills to help those in distress. Never mind how the rest of the film pans out. Suffice it to say that I thoroughly enjoyed Tension Doooor because it was so so terrible that it made me laugh out loud. Here’s why:

1. Remember the extras in films from Sohrab Modi’s era? Extras who would roll their eyes and stiffen their bodies to signify shock? The extras in this film make those guys look talented!
2. Again as in the days of yore, groups of people are repeatedly shown speaking in a chorus in this film. Apparently Indian village folk are given scripts with dialogues that they learn by heart.
3. This is the sort of film where if a human being is thinking, the camera actually shows him THINKING.
4. There’s even a song in which the camera moves from the lead couple to flowers to birds and back, like it used to in a time long past .
5. The song features the film’s over-made-up heroine Bijli wearing an ill-fitting lehnga choli with her belly fat spilling out of her skirt.
6. Remember how gaonwaale in Hindi films would go to the sheher to find bichhde hue friends and family, they’d wander the streets of Mumbai, sing a song and voila, they’d find the person they were looking for?! In Tension Doooor the heroine actually mouths a line I’ve not heard in ages: “Main sheher jaaoongee apne Gopal ko dhoondne ke liye.”
7. The sound design is so poor that when a character’s phone rings, we hear a piercing sound that hurts our ears and drowns out the speech of another character in the scene!
8. Bhojpuri cinema’s item girl Sambhavna Seth appears as RAW officer Ruby in this film. I kid you not! She is positioned as a sex bomb, but the director still gives us an extreme close-up of the huge pimple on her left cheek!
9. FYI Ruby thinks RAW stands for Research and Analysing Wing!
10. Words like gaddaar and dushman are bandied about here in the way they used to be when Sunny Deol had taken filmi patriotism to its peak!
11. The hero who can barely walk or talk is given the privilege of an item song in the end with sundry women in skimpy clothing draped around him. Oh joy!

My research tells me that Tension Doooor’s Ambrish Singhal also directed the 1990s Kamal Sadanah-Ritu Shivpuri-starrer Hum Sab Chor Hain which featured that pretty song by Kumar Sanu, Saawali saloni teri jheel si aankhen. Remember this? http://tinyurl.com/cxw7cre ...Whatever objections you may have had to that film, you HAVE TO admit that Tension Doooor is a real come down for the man!

In case I’ve left you in any doubt about the quality of this film, I repeat – everything about Tension Doooor is terrible: the casting, the acting, the lighting, the audio, the framing, the costumes, the make-up, the writing, the writhing. Everything! But if it is released on DVD or if it is available online, I strongly recommend that you watch it. Because it’s so bad that it’s fun.  

Don’t believe me? Here’s the trailer: http://tinyurl.com/cbsovq4 Watch it and kar le kar le kar le tension doooooooooor!

Rating (out of five): -75 stars

Video courtesy: Youtube