REVIEW 202: GHANCHAKKAR

Release date:	June 28, 2013
Director:	Raj Kumar Gupta
Cast: Language:	Vidya Balan, Emraan Hashmi, Rajesh Sharma, Namit Das, Parvin Dabas Hindi

Ghanchakkar is a fantastic concept stretched to non-fantastic proportions. There are so many individual elements in the film that are wonderfully memorable … the angle at which Vidya Balan’s eccentric Neetu holds her fork at every single meal … the absolute consistency with which she remains obsessed with women’s / fashion magazines, come hell or high water … the stroke of genius that inspired the director to pick three celebrity masks with just the right expression (one hilariously wide-eyed, the other grave, the third half-smiling) to be worn by three bank robbers ... Such gems! Yet somewhere along the way in this tragi-comic thriller, you get the feeling that Team Ghanchakkar (direction: Raj Kumar Gupta, writing: Gupta and Parvez Sheikh) was so impressed with their concept and climax that they failed to notice they were meandering and repeating themselves beyond a point.

Ghanchakkar is about a career criminal on the verge of retirement, Sanju (Emraan Hashmi), who agrees to be a part of one last heist that will set him up for life. He is roped into this bank robbery by two seemingly bumbling fellows called Pandit (Rajesh Sharma) and Idris (Namit Das). Sanju is given the task of keeping the money safe for three months till the police search cools down. And along comes the twist in the tale. When Pandit and Idris return to claim their share of the loot, the money can’t be found for reasons I won’t reveal here. Is Sanju spinning yarns? Or does he have a genuine problem? What role does his wife Neetu play in this entire affair? The answers are what make up the story of Ghanchakkar.

The film is thoroughly funny to begin with. The bank robbery is a killer. The dinner scenes with Sanju and Neetu too are a hoot. In fact, Neetu is a one-woman variety entertainment show who kind of reminds me of that line Balan’s Reshma a.k.a. Silk uttered in The Dirty Picture, “Filmein sirf teen cheezon ki vajah se chalti hain… entertainment, entertainment, entertainment… aur main entertainment hoon.” Yes she is, people! Balan does not miss a single beat throughout the film, which is amazing considering how bizarre her character is and how long the film goes on and on. The way she slouches over the table during meals, the angle at which she holds her fork that I just can’t get out of my mind, her garish outfits that she considers “fashionable” aur “ultra-modern”, that Punjabi accent that her character slips into every time she’s riled though she speaks a smoother variety of English in her calmer moments ... it’s all delightful. She claims that her ensembles are all inspired by Femina, Cosmopolitan, Vogue and their ilk. I suspect those magazines would not be flattered since she, clearly, is mixing and matching and modifying their suggestions to come up with her own ridiculous wardrobe. And then there is that scene in which Sanju is in the bathroom and Neetu calls out to him from their bedroom, “Ab andar hi rahoge ya baahar bhi aaoge?” We don’t see her at all when she speaks that sentence, but the come-hither tone just oozes through that wall. This is one of those performances that can only happen when there is a meeting of minds between an extremely talented actress, director, writer/s, make-up artist and costume director. For Neetu above all else, the entire team of Ghanchakkar deserves one big salaam.

Not so elsewhere. Emraan Hashmi is a usually dependable actor but his Sanju is a tad dull. There’s a nice touch in the writing of his character though. Sanju lets wifey take the initiative in bed, which is something we almost never see in Hindi films. He’s also good friends with her; he may hate her cooking and her clothes, but he certainly respects her and leans on her for advice.

The ones who suffer the most from the repetitiveness that sets into the film past the halfway mark are the remarkable talents of Rajesh Sharma and Namit Das. Sharma is a wonderful actor and has been a companion to Balan and director Raj Kumar Gupta in recent years. Who can forget his excellent corrupt-yet-honest policeman in No One Killed Jessica (the film that first brought Balan and Gupta together) or the oily-yet-likeable film producer who gave Silk her big break in Milan Luthria’s The Dirty Picture? Das played Ranbir Kapoor’s friend in Wake Up Sid, though he’s probably most familiar to viewers these days as the boy who refuses to phone his mother in the Idea ad. Sadly, Pandit and Idris are uni-dimensional characters who become increasingly uninteresting as the film rolls along.

What is it with so many Hindi film makers that compels them to make 2-to-3-hour films out of concepts that demand brevity? This is a criticism that completely contradicts Gupta’s track record so far: the highlights of his films Aamir and No One Killed Jessica were their compactness and pace. The problem with Ghanchakkar is that it needed both, but has neither. And few things can be worse for a film than stretched jokes.

So after an impressive set-up, there are entertaining bits and pieces in the second half of the film, and the last couple of minutes of the climax are not bad at all, but it just doesn’t add up. It’s also impossible to get past the fact that the writers clearly ran out of ideas after a point. Three great masks and a Vidya Balan do not a summer or a movie make.

 

Rating (out of five): **

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	137 minutes (as per pvrcinemas.com)

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

REVIEW(LET) 201: MONSTERS UNIVERSITY (3D)

This review was written as a Facebook post and first uploaded on June 23, 2013, on facebook.com/AnnaMMVetticadOfficial (which explains the opening sentence and the length).

The other new release I watched this weekend is director Dan Scanlon’s Monsters University in 3D. No time to blog a review, so a quick word on the film here: When the voice cast of an animation flick includes Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Helen Mirren and Nathan Fillion, I guess half its battle is won already. Monsters University is sweet, simple fun. It’s not earth-shatteringly great (no, that distinction must go to that all-time classic from Hollywood’s animation stables, The Lion King, and more recently, Cars, Happy Feet and Ratatouille among a handful of others), but it’s still a thoroughly enjoyable film. The prequel to Monsters, Inc, this one takes us back to the origins of the friendship between Mike Wazowski and James P. Sullivan. For those who’ve not seen the original film, you ought to know that the monsters-under-the-bed that human kids dream of are not a figment of their imagination. Those monsters do exist, and MU is a prestigious university that trains them to be as scarey as possible.

The film is about the underdog desperate for recognition, the pedigreed boy who must discover himself beyond his famous surname, and crucial lessons in leadership (the captain may not be the best player on the team, but should know how to bring out the best in every team member). Don’t cheat. But if you do slip up, make sure you own up to your mistake, pick yourself up and find a way to move on. Make sure you have a Plan B for life. If Plan A does not work out, give your best to Plan B and who knows, it may take you up a fabulous new path or it may even take you right to where you originally wanted to be.

There are tons of other little messages woven into the tale yet, like every good children’s film, Monsters University is subtle plus it does not talk down to juniors. In case your child makes new career plans after watching this film, visit this dead-serious website for an actual MU: http://monstersuniversity.com/edu/ J 

Make sure you arrive early for the film since it’s preceded by a loveable animation short called The Blue Umbrella.

My rating (out of 5 stars) for Monsters University: ***

Release date:	June 21, 2013
Director:	Dan Scanlon
Voice Cast: Language:	Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Helen Mirren, Nathan Fillion, Steve Buscemi English
CBFC Rating (India):		U
Running time: MPAA Rating (US):		95 minutes (as per rottentomatoes.com) G (General)
Release date in the US:		June 21, 2013

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

REVIEW 200: SHORTCUT ROMEO

Release date:	June 21, 2013
Director:	Susi Ganeshan
Cast: Language:	Neil Nitin Mukesh, Ameesha Patel, Puja Gupta Hindi

Shortcut Romeo doggedly pursues a formula Bollywood’s better directors have been trying to eschew. Songs in this film don’t even pretend to take the narrative forward. No effort has been made to smoothen out the arrival of a musical number or its end. Unlike many of today’s film makers who facilitate a character’s visit to a nightclub to justify the insertion of a song-and-dance interlude at a particular point, this one does not bother even with that. No sir, writer-director Susi Ganeshan simply stuffs song after unremarkable song into Shortcut Romeo as and when he wishes – abruptly, and sometimes to comical effect as a consequence.

Still, there are actually quite a few attractive individual elements in this film which is the Hindi remake of Ganeshan’s own Tamil film Thiruttu Payale. For one there’s leading man Neil Nitin Mukesh who is delightfully evil and vulnerable by turns in Shortcut Romeo. Former Miss India Puja Gupta fills out her role as well as she fills out a stunning little bikini in this film. She has evolved very swiftly from her so-so-ness in F.A.L.T.U. in 2011 to her brief though effective turn in Go Goa Gone earlier this year to the sweet likeability of her performance here.

If you consider just the kernel of Shortcut Romeo’s story, you’d see that it has potential. A con man called Suraj (Neil) blackmails the wealthy Monica (Ameesha Patel) with a video of her doing the dirty with her husband’s friend. The two play cat-and-mouse games to outwit each other, he to get millions out of her, she to get back that video. The husband is too busy making those millions to give her time but he loves her immensely all the same. Ridden with guilt, Monica wants to get out of her affair but is tied down by Suraj’s blackmail and her boyfriend’s refusal now to let her go. Everything changes though when Suraj meets the heiress Sherry (Puja Gupta) while on a vacation in Kenya paid for by Monica, and falls deeply in love.

The desperation of a woman blackmailed, the transformation of a man in love, the pain of a husband cheated by a beloved wife can all be compelling. Yet Shortcut Romeo falls terribly short. Apart from the tendency to unceremoniously thrust songs into the proceedings, the film also gives its hero an unconvincing emotional graph. Suraj’s physical attraction towards Sherry is plausible, but considering that they barely get to know each other on that trip, it’s hard to digest his all-consuming love; a love for which he turns his back on a lifetime of trickery at Sherry’s request, settles for a middle-class existence and takes up a job to honestly earn his bread. Can a bikini have such a life-changing effect on a man?! Just kidding.

But seriously… The depth and sincerity of Suraj’s love for Sherry is inexplicable, making it hard as a viewer to invest in their relationship. What makes it hard to invest in the film as a whole though is that the pivotal role of Monica is played by an actress who can’t act to save her life. (SPOILERS AHEAD!) This was a role that required a much greater talent, someone who could effectively switch from the helplessness of a blackmail victim whenever she’s cornered to the viciousness she’s capable of in the battle with her blackmailer to the triumph each time she thinks she’s outsmarted him to the penitence of the wife who’s gone astray to her heartbreak when she is raped by her boyfriend under threat that he’ll inform her husband about their affair unless she gives in. In the telling of that last episode, Ganeshan does something that few people in the Hindi film industry – or our society at large – would do. He does not adopt a “she asked for it” tone. Bless him for that. Ameesha gives her best to the character but that, sadly, is far from enough.

She is not, however, the film’s only weakness. Ganeshan’s direction is inconsistent. There’s a disconnect between his storytelling style in different parts of the film. Plus he elongates a story that might have been effective as a one-and-a-half-hour songless thriller into an over-two-and-a-half-hour long, song-filled affair. There are actually some rather well-told portions in this film, most notably the poignant flashback to Suraj’s childhood which explains how and why he developed a weakness for shortcuts to wealth. The action sequences where Suraj is fighting off goons sent by Monica (especially the one in Kenya) are smoothly executed. It’s interesting too that Ganeshan chose to explore Kenya as a location for Suraj’s vacation. Bollywood is fixated on North America, Europe and more recently, Australia. The wilds of Africa lend themselves to many breathtaking shots in this film, but bereft of emotional heft, those scenes end up seeming better suited to a Discovery channel documentary than a fiction feature. Vrajesh Hirjee’s entry with four African women in tow shaking their booty to Bollywood item numbers is like most of Hirjee’s film appearances: irritating, cringe-worthy, and unconnected to the rest of the film. Logic is not always a priority here. How, for instance, does an innocent and poor, usually-cotton-salwar-kameez-clad girl (don’t ask who) transform overnight into a glamorous, swimsuit-wearing sophisticate? No idea. And that’s the way the film goes: crest, trough, crest, trough, up, down, high point, low point, high point… The last half hour of Shortcut Romeo holds out several surprises. The tautness of the narrative at this point is what Ganeshan should have gone for throughout. Sadly, by then it’s too late to salvage the film.

Rating (out of five): *1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time:	153 minutes (as per pvrcinemas.com)

Photograph courtesy: Effective Communication