REVIEW 747: MARJAAVAAN

Release date:	November 15, 2019
Director:	Milap Milan Zaveri
Cast: Language:	Sidharth Malhotra, Riteish Deshmukh, Nassar, Rakul Preet Singh, Tara Sutaria, Ravi Kishan, Shaad Randhawa, Suhasini Mulay Hindi

“Main maaroonga toh mar jayega tu, dobaara janam lene se darr jayega tu.” This line that the hero fires at the villain in Marjaavaan comes from an arsenal of rhyming bombast that he uses from the opening minutes of this exhausting film. Thankfully, there is an arsenal of adjectives in the English language to match his weaponry. Dated, loud, cliché-ridden, preachy, unimaginative, boring, flat – that is what Marjaavaan is.

Take the slotting of the characters for one. Each comes from a checklist that Bollywood in earlier decades felt compelled to cover exhaustively in most scripts. Virtuous hero, virtuous woman who exists solely for him to fall in love with her and thus give her the requisite qualification for the post of heroine, villain without a single redeeming quality, the other woman in the ‘golden-hearted tawaif’ mould whose unrequited love for the leading man survives every trauma thrown her way – you will find them all in Marjaavaan.

As if these Neanderthal formulae are not enough, there are more. The bad guy is a dwarf in a film that clearly sees a disability as nothing but a source of drama. The hero is a “lawaaris”. A glamorous woman pops up to do that thingie called an ‘item song’ with dance moves that include spreading her legs wide, thrusting her bottom out and wiggling it, and going down on all fours to lift her bottom again and wiggle it – gosh, there is no originality even in the objectification of women in Marjaavaan.

And while it is a relief to get a break from the Islamophobia that has been a regular feature of Hindi cinema in the last couple of years, there is no joy in returning, as Marjaavaan does, to an era when the co-existence of religious and linguistic communities was not treated as a fact of life but as a cause for sugary sentimentality and in-your-face messaging on secularism.

Oh, and while the nice guy speaks in verse, the bad guy reels off “what is the height of (optimism, etc)?” kind of jokes and the female protagonist speaks in riddles.

Considering all this, it is appropriate that Marjaavaan’s soundtrack is dominated by remixes.

Sidharth Malhotra plays Raghu, the handsome orphaned foster child of the gangster played by Nassar. The latter’s son Vishnu (Riteish Deshmukh) has always resented his father’s love for Raghu, that resentment made worse by his crushing complex about his congenital short stature. Their life-long enmity is heightened when Raghu falls in love with the mute Zoya (Tara Sutaria) who tries to reform the children of the neighbourhood by steering them towards music and away from an otherwise inevitable life of crime. Rakul Preet Singh stars as Aarzoo, the bar dancer who is devoted to Raghu.

Marjaavaan is written and directed by Milap Zaveri whose career has so far been built primarily on writing comedies, some of them largely harmless fun (such as the Varun Dhawan-starrer Main Tera Hero), many of them crude (case in point: Masti, Grand Masti). For this film, Zaveri ditches high-decibel sexist humour in favour of high-decibel sermonising. Perhaps in a bid to sound intelligent and relevant, at one point in Marjaavaan he has the hero yelling “mandir banega aur masjid bhi blah blah blah”, but in the absence of any political depth, that pointed allusion to the Babri Masjid imbroglio makes zero sense. In a more well-thought-out film it might have meant something that Zoya is a Kashmiri Muslim girl and she is assembling a troupe for a music festival in Kashmir. Here though it means nothing.

Marjaavaan is so hackneyed that even the usually restrained Malhotra is driven to intermittent over-acting during its two-hours-plus running time. Deshmukh hams his way through playing Vishnu. Ms Sutaria is bland.

Singh does better than her colleagues with the little acting she is required to do in her limited role. Her primary job here though is to look hot, but she is not allowed to do that well by the photography, wardrobe and other departments who, for some reason, collude to highlight her protruding rib cage through much of the film – this inexplicable treatment meted out to an otherwise lovely-looking woman will hopefully spark off a debate on the impossible thinness required of Hindi film heroines these days. As for the great Nassar, his performance in Marjaavaan is a textbook example of how even the finest of actors can be reduced to embarrassingly strained performances by bad writing and direction.

Maybe the line Raghu should have delivered is this: “Yeh film dekhega toh mar jayega tu, dobaara koi bhi film dekhne se darr jayega tu.”

Rating (out of five stars): *

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	137 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/marjaavaan-movie-review-sidharth-malhotra-whatcha-doin-with-this-loud-neanderthal-sermon-7656451.html

Photographs courtesy:

(1) https://www.facebook.com/marjaavaanthemovie/

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjaavaan

REVIEW 718: JABARIYA JODI

Release date:	August 9, 2019
Director:	Prashant Singh
Cast: Language:	Parineeti Chopra, Sidharth Malhotra, Jaaved Jaaferi, Sheeba Chadha, Aparshakti Khurana, Sanjay Mishra, Neeraj Sood, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Sharad Kapoor Hindi

The road to cinematic hell is paved with concepts that must have sounded good on paper. A handsome young man who abducts grooms for a living falls in love with an irrepressible young woman. Those who know Bihar well will be familiar with Abhay Singh's trade: his clients are the families of unmarried women who cannot afford the dowry being demanded by potential grooms, and therefore get eligible men kidnapped and forcibly married to their daughters. Babli Yadav's father is anxious to see her married, but her reputation for wildness has ruined her prospects. She has clarity about her feelings for Abhay but he is all mixed up in the head because of his parents' failed marriage.

This was material that an efficient, talented team may possibly have expanded into something worthwhile. Instead, writer Sanjeev K. Jha's imagination appears to have gone on vacation after a while and director Prashant Singh has such a weak hold on the reins that what we get in Jabariya Jodi are a series of contrived twists and turns trying hard to be surprising, a bunch of characters with zero depth, and a lead couple whose convoluted journey to their fate even they seem disinterested in.

Others who lost interest in the project while it was on include the half dozen or so musicians involved who have churned out the most generic soundtrack you could imagine. Macchardani – composed by Vishal Mishra, with lyrics by Raj Shekhar, sung by Mishra and Jyotica Tangri – is the only song worth remembering.

If you really want to know about the business of groom-napping in Bihar, read news reports. Jabariya Jodi is too boring and shallow to be taken seriously as a source of information.

Parineeti Chopra and Sidharth Malhotra play Babli and Abhay, who seem to forget their Bihari accents at some point. Can’t blame them. Maybe they were distracted by the really bad lines trying to sound smart scattered throughout the film. I was distracted too, but I think there was one assigned to his Daddy, a goonda and aspiring politician played by Jaaved Jaaferi, which went something like this: Tum bahu (daughter in law) ka soch rahey hai, hum bahumat (electoral majority) ka soch rahey hai.

At first it is not all bad. Jabariya Jodi has its moments of humour early on. And how can one not enjoy just gazing at the sinfully handsome Sidharth Malhotra? But after Abhay abducts a lot of people, then Babli abducts him, then Abhay abducts her, and they all head off on a road to nowhere (there are no spoilers here, the trailer has revealed all this already) it was a struggle to stay awake.

There are some scenes aspiring to be intellectual and emotionally profound along the way, scenes in which he discusses his fear that he may turn out to be a jerk like his father and is therefore afraid to hook up with a woman he genuinely loves. Maybe there was something there worth exploring, but this team is clearly not equipped for the job.

Fine supporting artistes like Sheeba Chadha, Aparshakti Khurana, Sanjay Mishra and Chandan Roy Sanyal are criminally frittered away in Jabariya Jodi. As for the leads, it is hard not to feel sad about their wasted potential.

Parineeti Chopra had shown great spark in her debut film Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl (2011), but has since then seemed more invested in publicising her impressive weight loss than picking solid scripts. There is only so far that your bright diamond-like eyes can take you, Ms.

Malhotra deserves better but either does not have the right instincts for scripts or is just not getting good offers. Either way, the hottie from Student of the Year and Ek Villain, he whose eyes can by turns be pools of pain, longing and mischief, he who gave so much to the lovely Kapoor & Sons and Ittefaq, is too good for the bland fare that has dominated his filmography since 2012. Jabariya Jodi makes the worst of his films so far look worthy of National Awards though. For one, it has the depth of a teaspoon. More important, it is dull dull dull.

Rating (out of five stars): 1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	UA (bookmyshow)
Running time:	144 minutes (bookmyshow)

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/jabariya-jodi-movie-review-sidharth-malhotra-is-too-hot-and-happening-for-such-bland-fare-7135641.html

Visuals courtesy: Spice PR

REVIEW 572: AIYAARY

Release date:	February 16, 2018
Director:	Neeraj Pandey
Cast: Language:	Sidharth Malhotra, Manoj Bajpayee, Rakul Preet Singh, Pooja Chopra, Kumud Mishra, Adil Hussain, Naseeruddin Shah, Vikram Gokhale Hindi

There is a formula writer-director Neeraj Pandey adopted in his 2015 hit Baby that he carries forward into this one: show a bunch of smart-looking, well-dressed people going somewhere, anywhere, at all times at a clipped pace, keep the characters moving – literally, physically – throughout, use brisk edits to cut back and forth between them, rope in an intense background score to scale up the energy, and give them clever-sounding dialogues that hold out the promise of something interesting to come at some point during the rest of the film.

Aiyaary adds an uncommon title to the mix along with Manoj Bajpayee, Sidharth Malhotra and the repeated use of top-to-bottom tilt shots of cityscapes. The tweaks to the blueprint do not save this film from its hollowness or air of déjà vu though. This is Baby Redux minus the chest-thumping nationalism, still convinced that it is far cleverer and cooler than it actually is. 

“Vacuous” is a mild choice of adjective for Pandey’s new film, the latest in a series of thrillers he has churned out since the sleeper hit A Wednesday! in 2008. Its troubling politics of anarchy notwithstanding, at least A Wednesday! had a story and meaning going for it. Baby had Taapsee Pannu playing that rare female character given impressive stunt scenes in a Hindi film. Aiyaary has nothing.

As with Baby, Aiyaary too revolves around a covert ops team of the government of India, this one formed within the Army. It is headed by a Colonel Abhay Singh, played by Bajpayee. Malhotra is Major Jai Bakshi, an agent gone rogue. Their unit was formed with government sanction, on the understanding that they would be disowned by the sarkar and the sena if they are ever found out.

No one discovers them, but Jai decides to expose them to the media for reasons that are completely unclear even after the end of the film.

(Spoiler alert. Yawn.)

Jai claims he is blowing their cover because during surveillance operations he realised that everyone is corrupt – yes, his grand revelation is as non-specific as that. However, since it is evident that he considers Colonel Abhay clean, there is no clarification about why he rings the good man’s death knell too or why, at the last minute, he chooses to issue repeated warnings to him to get out of there. Where is “there”? Beats me.

Abhay’s undercover cell had the government’s okay, but was put together by army chief General Pratap Malik with funds that were not authorised on the record. So the chief (Vikram Gokhale) is in trouble too, although it is never apparent why Jai decides to ruin him either since he too seems to be a nice guy.

Oddly enough, Jai is working for a corrupt arms lobbyist who was formerly with the army. Lt General Gurinder Singh (Kumud Mishra) wants to punish Pratap Malik for objecting to the inflated quotation offered by a group he represents in a defence deal. Why is sweet, innocent, disillusioned Jai aiding bad, bad Gurinder in bringing the General down? Again, beats me.

Jai’s ‘explanation’ for his actions, when it does finally come, is so empty, so bereft of detail and logic, that it feels like an act of betrayal on the part of Pandey the scriptwriter. There is also an Adarsh scam-like reveal that is hyped up throughout the film and then recounted in a silly, over-dramatised fashion in the climax.

Jai is in hiding and undercover from the beginning of Aiyaary but all that glib talk from him amounts to a lot of hoo-haa considering that he epitomises stupidity in the way he allows a civilian to discover his true identity by leaving his army I-card lying around in his absence. Besides, Abhay manages to find him with just a click of his fingers, at which point our hero and his girlfriend/accomplice react like hapless babies.

(Spoiler alert ends. Yawn.)

Oh yes, before I forget, in the picture is a girlfriend cum software specialist whose professional talents come in handy for Jai’s hanky panky.

Her name is Sonia Gupta (Rakul Preet Singh), and like Jai’s colleague, Captain Maya Semwal (Pooja Chopra), she has little to do beyond be attractive and provide the director with an alibi in case he is accused of excluding women from his all-male story.

Singh is just fresh from the success of the Tamil film Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru in which she got to play a cutesy female trifle in an otherwise gripping thriller about a no-nonsense male cop. Here she gets to go a step further and give us proof of her character’s hacking abilities by typing furiously on Jai’s laptop with her impeccably manicured fingers.

Poor Chopra comes across as being capable of something more than just standing around, but in Aiyaary, that is all she gets to do.

Meanwhile, Adil Hussain, who was fabulous in last year’s fabulous Mukti Bhawan, is so unconvinced of his role as an arms dealer here, that he seems to be suppressing his laughter while playing the part. I swear I could sense a medley of giggles just below the surface in all his scenes.

Bajpayee somehow pulls off the incredible feat of appearing earnest in an ocean of fluff. Malhotra looks sincere and delicious from start to finish. His pretty face and sensitive eyes are worth the price of a ticket in the worst of situations, but here we get the bonus of his slim physique encased in battle fatigues. It is a sight that, I assure you, is guaranteed to have any healthy, artistically inclined human being go weak in the knees.

Barring the low-priced extras the casting director settled for in Europe, as Bollywood often does, money has obviously been spent on producing Aiyaary. Now if only time had been spent on thinking the script through.

With his 2013 film Special 26, starring Akshay Kumar and Bajpayee, Neeraj Pandey proved that he has what it takes to execute a solid thriller. Aiyaary – which means shapeshifter, trickster, and more – is an example of what happens when a filmmaker, like most of the industry he operates in, mentally differentiates between a thinking, niche audience and a commercial audience (read: the masses), and blatantly takes the latter for granted.

Aiyaary’s first hour is engaging because it gives us reason to assume that great twists and turns will unfold at any moment. That promise is unfulfilled in the remaining 100 minutes of the film. Pace and bluster cannot compensate for lack of substance. This wannabe James Bond flick is nothing but a blast of hot air.

Rating (out of five stars): *

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	160 minutes 10 seconds

This review was also published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/aiyaary-movie-review-sidharth-malhotra-is-pretty-and-manoj-bajpayee-earnest-in-this-blast-of-hot-air-4353879.html

  

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/aiyaary/