REVIEW 30: THANK YOU

Release date:	April 8, 2011
Director:	Anees Bazmee
Cast:	Akshay Kumar, Sonam Kapoor, Bobby Deol, Irrfan Khan, Rimi Sen, Suneil Shetty, Celina Jaitley

Raj, Yogi and Vikram are married men whose life’s mantra is infidelity. Raj deceives his gullible wife with promises of undying love. Vikram tramples upon his lady at every opportunity he gets. And Yogi has been tossed around by his spouse ever since she discovered him with a lover. The three men are buddies, so are the three women. When Raj’s wife Sanjana suspects him of fooling around, she hires a detective to pin him down. The sleuth Kishen (Akshay Kumar) complicates matters further by falling for the beatific and beautiful Sanjana.

Thank You is good for some laughs if you can forget that it’s offensive to women or that Bollywood has made several multi-star-cast comedies on the theme of adultery this past decade. Director Anees Bazmee’s No Entry was far funnier than his latest offering. It too featured three cheating husbands + three unhappy wives, one of them as credulous as Sanjana. Perhaps since critics are bound to point out the similarities between the two films, Bazmee has inserted a scene in Thank You in which a character is watching No Entry. Technically then, am I supposed to call this the director’s ode to his previous megahit or just a lack of fresh ideas? You decide the answer to that one. What I will tell you is that other Hindi films on the same subject are flooding my memory as I write: Shaadi No. 1, again with a triumvirate of married couples and Sanjay Dutt in a role similar to the one played by Akshay in Thank You; David Dhawan’s disturbingly bad Govinda-starrer Do Knot Disturb; Masti which too was about a trio of duos … feel free to add to the list ...

But as I said, despite the feeling of having been there and seen all that before, I did find parts of Thank You funny. The actors all acquit themselves reasonably well, Suneil Shetty is particularly hilarious, and Irrfan is so good that I’d love to see him in other, hopefully more original comedies. I say all this despite the fact that the film slows down in patches, is too long and has a dull soundtrack; the repeated references to the flute-playing Lord Krishna are too meaningless to even be called pretentious; Celina Jaitley disappears for a large part of the film in such an inexplicable fashion that it almost seems like the actress fell out with the film maker or didn’t give him sufficient dates; Mallika Sherawat’s much-hyped item number is completely impactless; there is no particular reason for the film to be set in Canada and not India; Akshay’s character’s sexually promiscuous ways are forgotten completely by the scriptwriter in the end; his interest in Sanjana too is entirely – and inexplicably – axed from the climax.

Lazy scripting apart, what is completely unfunny about Thank You is its attitude towards fornicating husbands, so similar to the other films I just listed in its league. Little has changed in Hindi cinema since the 1981 film Ek Hi Bhool in which Jeetendra played an adulterer who demands to be forgiven for his “ek hi bhool” (just one mistake) by his wife (Rekha). That film regressively painted the wronged woman as an unforgiving, stubborn creature who had the audacity to be offended by her pati parmeshwar’s sins … oops, just one sin. Thirty years later in Thank You, tokenism towards political correctness comes in the form of a long lecture about suffering wives that Kishen / Akshay delivers to the deceitful husbands. But just to be sure that the film doesn’t offend the sensibilities of its primary target audience, Kishen also describes the men’s penchant for bed-hopping as “ek chhoti si aadat”.

When I entered the hall to watch Thank You first day first show, I was taken aback to see a virtually all-male audience. As the film rolled on, I began to understand the gender imbalance in the crowd … The men in that theatre laughed their guts out every time the sadistic Vikram was mean to his wife, ordered her around and treated her like hired household help. They burst into peals of raucous thigh-slapping laughter whenever one of those celluloid husbands was unfaithful to his wife and successfully covered up his treachery. They then fell silent when Akshay lectured the womanising boys about the price of faithlessness. But the energy in the theatre returned when Akshay uttered those reassuring words “ek chhoti si aadat” and Vikram described his need to be with his wife, not in terms of his affection for her, but thus: “jabse yeh aurat meri zindagi mein aayee hai, meri kismet badal gayee hai.” Ah, that whole ghar ki Lakshmi phenomenon. My fellow viewers in the hall could understand that! The order of nature had been restored! All was well with the world! Thank you!

Now tell me Mr Bazmee, would you have the courage to make a comedy about man-ising wives in which female philanderers too are absolved this easily? I suspect not. Do prove me wrong.

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

Post-script: My dear gentlemen readers, I DID NOT say the hall in which I watched Thank You was filled with gentle folk like you J

CBFC Rating (India):	U / A without cuts
Running time:	134 Minutes
Language:	Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=154612521259601&set=a.154612517926268.36806.154356421285211&theater

 

REVIEW 29: MEMORIES IN MARCH

Release date:	April 1, 2011
Director:	Sanjoy Nag
Cast:	Deepti Naval, Rituparno Ghosh, Raima Sen

The producers of Memories in March must be made answerable for why they would support a gutsy project such as this one and then not bother to promote it. How many of you were aware of this film’s existence before you saw this review? And then, if it fails at the box-office, what will we hear? That Indian audiences are not interested in anything except masala or that Indians are uncomfortable with films featuring central characters who are gay. That’s so unfair – Indian audiences are not to blame if you make a sweet little film and then don’t bother to spread the word about it!

Memories in March is the story of a mother re-discovering her son after he passes away. Arati Mishra (Deepti Naval) flies to Kolkata from Delhi when she receives the news of Siddharth’s death in a car accident. Sid was a young, bright, up-and-coming executive in an ad agency whose life is cut short by one night of drunken driving. The film remains with Arati during her three days in Kolkata where she stays at Siddharth’s flat, visits his office, meets his colleague Sahana Choudhury (Raima Sen) and his boss Ornob Mitra (Rituparno Ghosh). Through them she realises that she didn’t, after all, know everything about the child she loved so much.

So when a mother learns that her late son was gay, what’s worse in her eyes: the loss of the boy or the loss of her image of what he was? Naval brings a remarkable maturity and restraint to the role of a parent who is clearly uncomfortable with the idea of homosexuality and yet can’t be harshly labelled as a homophobe. That’s the wonderful thing about director Sanjoy Nag’s handling of the subject and Rituparno Ghosh’s writing: at no point is Memories judgmental about Arati though that could have been a temptation since the film takes a sympathetic view of a homosexual person’s fear of coming out to his family. Yes Arati does call it an “abnormality”, and yes she does accuse her son’s lover of seducing him, but is her reaction any different from what you might expect of any city-bred, 50-plus Indian mom who has never been exposed to alternate sexualities? So is Arati prejudiced or innocent? Witness her artless reaction to the discovery of a packet of condoms among her son’s belongings: if he used birth control, then he certainly couldn’t be gay, she concludes. That is one of the many heart-warming scenes in this film.

I’m not saying much more about the story here for fear of giving away details that it would be nice for you to chance upon yourself. All I will say is that it’s lovely to watch Arati’s transition from her initial revulsion to reluctant acceptance of Siddharth’s reality. Rituparno Ghosh enriches that journey with his uncannily real portrayal of Siddharth’s gay boss. Ornob’s physicality fits many of the stereotypes that exist in our minds of what a gay person would be and yet, he is not a caricature. As the female colleague who harboured feelings for Siddharth, Raima Sen chips in a very natural performance. I have no idea why this girl has not made it big in films – she’s beautiful and talented and a joy to watch.  

Memories in March is about a mother-son bond, about homosexuality, about how that office for which we neglect our family will give away our cubicles in a jiffy while we remain irreplaceable in the lives of the very family we neglected for work. But most of all, the film is part of an interesting expedition that Indian cinema has embarked upon in its exploration of homosexuality as a theme: it’s not the first, and hopefully won’t be the last, but it’s certainly one of the best. Onir’s My Brother Nikhil was a simple and beautiful film about a gay man battling HIV and social opprobrium. More commercial films like Kal Ho Na Ho and Dostana too have their place in easing mainstream, conservative Indian audiences into the idea of homosexuality. Those who were offended by these two films should consider the obscene amount of bigotry that was packed into Karan Razdan’s Girlfriend, to understand the difference between laughing at someone and laughing affectionately with someone.

About a decade back, the late Nishit Saran had made a film called Summer in my Veins which was a feature-length home video about the moment he came out to his mother. It was moving no doubt, and pathbreaking, but one thing that defied believability in the film (at least for me) is the ease with which Nishit’s mother accepted the information. “Mom I’m gay,” was met with equanimity and an unblinking okay. In that sense, Memories in March feels more real.

Perhaps this film could have done without the lengthy discussion about fish being caged in an aquarium. And I certainly don’t understand why costs had to be cut by superimposing a car against footage of a busy road passing by – that looked tacky. But when you look at the larger picture, these feel like minor quibbles. Memories in March has some lovely music to back the story, but what moved me much more than the voices of professional singers in the background was watching Arati sing Yeh raatein yeh mausam nadi ka kinara yeh chanchal hawa in a borderline tuneless voice when Ornob tries to recall the song that Siddharth loved so much. Like so much else in this film, the scene was funny, it was sweet, it made me smile, it made me cry, and it was totally worth my time.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U / A
Running time:	106 Minutes
Language:	English, Hindi and a bit of Bengali with subtitles running throughout

 

Photograph courtesy: http://passionforcinema.com/memories-in-march-firstdayfirstshow-on-dingora/

REVIEW 28: HAPPY HUSBANDS

Release date:	March 25, 2011
Director:	Anay
Cast:	Anay, Mohit Ghai, Kurush Deboo

Dear Jaideep Sahni, I will never again take potshots at your Dum Maaro Dum lyrics about potties and “nanga” people. How could I, after “Aish kar aish kar aish kar, Jawaani ko tu cash kar” in Happy Husbands?

Dear Farrelly Brothers, I take back my harsh words about Hall Pass. The glam girl spewing diarrheoa on a bathroom wall in HP is no grosser than the leering men and bendy, cleavage-ridden women in Happy Husbands, a film that tries to make pretty much the same point as you did: that men may talk a lot about wanting to sow their wild oats, but when it comes to the crunch they will take their oats right back home to their wives. I swear, Messrs Farrelly, I’d rather watch your hero’s buddy shitting on a golf course than read the tagline of Happy Husbands: “there is no life without wife.” At least your film starred Owen Wilson! Happy Husbands stars a chappie called Anay who has also directed the film, clearly thinks he’s Mr Universe, has one song in which he tells us “I’m a killer” and gifts himself a couple of dances in which he gets to groove with (waah re kismet!) groups of white women!

Quick word on the story of Happy Husbands. It’s about a men’s club where the aforesaid Anay (who’s called Jaiveer in the film) counsels men to have affairs in a bid to stabilise their marriages. Mohit and Champu are his chelas. And of course in the end, everyone realises that fantasizing about having an affair is all very well, but the truth is – hold your breath for this one – “there is no life without wife”!

On the journey to this conclusion we get the following:

·    A hero who looks so much like the leading man in Impatient Vivek that they could play brothers in a film. Oh joy! (http://tinyurl.com/5tnlqow)  

·    A conjugal squabble in which a man tells his wife: Tamatar toh bahut badee cheez hai. Main kabhi kabhi matar ka bada matter bana deta hoon.

·    Wives who wear so much make-up at home that they’d put the ladies in our reigning Hindi soaps to shame

·    A woman called Komal Mazaakar who Mohit sees as an ideal candidate for an affair because: (a) she’s divorced (b) she’s got a rich ex doling out alimony which leads Mohit to believe that she wouldn’t want to pin him down to anything more than her bed, and (c) her surname is Mazaakar, meaning mazaa+kar, didn’t you get that stupids?!!!

If it weren’t for my New Year resolution to blog reviews of every single Hindi film released in 2011, I may not have bothered with Happy Husbands. But on second thoughts, I’ve just read an article in which director Anay has issued a threat to make a sequel to this film, so perhaps a review of Happy Husbands is an important social service that every critic must provide.

Rating (out of five): -10 stars

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	133 Minutes
Language:	Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://www.movieaxxo.in/2011/03/happy-husbands-latest-hindi-movie.html  

If you do not believe me, here’s a trailer of Happy Husbands. Enjwoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6BjgTrgBG4&NR=1

REVIEW 27: F.A.L.T.U.

Release date:	April 1, 2011
Director:	Remo D’souza
Cast:	Jackky Bhagnani, Angad Bedi, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Puja Gupta, Riteish Deshmukh, Arshad Warsi, Vijay Kashyap, Rameshwari, Akbar Khan, Mahesh Thakur, Darshan Jariwala

F.A.L.T.U. is what 3 Idiots might have been if it was less refined & less well written. But F.A.L.T.U. is also a reminder of what 3 Idiots could have been if the lead trio actually looked like college students.

Choreographer-turned-director Remo D’souza’s F.A.L.T.U. is one of those films that I confess I enjoyed in spite of the ludicrousness of the premise and the triteness of some of the dialogues. In spite of myself, I couldn’t help but smile through F.A.L.T.U. because D’souza brings a certain infectious energy to this film about teenagers who barely manage to pass school and are rejected by every college in their city. To silence their parents, they create a website for a faux college and print out acceptance letters for themselves. So far so good. But whaddyaknow, mom and dad are so thrilled at the news, they want to visit the college. Fear not, the kids’ wheeler-dealer friend has a decrepit building at his disposal, which they sweep, swab, wash, scrub, mow, dust, scrape and paint – in short, they convert those ruins into a shiny, brightly coloured educational institution complete with classrooms, notice boards, a swimming pool and a sign outside for Fakirchand and Lakeerchand Trust University. Now all they need are some fake students and a fake principal for a day. Their wheeler-dealer buddy (Arshad Warsi) promises to arrange for actors who’ll play students, and hires a real teacher (Bajirao / Riteish Deshmukh) to be a phony principal. But who are the hundreds of teens who throng the corridors on the opening day? They’re certainly not actors! I won’t reveal anything further!

In a film like this, I suppose there’s no point in asking some perfectly logical questions. Like: how could our three badmaashes manage to transform that building with their bare hands (and that too in a single day as one character informs us)? How on earth did they cough up the money for this enterprise? Who is this mysterious Google who contributes cash in lakhs to this venture? And how on earth did the college website enrol students when no one was operating it?

If the writer had been a little less lazy with his imagination, he may well have managed to plug these loopholes, and still served up a fun script. But perhaps that’s asking for too much in a Hindi film industry that has shown little respect for its audiences in recent years. Besides, the youngsters filling the theatre where I watched F.A.L.T.U. didn’t seem to mind too much.

Perhaps it’s because of the youthful appeal of the lead trio who are all in their 20s. Perhaps it’s also because producer Vashu Bhagnani has been wise enough not to repeat the mistake of placing the burden of a single-hero film on his son’s shoulders. Jackky Bhagnani’s debut film Kal Kissne Dekha failed miserably. In F.A.L.T.U. he is just one of a cheery gang, and the camera does not rest demandingly on him in every single shot. Jackky does a fair enough job of playing Ritesh Virani, a junk dealer’s son who would rather ogle women at a lingerie store than man his father’s kabaadi shop. Angad Bedi (Bishen Singh Bedi’s cricketer-turned-model-turned-TV-host son) is quite impressive as Nanj Nair who is nothing like the cliched aiyyayo-Hindi-film-idea of a ‘Madrasi’. Ritesh’s Pappa and Nanj’s Appa are concerned about their kids’ careers, but Puja Nigam (former Miss India Puja Gupta, less impactful than her co-stars) must deal with a father who thinks there’s no better future for her than the one he could find on a matrimonial website. The trio have a nerdish buddy Vishnu Vardhan who cries because he marginally falls short of a 95% score, but whose secret dream is to be an actor. Chandan Roy Sanyal (who we earlier saw in Kaminey) plays Vardhan without all the trappings of a typical Hindi film student-genius – sure Sanyal wears thick glasses but his Vardhan is still a fun and delightfully funny chap. He is the pick of the F.A.L.T.U. cast for me.

The main players are aided by Sachin-Jigar’s rambunctious sound track, some brilliant choreography, a lovely supporting cast playing their parents and praise-worthy attention to detail in the casting of F.A.L.T.U.’s crowd of students: someone tell me the name of that actor playing the Malayali kid – he just killed me!!! Arshad Warsi is wasted on the margins of this laugh-fest, Boman Irani over-acts in a brief appearance, but Riteish Deshmukh in a tiny role shows us once again that he’s one of the most under-rated comic actors in the industry. Watch him teach his students the eight time tables to Munni badnaam hui.

It’s moments like these that helped me forget the patchiness of F.A.L.T.U. which swings between being brisk and not, between being genuinely funny and falling terribly flat: I mean, Arshad Warsi is called Google because, well, that’s where you can find anything you search for, get it dummies?! And Bajirao says that students with low marks are “not useless” they are “used less”. Oh jeez! Post-interval F.A.L.T.U. also looks like a string of music videos. And in case we miss a point, it is repeatedly repeated for us dimwits in the audience. So not only does Pappa point out that F&L Trust University stands for F.A.L.T.U. but the letters flash on our screens. Just in case we didn’t get that this is a film about the flaws in our education system, the message is rubbed in with a looong conversation between Google and Bajirao, then again with Ritesh’s kabaadiwala Pappa equating the students of F.A.L.T.U. with kabaadi that doesn’t realise its own value (yes seriously, he does that!), and then again with some lengthy speechifying in the climax.

Now if Remo and his team had not under-estimated their audience, this could have been a special film. As things stand, it’s a highly flawed, uneven, light-hearted funfest. Well, at least it’s not pretentious and thank goodness for that.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U / A without cuts
Running time:	120 Minutes
Language:	Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://faltu-thefilm.com/

REVIEW 26: GAME

Release date:	April 1, 2011
Director:	Abhinay Deo
Cast:	Abhishek Bachchan, Jimmy Shergill, Boman Irani, Shahana Goswami, Anupam Kher, Kangna Ranaut, Sarah-Jane Dias

Ek akeli ladki aur kya kar sakti hai? If I hear that question one more time in a Hindi film I think I may just scream. In Yash Raj Film’s Laaga Chunari Mein Daag not too long back, the akeli ladki in question was compelled to become a call girl in the big bad city because … well, ek akeli ladki aur kya kar sakti hai? I’m not sure whether Game is an improvement or one step further back since the akeli ladki here is compelled to become a flesh-flashing nightclub dancer and drug dealer. Bechaari. Ek akeli ladki aur kya kar sakti hai?

But there’s more to Game than its hai bechaari take on a significant female character. There’s the fact that it’s poorly scripted and poorly directed. There’s the fact that it wastes competent actors like Anupam Kher, Boman Irani and Jimmy Shergill. There’s the fact that it fails to tap into Abhishek Bachchan’s ability to play uber cool the way few of his industry colleagues can, the way he did in Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna and Dostana. And there’s the overbearing fact that its pretentions to being a thriller are undermined completely by its part-predictable, part-contrived-despite-not-being-predictable storyline, lack of tautness and lack of finesse in storytelling.

The story is about four people who are invited to the Greek island of Samos by billionaire Kabir Malhotra (Anupam Kher). On the face of it, they’re a disparate quartet: there’s Thailand’s leading political figure O.P. Ramsay (Boman Irani), London-based journalist Tisha Khanna (Shahana Goswami), the nightclub owner and no-gooder Neil Menon (Abhishek Bachchan) from Turkey and Bollywood superstar Vikram Kapoor (Jimmy Shergill). But Malhotra knows more about them than they bargained for.

It’s a thriller, so any further elaboration on the story would have to contain spoilers. All I’ll say is that the introductory passage in Game right until the first crime is committed is quite engaging. But everything begins to unravel from the moment the International Vigilance Squad (IVS) arrives on the island in the form of Sia Agnihotri (Kangna Ranaut) and her team.

Why is it that so few Hindi film makers in recent decades have managed to pull off the thriller genre effectively? Maybe Abhinay Deo should have been force-fed all seasons of CSI before embarking on this project. It isn’t quite clear what the IVS is, but I can tell you that their methods are shoddy and the dialogues given to them certainly don’t sound to me like the conversations of intelligent, international crime scene investigators. Simple question: without giving away anything, I’d love to get an answer to this question from any of you who has watched the film: why didn’t it occur to the IVS right at the start to take fingerprints from a crucial object in the room where the first crime occurs?

What do I like about Game? Well, the locations are lovely, so is some of the production design (Neil Menon’s club – I like, I like) and the outdoor camerawork. Every character in the film is appropriately styled too, from Ranaut as a well-dressed sleuth in pantsuits to Goswami as the alcohol-swilling scribe with her heavily made-up eyes, Gauhar Khan as the wealthy man’s pretty but prim executive assistant and Bachchan junior in both casuals and formals. It’s a film that also reminds me of how much I’ve wanted to see Gauhar Khan in well-fleshed-out roles ever since I watched her in Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year. But an intriguing build-up, a slick look and a talented cast are not enough to redeem this completely unsatisfactory whodunit.

For instance, perhaps Mr Deo could tell me why a murderer appears shocked when the news of his crime is announced on TV. Didn’t he know he had committed the crime? Please note how carefully I’m wording my sentences to ensure that this review does not give away any plot twists. There’s a scene in which Sia Agnihotri’s associate is informed that Vikram Kapoor has just confessed to a crime. Right outside their taxi, a child is peddling a magazine that bears the headline: “Vikram Kapoor Exposed.” Whoa, I’d like to know the production schedules at that magazine! And if that mag story was “exposing” the actor’s earlier shenanigans, well … the point certainly didn’t come across. Elsewhere, a news channel in Thailand plays a video of O.P. Ramsay. The audio levels are raised for viewers to hear but simultaneously, on one side of the TV screen, the anchor is shown continuing to address her viewers. Err … why would the anchor remain talking when she clearly wanted her viewers to hear what was being said in that video?

I know, I know, I’ll be told that I’m being too fastidious. Well, forgive me for believing that a good film maker should be – to borrow a phrase from Arundhati Roy from an entirely different context – a god of small things.

Some scenes in Game appear designed to be profound but come off looking childish instead. There’s the one in which Sia is on the phone with her boss who is ordering her to get off a case, possibly under pressure from powerful people. As she speaks to him, the camera moves to a newspaper lying next to her with a screeching headline about corruption, and Sia – in what is perhaps an unconscious action – circles that word repeatedly and ferociously with her pen. Ooh!

And while on the subject of that boss, why oh why does Bollywood struggle so often to get decent actors to play white people in films?! And why why why is a looooong love song allowed to slow down the pace right in the middle of a murder mystery when there’s nothing in that number to take the story forward and it’s unmemorable?

It’s hard to believe that Game is produced by the team who gave us Dil Chahta Hai, Lakshya, Don and Rock On. Something about this film gave me an ache in the heart for that lovely old film Shalimar in which a bunch of master criminals (played by Dharmendra, Sylvia Miles, Shammi Kapoor, John Saxon and O.P. Ralhan) gathered at the island home of a notorious gangster for a very different purpose from the goal that Kabir Malhotra has in mind in Game. I’d love to know what Shalimar’s director Krishna Shah would have made of this material. Because Game feels like an unkind April Fool’s Joke – on the entire team of the film, and on us.

Rating (out of five): *1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U / A with no cuts
Running time:	125 Minutes
Language:	Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://www.gamethefilm.in/