Funny Funniest, Funner, Lol !

Rating : Above average (3.7/5)
Genre : Drama
Year : 2009
Running time : 2 hours 50 minutes
Director : Anurag Kashyap
Cast : Kaykay Menon, Abhimanyu Singh, Aditya Shrivastava, Deepak Dobriyal, Jesse Randhawa, Piyush Mishra, Mahi Gill, Ayesha Mohan, Raj Singh Chaudhary
Kid rating : PG-13


GULAAL : WEAK ENDING RUINS STRONG BUILD-UP !

Technorati tag : Review Gulaal

Kashyap’s latest is a dark film, not just in it’s content, but also visually. Dark or poorly-lit rooms, house dark, vengeful characters. The main story focuses on student politics in Rajasthan, where law student Dilip Kumar Singh (Chaudhary) has newly arrived. Naïve Dilip finds rooms let by Rananjay Singh, known as Ransa (Abhimanyu Singh), the son of the erstwhile Raja. Dilip, cowardly and weak, is soon embroiled in student politics, courtesy Ransa and other rival gangs.

Gulaal introduces us to politics via Dilip, but this is really the story of people hungry for power and the affluence that it brings. Duki Bana (Menon), a zamindar, who finds himself bereft of any real power in the face of Governmental rulers, wants money to build the state of Rajputana. Kiran (Mohan) and her brother (Aditya Srivastav), as children of a kept mistress, want their father’s name. There is a third faction of louts also contesting the student General Secretary post, however they do not become prominent to the story. Other characters, all interesting, are those who sway one way or another.

The first half of the film is strong and well-controlled, and Kashyap uses the time to give us a tight, political drama. You have a weak common-man, Dilip, friends with Ransa, who’s kind of wild and reckless. Dukki Bana, who’s married, has a mistress on the side, and is open to other amorous advances, is using Ransa to win over student politics in Rajpur, and thus supporting him over rival factions. Deepak Dobriyal stunningly plays Dukki’s right-hand man. Then there is Kiran, who will go to any lengths to win the elections and become the student General Secretary. And there is her brother, cold, calculating, trigger-happy Karan who master-minds Kiran’s every political move.

There are also minor characters like Dukki’s wife (Jyoti dogra), a dutiful woman, who gets a little feisty when she hears of Madhuri (Mahie Gill) Duki’s mujra-performing mistress. Model Jesse Randhawa plays Anuja, a teacher who is stripped of her clothes and her dignity, but must continue to puff-up impotent clouds of cigarette smoke, in the absence of any hope of action against the perpetrators. I found her role inconsequential to the story – it didn’t do anything and didn’t exert any influence on any character. The female characters in the film are all of them powerless, and truly depicted given the context. Even Kiran’s character, while conniving and determined, is only so at another’s bidding.

Then there is also Dukey Bana’s mentally retarded brother Prithvi Bana (Piyush Mishra), who is given to singing and composing couplets. Kashyap uses him to narrate the story in balladic form, and reflect on the corruption of it all.

This film doesn’t have any one protagonist. The main characters are all negative, except maybe Dilip, who’s weak, and doesn’t have the strength to overcome the odds. So it’s kind of hard to actually root for any one. Still, the film with it’s interesting characters, and brilliant acting, is trundling along nicely, until it hits intermission. Then, it’s downhill, because Kashyap fails to keep up his promise. The story flags and I found the end really disappointing. Where he should have upped the ante, and provided a sizeable twist to the story, he goes along with a jaded, and un-interesting premise.

Kashyap tries hard to give us a gritty, ethnically-flavored drama, and comes close to carrying it off, but ouch! - that ending. I cannot see this film succeeding commercially at all, for who really has the time to read between the lines, these days ? Still, this film is highly recommended; just don’t go in there expecting too much.

If you liked this film, you might also like :

- Haasil
- Hazaron khwaishen aisi
- Omkara

Rating : Poor (2.2/5)
Genre : Drama
Year : 2008
Running time : 2 hours 10 minutes
Director : Anil Senior
Cast : Irrfan Khan, Soha Ali Khan, Rahul Bose, Konkona Sen Sharma, Payal Rohtagi, Rahul Khanna
Kid rating : A


DIL KABADDI : TORTUROUS !

Technorati tag : Review Dil Kabaddi


“Dil kabaddi” is apparently an Indianised version of Woody Allen’s “Husband’s and wives” – a desi take on infedility in a marriage. We have two couples, one Samit (Irfan) and Mita (Soha), and the other Rishi (Bose) and Simi (Konkona). Samit and Mita decide to split up, much to Rishi and Simi’s consternation. Samit hitches up with kooky Yoga instructor Kaya (Paya Rohtagi), and Mita, after much weeping and hand-wringing decides to get dating again.

Rishi and Simi meanwhile rethink their partner-ship, he, a professor, on more-than-friendly terms with a student, and she a journalist, almost in love with another man. It’s a tangled web, with lots of sex talk and sexual references thrown in. And if it was reaching for a deeper meaning, it gets lost in the messy thingamajig that is the screenplay.

“Dil kabaddi” is a warbled, garbled film. The characters are interesting, better handled it might have made a better film, but as is, they come in slip-shod and eccentric. The actors playing these ill-defined characters give it their best shot, but that isn’t enough to keep this film from sinking. The direction is amateurish, and the product comes across as incoherent and disjointed.

This film tries to get into the nitty-gritty of relationships, and tries to be quick and clever about it. The couples are, at least on the outside, smart, savvy and snappy. On the inside they are emotional wrecks like the rest of us. As such you’d think that it would be easy to sympathize with their predicament and root for them, in their search for “The One”. Unfortunately not. Inept handling makes this a difficult job – the one character for whom I felt (remote) sympathy was Mita.

This is an awful film, and not even strong acting performances could redeem it.

Kidwise : Contains sexual references, and gets an A rating.

Rating : Below average (2.8/5)
Genre : Romance
Year : 2009
Running time : 1 hour 45 minutes
Director : James Dodson
Cast : Anupam Kher, Shriya Saran, Jesse Metcalfe Kid rating : PG-13

THE OTHER END OF THE LINE : Worth hanging up on !


Jessica David talks to Granger Woodruff, over the phone. She is almost in love with his voice, and he wants to meet her for drinks. The catch – Jessica is not really American Jessica but Indian call-center employee, Priya Sethi, complete with Amrikan accent and knowledge of Amrikan culture, etiquette and movie stars. And she’s helping Granger sort out his credit card theft issue, while surreptitiously checking him out on the web.

Bangalore based Priya, being pushed into an arranged marriage with a tied-to-Mama’s-pallu suitor, decides to throw caution and parental disapproval out the window and head out to the US to meet Granger. However since he isn’t expecting an “Indian” Jessica, complications arise. The two do get to meet in total Bollywood fall-over-each-other style (and under false pretenses), but love is quite another matter . . .

Now, romantic comedies abound. So why should you see this one? No reason at all. The chemistry is non-existent, the storyline involves flights of fancy and logical lapses, and the acting is mediocre. Besides watching perpetually pleasant Priya turn into a coy, simpering desi girl in the presence of gorgeous Granger got tiring after a while.

Ashok Amritraj produces this jaded bit of filmdom. The story is pretty cliché-ridden from the over-strung Dad to the patriarchal future in-laws. And the quality, the overall feel of the film is very average. While most parts of the movie are passable – yeah, they won’t have you swooning in delight – some are so ineptly done, that they are almost gauche. James Dodson decides to lay on the whole Indian bit a little thick.

Shriya Saran playing Priya is nothing out of the ordinary; she’s the pretty girl next door, but without that quality which would separate her from the pack. And Jesse Metcalfe (from Desperate Housewives) playing Granger is OK. Anupam Kher is great always, but he’s been given this eccentric, overwrought Dad’s role, so you can imagine how it goes.

All that said, my biggest issue with this film is it’s predicatability. Another love story with the honor-ridden, what-will-people-say, izzat-minded desi parents and a girl wanting the unsuitable? Ouch. I would tolerate inept acting and direction if only to watch something new, with decent emotional grounding. If I could feel a glimmer of what Priya-Granger were feeling, or even get a whiff of their blooming (and you can take that any way you will !) romance I’d be a happy couch potato. But no, nada, nyet – all that they feel is expressed very amateurishly, and in a very limited fashion. Where is that rumbling passion that would make you toss aside parents/girlfriend ? Not in this film.

And it’s not like I expected Dodson to deliver it served warm and fuzzy, but one can hope, can’t one ?

A very been-there done-that film; an Indian “Pretty Woman” if you will – only there ain’t no oomph; Shriya isn’t a Roberts and there isn’t a Gere to dream of post-movie.

If you liked this film, you might also like (hint-hint - a well-made romance !) :

- Pyar ke side effects
- Rules
- Socha na tha

Rating : Below average (2.8/5)
Genre : Drama
Year : 2009
Running time : 2 hours
Director : Jehagir Surti
Cast : Neil Nitin Mukesh, Bipasha Basu, Rahul Dev, Sophie Chaudhary
Kid rating : PG


AA DEKHEN ZARAA : Predictable pot-boiler !

One is often wary of watching films with bad actors in them. And so it was with “Aa dekhen zaraa”. The fact that Neil Nitin Mukesh also starred in it somewhat mitigated that fear, because after the wonderful "Johnny Gaddar", his next appearance was highly anticipated. Now, he’s not a master actor, but compared to Lady Bips, he is the King.

And then, of course, you have the , er . . , scientific angle. Because this film involves concepts of time travel – yeah, not so much that you’d have to stress that precious noggin, but just palatable enough for a casually entertaining desi flick. Me, being this huge time-travel fan, you’d think I’d go see this film the first chance I got, no ? But no, getting these many bad reviews of a film does put you off. So I waited. And finally did see the film. Here’s the plot :

Lady B plays Simi, a singer/DJ – nice, swanky looking club, and she looking marvelously hip and all. In a flat close by her’s, resides our photographer hero Ray (Neil). Now Ray has been left a camera by his grand-father, and it’s not an ordinary one. It can foretell the future - you click the snap and turn a handy dial, develop said photo, and voila ! the developed photo will be of the subject in the future. Awesome, you think ! Well, guess who else thinks this is awesome ? The villains of course. And there are many.

Anyway, with our boy Ray merrily clicking away, he has one photo taken of himself, and discovers that there’s something quite unwelcome looming in his future. Simi, who by this time has become serious girl-friend steps in, talks some sense, and together they try to beat this thing. The evil villains, predictably are hot on their trail . . .

Well, that’s as far as I can take you. And if you haven’t yet guessed the ending, please go see the film. It isn’t as bad as anticipated – for a masala movie. For one thing, the songs are pretty good – especially the title track, and that slow romantic number “Mohabbat aap se”. However the lead pair don’t have much chemistry; she looks quite a bit older and way more worldly-wise than dewy-eyed Mukesh. The direction is a bit slapdash, the film’s coherence hangs by a thread, and events and characters pop out of nowhere. Aah, and the logic – let’s just say that there isn’t much of that.

Rahul Dev as villanous "Captain" essays his role with some panache, while Sophie in yet another baby-doll-with-anglicized-Hindi is her usual self - bad. Bipasha can't act but has personality, and Neil can't act either but has this very earnest appeal thing about him. Makes you wish they got better scripts, and directors who knew what they were doing.

It is believed that we are attracted to the shiny and the colorful, as compared to the reliably hued. So it is with this movie – it’s thoroughly pulpy, cool angles, cool clothes, and quite a bit of bling. But for about 2 hours of mindless entertainment, I’d choose this over, say, a “Race”.