Yeh Faasley
Thriller minus thrills
Story: Arunima (Tena Desai) loves dad (Anupam Kher) who, she believes, loved her mom too. But her love is put to test when she begins to suspect her dad and holds him responsible for her mother's death. Will the daughter avenge her mother's death even if it means standing up against her father?
Movie Review: If there's anything that holds the film together, it is the performances. If Anupam Kher renders a serious and substantial act as a father who may or may not be guilty, then newcomer Tena Desai is suitably restrained as the troubled daughter, torn between love and truth. Then, there is also Pawan Malhotra to watch out for as the mysterious third angle in this whodunit. All okay, on the acting front at least.
But when it comes to the plot, the pulp begins to flow....The film takes so long to build up to a not-so-predictable climax, it almost enervates you with its sluggishness. The repeated flashbacks with a not-so-happening actor-duo playing out a young Anupam Kher and his wife are meandering and meaningless, as are the daughter's rants about good daddy-bad daddy.
The film does show flashes of substance and form, but there's a whole lot of flab that renders it formless.
Story: Arunima (Tena Desai) loves dad (Anupam Kher) who, she believes, loved her mom too. But her love is put to test when she begins to suspect her dad and holds him responsible for her mother's death. Will the daughter avenge her mother's death even if it means standing up against her father?
Movie Review: If there's anything that holds the film together, it is the performances. If Anupam Kher renders a serious and substantial act as a father who may or may not be guilty, then newcomer Tena Desai is suitably restrained as the troubled daughter, torn between love and truth. Then, there is also Pawan Malhotra to watch out for as the mysterious third angle in this whodunit. All okay, on the acting front at least.
But when it comes to the plot, the pulp begins to flow....The film takes so long to build up to a not-so-predictable climax, it almost enervates you with its sluggishness. The repeated flashbacks with a not-so-happening actor-duo playing out a young Anupam Kher and his wife are meandering and meaningless, as are the daughter's rants about good daddy-bad daddy.
The film does show flashes of substance and form, but there's a whole lot of flab that renders it formless.
Tanu Weds Manu
Story: Manu (R Madhavan) is a sad and serious NRI doctor in London who comes looking for a bride in India. He flips for a sozzled small town girl, Tanu (Kangna Ranaut) who lives with her extended family in Kanpur. But there's a hitch. Tanu loves a goonda from Lucknow and threatens Manu with dire consequences if he doesn't say No to the wedding. Poor Manu! He not only says No but tries his best to get his dream girl marry her boyfriend.
Movie Review: Been there, done that? Yes, the first thing that strikes you about Tanu Weds Manu is a striking sense of familiarity. It wasn't long before you saw Shahid Kapoor playing a similar sacrificial lover to Kareena Kapoor in Jab We Met. And like poor Kareena, who tries too sort out her confused emotions against the backdrop of the big fat Punjabi wedding, Tanu too must decide who is better husband material, first amidst the hustle bustle of her best friend's boisterous going-balle-balle baraat and then at her chaotic Kanpuria community haveli.
Movie Review: Been there, done that? Yes, the first thing that strikes you about Tanu Weds Manu is a striking sense of familiarity. It wasn't long before you saw Shahid Kapoor playing a similar sacrificial lover to Kareena Kapoor in Jab We Met. And like poor Kareena, who tries too sort out her confused emotions against the backdrop of the big fat Punjabi wedding, Tanu too must decide who is better husband material, first amidst the hustle bustle of her best friend's boisterous going-balle-balle baraat and then at her chaotic Kanpuria community haveli.
Satrangee Parachute
Story: Pappu (Siddhartha Sanghani), a precocious kid, wants to find a parachute for his visually impaired friend Kuhu. He sets out with a bunch of friends from Nainital to Mumbai in order to fulfil his mission. But Mumbai is murky city.... Pappu and his buddies get embroiled with a gang of terrorists who are determined to create terror in the city with dubious parachutes.
Movie Review: If Iran can have it, why can't India have it too: a viable children's film movement. Why does the world's biggest film industry dish out the saddest kiddie films, week after week? Why can't Bollywood go the Hollywood way and treat children's film as hardcore, high market entertainment? Why must our film makers give the tween and teen film market a step motherly treatment.... Questions that need to be addressed urgently as the young viewers become more and more vociferous.
Sadly Satrangee Parachute fails to address any of these questions with its narrative that appeals neither to kids nor to adults. The storyline may be interesting and hold potential as a drama about a bunch of kids trying to blow up a terrorist plot. But its delineation is so serious, so tedious and so unfunny, it makes us adults fidgety. Can't imagine what it would do to an audi full of restless kids!
If the bachcha party lacks characteristic badmashi, then the adult cast looks totally confused. Both Jackie Shroff and Kay Kay Menon are clueless cops, while fine actors like Sanjay Mishra and Zakir Hussain haven't much to do. Please let's get less uptight about kids and start treating them as an intelligent and naturally bratty audience.
Movie Review: If Iran can have it, why can't India have it too: a viable children's film movement. Why does the world's biggest film industry dish out the saddest kiddie films, week after week? Why can't Bollywood go the Hollywood way and treat children's film as hardcore, high market entertainment? Why must our film makers give the tween and teen film market a step motherly treatment.... Questions that need to be addressed urgently as the young viewers become more and more vociferous.
Sadly Satrangee Parachute fails to address any of these questions with its narrative that appeals neither to kids nor to adults. The storyline may be interesting and hold potential as a drama about a bunch of kids trying to blow up a terrorist plot. But its delineation is so serious, so tedious and so unfunny, it makes us adults fidgety. Can't imagine what it would do to an audi full of restless kids!
If the bachcha party lacks characteristic badmashi, then the adult cast looks totally confused. Both Jackie Shroff and Kay Kay Menon are clueless cops, while fine actors like Sanjay Mishra and Zakir Hussain haven't much to do. Please let's get less uptight about kids and start treating them as an intelligent and naturally bratty audience.
Masti Express
Story: Rajpal Yadav may be an auto rickshaw driver, but he has a dream. He wants to send his son to the upmarket school where he ferries kids every morning. His wife, Divya Dutta, too eggs him on to fulfil his million dollar dream. But where can he get those elusive millions that would ensure a better future for his son? Will the neighbourhood dada, Johnny Lever, allow his aspirations to come true?
Movie Review: With a star cast boasting of almost all the comic actors of current Bollywood, you would expect Masti Express to unfold like a big screen comedy circus. Unfortunately, the laughs are too few and far between, as Rajpal Yadav choses to don a serious avatar and Johnny Lever plays it way over the top as the loud goon who is desperate to rule the neighbourhood with his might-is-right mantra. Even Divya Dutta, a fine actor otherwise, is reduced to a caricature as a whining, wailing wife and mother who threatens to throw herself under a train whenever things go amiss.
Funny only in bits and pieces, Masti Express doesn't live up to its name.
Kaccha Limboo
Story: Thirteen-year-old Shambhu (Taher Sutterwala) is the archetypal adolescent who wants to get a hold on life, but ends up all awkward, antsy and alienated, both from the bizarre adult world and the bullying peer world. When things get too rough, he runs away from home, finds a new friend in a precocious street kid, Vitthal (Chinmay Kambli) and decides to run further with him in order to find a perfect world. Is this the great escape or is it a coming-of-age for the confused teen?
Movie Review: When the credits begin to roll, you see director Sagar Ballary saying thank you to Gulzar for Kitaab and Francois Truffaut for 400 Blows. Naturally then, the paramount question is: Does Kaccha Limboo live up to its inspiration?
The film begins on the right note as it traces the dysfunctional world of oddball Shambhu who just can't fit in...Neither in school, where he becomes the butt of jokes due to his ungainly body image (he's overweight, untidy, refuses to wear shoes, sports shorts instead of trousers) nor at home where he just can't seem to connect with his over-effusive step daddy (Atul Kulkarni) and pregnant mom (Sarika). In a telling scene which sums up his isolation, the self-immersed Shambhu asks `Tara, who?' when his dad tells him to pipe down the music because his infant sis, Tara is sleeping.
The film is replete with such interesting little details which make it a promising viewing. But suddenly, the film changes track and Shambhu's misadventures at home and school are replaced by his encounters with a bunch of slum kids in Mumbai's underworld. Whatever happened to the cracker-like and thoroughly explosive situations where the teenager was fumbling with a teen crush and trying his best to fit in with the snooty coterie in class. Shambhu's extended encounters with Vitthal, the bustee kid derail the plot and leave you fidgety and bored.
Sad, because Kaccha Limboo could actually have been a great comeback from the director who gave contemporary cinema one of its smartest comedies: Bheja Fry. Nevertheless, watch out for the performances by the kids and by Sarika and Atul Kulkarni as the stressed-out parents. Why can't we have more of Sarika, please?
Movie Review: When the credits begin to roll, you see director Sagar Ballary saying thank you to Gulzar for Kitaab and Francois Truffaut for 400 Blows. Naturally then, the paramount question is: Does Kaccha Limboo live up to its inspiration?
The film begins on the right note as it traces the dysfunctional world of oddball Shambhu who just can't fit in...Neither in school, where he becomes the butt of jokes due to his ungainly body image (he's overweight, untidy, refuses to wear shoes, sports shorts instead of trousers) nor at home where he just can't seem to connect with his over-effusive step daddy (Atul Kulkarni) and pregnant mom (Sarika). In a telling scene which sums up his isolation, the self-immersed Shambhu asks `Tara, who?' when his dad tells him to pipe down the music because his infant sis, Tara is sleeping.
The film is replete with such interesting little details which make it a promising viewing. But suddenly, the film changes track and Shambhu's misadventures at home and school are replaced by his encounters with a bunch of slum kids in Mumbai's underworld. Whatever happened to the cracker-like and thoroughly explosive situations where the teenager was fumbling with a teen crush and trying his best to fit in with the snooty coterie in class. Shambhu's extended encounters with Vitthal, the bustee kid derail the plot and leave you fidgety and bored.
Sad, because Kaccha Limboo could actually have been a great comeback from the director who gave contemporary cinema one of its smartest comedies: Bheja Fry. Nevertheless, watch out for the performances by the kids and by Sarika and Atul Kulkarni as the stressed-out parents. Why can't we have more of Sarika, please?
7 Khoon Maaf
Story: Susanna is a sad woman. All she wants is love. But all she ends up with is weirdness, wickedness and bestiality in the form of her sundry husbands. Naturally then, there is only one option left for her to end her bitter ordeal. Murder. The embittered woman devices innovative measures to rid herself of her unsavoury husbands, hoping to find the elusive happy-ever-after sentiment some day. Does she succeed?
Movie Review: Vishal Bhardwaj takes a leap from Shakespeare to Greek tragedy. After having successfully rendered Othello and Macbeth in a purely desi idiom, the avant garde film maker transforms Priyanka Chopra into a Medea-like inferno who is hell-bent on revenge, after she fails to get her due from love and life. Is this leap successful too?
Movie Review: Vishal Bhardwaj takes a leap from Shakespeare to Greek tragedy. After having successfully rendered Othello and Macbeth in a purely desi idiom, the avant garde film maker transforms Priyanka Chopra into a Medea-like inferno who is hell-bent on revenge, after she fails to get her due from love and life. Is this leap successful too?
First things first. 7 Khoon Maaf is an intensely dark film which unfolds in shadows and silhouettes. So, if you aren't mistakenly looking for entertainment here, you are going to love this half-lit canvas of crime and punishment which lays bare the innermost recesses of a tortured soul. Vishal never once slips and lets go of his hold on this intense study of grief and grime. From the very first shot, which explodes with a grimacing Priyanka pulling the trigger on God-knows-who, the director inexorably draws you into this welter of passion and crime. All the death play takes place in semi-darkness: an almost outward pouring of an evil soul.
And this brings us to the second stirring note of 7 Khoon Maaf. The film is based on a seven-page story by Ruskin Bond. Vishal not only fleshes out the characters and adds immense details to the plot and the narration, he also balances the moral fulcrum at an interesting point. Priyanka may be a murderer, but is she evil? Never. Like all good and realistic crime and passion plays, this one too showcases the protagonist as a woman with a purpose. She may have used poisonous snakes and mushrooms and loaded guns to do away with her husbands, but you don't really blame her. Because somewhere through her dark and devious journey, Susanna carries the pain of every woman wronged: either by a two-timing husband, a wife-beating husband, a junkie husband, a murderous husband, a dictatorial husband, a sadistic husband, a husband who treats his wife as a sex object. The poor soul has no option but to end her anguish, any which way.
In terms of performances, 7 Khoon Maaf would undoubtedly end up as a milestone in Priyanka Chopra's career graph. The actor displays exquisite command over a complex character that is definitely a first in Indian cinema. She renders a subtle and restrained portrayal of a lonely and wronged woman who wanted love and only love from life. Amongst her husbands, it is Neil and Irrfan who excel as the brutes, even though it is hard to find fault with any of the characters in a Vishal Bhardwaj film. The music score (Gulzar and Vishal) is riveting too and boasts of the mesmerizing Darrrling number, amongst other tuneful songs. A word about the length: a bit of editing and tightening would make the experience more compelling.
Serious, sensitive and stirring, 7 Khoon Maaf is a whole new cinematic experience. Watch how Indian cinema is metamorphosing into something more substantial and glocal.
Angel
Story: Abhay is a happy-go-lucky youth who loves to live life king size, till fate leads him to prison. Once out of prison, he sets out to find the family of the dead victim, and ends up finding his lady love. Is it really that simple? Or does destiny have other things in store?
Movie Review: Now what's so angel(ic) about this one? Is it Abhay (Nilesh Sahay) who, hit him, scold him, abuse him... ends up smiling come what may? Or is it Sonal (Maddalsa Sharma) who forgives the man who kills her dad (by default) and later falls in love with him to become his angel? Or is it the blooming romance of the debutants where love is all about the chanting some incoherent Chinese mantra? Whatever it is, you really don't want to know.
Reason? First, is Abhay, who for most part of the movie, is seen moving in and out of jail. Sometimes for two years -- when he hits a man on the road killing him on the spot; sometimes for seven -- when he can't explain his love for the mentally challenged girl who happens to be the daughter of the man he once hit.
The motif may be angelic in the film, but the vision's lost somewhere!
Movie Review: Now what's so angel(ic) about this one? Is it Abhay (Nilesh Sahay) who, hit him, scold him, abuse him... ends up smiling come what may? Or is it Sonal (Maddalsa Sharma) who forgives the man who kills her dad (by default) and later falls in love with him to become his angel? Or is it the blooming romance of the debutants where love is all about the chanting some incoherent Chinese mantra? Whatever it is, you really don't want to know.
Reason? First, is Abhay, who for most part of the movie, is seen moving in and out of jail. Sometimes for two years -- when he hits a man on the road killing him on the spot; sometimes for seven -- when he can't explain his love for the mentally challenged girl who happens to be the daughter of the man he once hit.
The motif may be angelic in the film, but the vision's lost somewhere!
Patiala House
Story: Pargat Singh Kahlon (Akshay Kumar) is a shadow of a man. Why? Because his autocratic dad (Rishi Kapoor), scarred by the racist attacks against Indians in Southall, has forced his talented pace bowler son to run a grocery store rather than play cricket for the gora (read England) team. Pargat aka Gattu ends up as a puppet on a chain and perks up only when local firebrand Simran (Anushka Sharma) edges him on towards a mini rebellion.
Movie Review: It doesn't take much for lost, lonesome and loser Gattu to metarmophose into super cool Kaali, the bowler who leads a down and out England cricket team to umpteen victories. All it takes is a family counselling session by a bunch of restless yuppies in Patiala House -- the extended family mansion in Southall -- who urge our hero to rise up against Bauji, the in-house Hitler and realise his dreams. He would thereby set a precedent for the rest of the suppressed souls who would prefer to become chefs, rap artists, film makers and fashion designers rather than churn out jalebis or sing bhajans as per the patriarch's wishes. Of course, the major push -- and inspiration -- comes from the somewhat badnam Munni of Southall, Anushka Sharma, who apart from being a big tease, is an accomplished motivator too.
Movie Review: It doesn't take much for lost, lonesome and loser Gattu to metarmophose into super cool Kaali, the bowler who leads a down and out England cricket team to umpteen victories. All it takes is a family counselling session by a bunch of restless yuppies in Patiala House -- the extended family mansion in Southall -- who urge our hero to rise up against Bauji, the in-house Hitler and realise his dreams. He would thereby set a precedent for the rest of the suppressed souls who would prefer to become chefs, rap artists, film makers and fashion designers rather than churn out jalebis or sing bhajans as per the patriarch's wishes. Of course, the major push -- and inspiration -- comes from the somewhat badnam Munni of Southall, Anushka Sharma, who apart from being a big tease, is an accomplished motivator too.
United Six
Story: Six uptown girls loot a bank in Kuala Lumpur to teach the world a lesson. A world that's full of exploitative male bosses and two-timing boyfriends....
Movie Review: Justice for the bimbette? Well, if robbing a bank would be the plausible way to set right the gender imbalance, then cheers to the girls with the drillers and the .22s. But hey, there's got to be some attitude girls, specially when you try to tread the Thelma and Louise way to liberation. You can't go cackling like a bunch of geese with fake accents, faux oomph and freakishly bad performances.
Give us a wicked woman anyday. But give it in style.
Movie Review: Justice for the bimbette? Well, if robbing a bank would be the plausible way to set right the gender imbalance, then cheers to the girls with the drillers and the .22s. But hey, there's got to be some attitude girls, specially when you try to tread the Thelma and Louise way to liberation. You can't go cackling like a bunch of geese with fake accents, faux oomph and freakishly bad performances.
Give us a wicked woman anyday. But give it in style.
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