First a background confession time: I am not a Chetan Bhagat fan; I read his first two novels but I found his writing style so abominably bland that it put me off forever. I reckon he is quite a hit with the youngsters; and that’s the audience the film wants to latch on to. That’s why his name is prominent on the posters, with the blurbs also proclaiming ‘from makers of Rang De Basanti’ a supposedly ‘cult film’ (though for sure, UTV has produced many more since then).

(I made a lame half-hearted attempt at seeking Three Mistakes of My Life, on which this film is based, at the Amazon Kindle stores a few weeks ago, but since it’s not seemingly not available there, I left it).

I am also not too well-versed with Abhishek Kapoor’s sole directorial venture: Rock On, having missed it in theaters, and watched it in fragments on TV (I saw its biggest chunk just today when it was aired on some channel; and found it a fake film in intent: a true blue Hindi melodrama masquerading as something seemingly ‘different’)

So coming back to Kai Po Che - with no overt interest in any of its makers, and not knowing the plotline or the characters, I had a key advantage of approaching it with an open mind. I was so clueless about the basic plot that I had no inkling as to whose ‘three mistakes’ the title refers to – though the film doesn’t really help to spell it out clearly.

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With a tantalizing tagline ‘Office politics gets hotter’, Inkaar is a sensitive film that deals with ‘office sexual harrasment’ in a more complex manner than it did in Aitraaz (though, let me hasten to add, that film was very enjoyable in its own way).

First the caveat – this is not your usual drab office. The setting is an advertisement agency, hence there is a huge quotient of glamour, casualness & freedom. Most of us would rush through Mumbai’s cruel traffic to mark our e-attendance on time, or sulk over sales numbers doing a Manmohan Singh like deafening silence, here the characters have it rather easy where it comes to the core work. Ideas flow naturally – they even change an entire campaign overnight in a hotel room, clients get bagged with just a few witty lines & the National Creative Director doesn’t seem to be to worried about her staff supposedly pan-India delivering on time. In that, sadly, Sudhir Mishra has alienated a large section of his urban audience, which in any case were his audience! I doubt the film will even see through its opening week in single screens or small sections.

Now for the good parts.

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Hmm, good day to release the film. It’s a sure-shot doomsday for competition, because Chulbul Pandey is here not only to chew a new villain (Prakash Raj) but also to swallow all rivals (if there were any left, in the first place!). I know I am a wrong person to review Dabangg 2, because I am an unabashed and self-proclaimed big-time Salman Khan fan, and this film is made for us.

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Hmm, the chiffons have been packed; the Alps are missing; the heroines are brash; and the biggest change: the Lata Mangeshkar’s velvety vocals are frustratingly absent;  but what remains in Yash Chopra’s swan song is his biggest asset : a straight-from-the-heart, somewhat old-school but deeply honest story-telling!

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A few pointers & questions to Mr Ashwini Dhir & Mr. Ajay Devgn:

1. I like your sense of humour – the name itself said, "SOS", so cant blame you really – but how come you forgot to inject the same humour in the film?

2. Was it necessary for all dialogues to be spoken as some sermon in one high-pitched drone – this was a film, not Mahabharat right?

3. We, the audience, are not that dumb not to read the film’s name – you needn’t have peppered the word ‘Sardaar’ in every other dialogue!

4. Could you please give us whatever you intoxicated your editor with? At least, we can also sit through those painfully lengthy chase-and-action sequences.

5. Slow motion is an effect to enhance a scene. Beyond a point, it ceases to be!

6. I am not blaming your music directors (two of them!) – songs can be a speed-breaker only in something that has speed in the first place!

7. Please go and watch a few of Tanuja’s brilliant acted movie before wasting her in a half-baked half-loony matriarch’s role.

8. Camera angles have been bane of a certain Mr. Ram Gopal Verma. Did you not read the flak he received? Or did you take the phrase ‘over the top’ a bit too literally. It’s not a joke to see so many top angle shots!

9. Please do buy a dictionary and check the word ‘cohesion’ – it may give you some insights. I love commercial films ( Salman Khan, who makes a rather unnecessary guest appearance in this one, is a master in them) but this one irritates and bores to the core!

10. Your heroines (Sonakshi and Juhi) are like glittering sparkles – but you simply allowed them to sinfully fizzle out.

Regards,
Your Pained Viewer!

English Vinglish is a story of a woman’s journey to discover her deprived self-esteem, her own lost self, and mend her warped dignity, all of which have got buried beneath her daily chores & mundane household activities; here her lack of understanding English is used as a metaphor; in reality, it could have been anything. It is a good concept wrapped in a competent film, one I believe will appeal to the ladies audience.

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Oh My God (OMG)  is an interesting and thought-provoking film that raises an accusing finger at god-men, rituals and other religious paraphernalia. Shun them, not God, is what the film says. Don’t allow the ‘business of God’ to flourish: why waste milk over stone idols when it can be used to feed the hungry? Be God-loving, not God-fearing.

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I have enjoyed many Vikram Bhatt-horror films : Raaz, 1920, Haunted to name a few. But this one is very average, and certainly looks made hurriedly on a tight budget, and sadly with very few spooks.

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Ek Tha Tiger  is a smashing entertainer with slick production values, a smooth as butter narrative flow, stunning action, superb music, crystal shining cinematography & Salman Khan in a top form.

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The glare of rich, easy and comfortable life that blurs the lines between morality and crime (while the protagonist’s lover looks on helplessly) has been an oft explored theme in Hindi cinema. Right from Shri 420 to Naam to Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman to Bas Itna Sa Khwab Hai, several Rajus have been blown away by the easy money tainted with blood, urged to mud mud ke na dekh to the middle class but tough and morally high life they have just disparagingly discarded. One more addition to such morally corrupted protagonist list is Kunal Kadam ( Kunal Kemmu, with his surname spelling changed, mind it!).

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Kahaani is a brilliantly directed, taut and tense thriller, with dollops of twists, and  loads of suspense,  leaving the audience forever guessing, and lots of surprise elements that will keep you riveted to your seats.

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Jodi Breakers seems to stem out from someone pointing out after watching Band Baaja Baraat (BBB) -’what if they specialized in breaking than making couples?’

Well, yes? Then? Then what?

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Sweet, short, slim and pretty much serene; though the film lacks a full-bodied story yet it makes it up with its inherent charm & easy-going affability, especially between the lead pair. Plus, it’s running time is just about right.

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God bless Juhi Chawla! The actor keeps getting more beautiful by each passing day. The grace & maturity with which she has handled age & motherhood is a rare phenomena in our industry. Not only is she looking absolutely stunning, she has also retained her inherent charm & elegance in a variety of understated (& often seemingly effortless) performances. And look the way she has carefully shifted gears from your usual heroine roles without compromising on either quality or quantity and yet not stuck in the mother/bhabhi/sister routine stuff (Bas Ek Pal, My Brother Nikhil, Jhankar Beats are some of her excellent post-marriage roles). Kudos, Juhi – you rock, and in Bhoothnath, your unobtrusive young-mother act is another shimmering example of how you can remain in the background yet ooze your presence…just like a mother in an average household!

In this film, she reveals yet another facet of her personality- that of being a very very competent singer. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that she has rendered the female portions of ‘Chalo jaane do ab chhodo bhi’ .

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There is absolutely no harm in showing attitude. This year’s top hit Race had oodles of it. Problem happens when there is no substance to support the style. Tashan – like Musafir – fails because the sexy swaggers and svelte styles has no back up in sense of script or soul. Leave soul aside, it even eschews a coherent story-line.

There is also no harm in simulating the seventies/eighties drama and melodrama and package it to suit the current sensibilities. After all, a sizeable audience slice still lives in the hinterland who feel alienated from the current trends. And dammit, we – the generation born in seventies – are not dead or transported to some other planet. We live too! So why not give us once in a while the kind of films we grew up with!

Farah Khan has delivered two bumper hits – Mai Hoon Na (a film I hated) and Om Shanti Om ( a flick I enjoyed) – keeping all those ingredients of the past painstakingly preserved ( in MHN, when the mother sobs in the climax, ‘ Mujhe mere dono bete zinda chahiye’ it was such a shining harkback to Nirupa Roy’s motherhood that wetted many a screens in the seventies) but gloriously packaged. There is a way of doing things and conjoining the two largely differing eras. There are films and then there are films. While OSO showed how to do it, Tashan spells out how not to do it!

Tashan is essentially a seventies/eighties film crash-landed into the new millenium and just doesn’t know what it really wants to be!

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It is the comeback season. Not mine. That is still time away. (I will continue to visit this space off and on for some more time).

But two of my favorites have come back with a proverbial bang – Director duo Abbas- Mustan and author Jeffrey Archer.

Isn’t it curious how much a fan accepts his loved artiste’s failure as his own, and then tries to defend it weakly or pompously (as his character is wont be)? Well, this post is not to dwell on a fan-artiste relationship. That would need to much of input and time, and more concentration that what this cyber cafe offers (with the lady at the desk happily viewing sobbing bahus in variety of soaps spread over multifarious channels).

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…and very soon. But just a quick update to those who have actually ventured into this space the past few days:

I am still home-less. More than me (after all, the company guest house is so comfortable) it’s my packers-and-movers guy (who is holding my stuff en-route from Agra at New Delhi) who is exasperated. From the gruff ‘when will you give me an address to send your dumb stuff’ he has now stepped down to a worried plea ‘boss, saamaan mangaa lo please’. I dread at thought of his final bill amount.

Nagpur is the new city added to my list of travels (and I type this post from a horrible cyber-cafe from there).

I stepped into Delhi for a brief while for Diwali. What to say? The four days simply whizzed by. My apologies to all whom I must have promised to meet, but didn’t.

I watch movies aplenty. And my current haunt is Cinemax at Versova. Their Red Lounge (with huge reclining sofas) is a treat, and the cheese pop-corns delicious. A bit late, but here are one-or-two sentences on the movies seen:

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For someone who has spent a lifetime on television making fun of other’s movies, I had expected Sajid Khan to churn out a whacky and whopper comedy – even if it were superbly slapstick or insanely double-entendre laden! Alas, Khan proves to be simply an arm-chair critic and an atrocious film-maker. Heyy Babyy is neither a full-fledged comedy nor a perfect emotional blaster, and in the end you return from the theater mourning the loss of money and time wasted on this corrupted kitsch.

The film is supposedly borrowed from Three Men and a Baby. It could be, but that is just till the first half – or till about three quarters of the first half. In the rest, it gets all emotional – including a tediously lengthy song that the three nasty-bachelors-turned-nice sing to the cute little one. Knowing Sajid Khan, he would surely have watched Dharam-Hema’s Tum Haseen Main Jawan (where a womaniser Dharam is found clutching a figure far too smaller to his liking!). Why couldn’t Khan take a leaf from that film? Despite all the seventies cliches and contrived situations, Tum Haseen Main Jawan was way more entertaining (and with good music to boot, courtesy Shankar Jaikishan!).

In the second half, the film concentrates on Akshay Kumar and Vidya Balan’s romance-cum-tiff, who it turns out is the mother of the child, and has returned to claim her right back. Poor Riteish and Fardeen are reduced to sheer side-kicks mumbling unconvincingly about how they miss the kid and help Akshay regain Vidya’s trust. This portion has a few genuine laughs. But then, it’s too little and too late.

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Patriotism easily slips into jingoism. We have seen it do it so easily in those Sunny Deol/Anil Sharma flicks. And this one even opens with a hockey match against Pakistan; and we all know that a match against Pakistan – any game – is no less than a war. One of the many things that I loved in this superbly crafted film is that Shimit Amin keeps the patriotic valve in strict control, allowing it to ooze out the fervor and letting it remain as a simmering under-current in the entire narrative, but never letting it gush and drown the audience in unnecessary hyperbole or screaming monologues. The subtle patriotism extends to the selection of the game itself – it’s about hockey, which is our national game (and not cricket, as some would believe). Perhaps the best touch is that the finale match is against Australia – who has been our bete noir in sports, and showing a win against them gives a curiously vicarious but satisfying thrill.

The story is simple and straightforward – a hounded-by-media-for-being-a-traitor hockey captain Kabir Khan (Shahrukh Khan) resurfaces seven years later to coach a bunch of rowdy girls team, and steers them to a resounding victory at the next World Cup. Most such stories follow a set pattern – a past that is not too shining, a team that is not too much of a team, a few external problems that need immediate attention, a few initial loses and then the last half-hour of a thrilling match, with that all-important goal/run in the very last frames of the match. Chak De India sticks to this basic framework, but what it adds on is not an ungainly mass of flab, but sinewy and rippling muscle. That’s where the film scores a straight goal.

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The blurbs say “sugar-free romance.” Don’t take it too seriously. After all the film comes from advertising guy (R. Balki), there is bound to be some amount of exaggeration. The film is most definitely sweet though not cloyingly so.

And at last there is a mature romance where the characters age is just a number, outside Yash Chopra’s banner (at least, till the time the veteran made films we got some delectable and sensitive films). The film has more weight and words than Nishabd, and while watching Cheeni Kum I had this huge urge of dragging Ram Gopal Verma to the theater and show him that this is how old man-young woman romance should be made!

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